The banks are going down. There is uncertainty in the financial world. Do I care? Not really. I’m a teacher. Better yet, I’m a teacher in the inner city. I’m never going to lose my job.A teacher in the Independent sector might have to worry. If bankers lose their jobs, families cannot pay the fees, maybe some teachers get fired. In any case, those parents are paying for their child’s education. So they are always on top of their teachers, demanding high standards, and teachers have to work to keep up with them.
Silly Independent sector teachers… they should have got a job in the inner city! Better yet, they should have got a job in the worst of the inner city schools. No one cares what time you leave, or if you’re even in your classroom. No one notices when you’ve taken 20 days off sick or more, in spite of the fact that we get 15 weeks of holiday a year. At my school (which is a good inner city school), the average number of sick days is 11. I’ve never taken a day off sick, so I guess someone else took my 11 days for me.
As long as you have the stomach for the rudeness, and the occasional flying chair, if you’re lazy and want a decent salary, teaching in the inner city is the place for you. The best kind of school is one that’s on its way to being in ‘Special Measures’ (failing status), because that means the school is in utter chaos and no one is doing anything about it. Parents haven’t a clue of what to expect of a school and they never even show up to parents meetings so you don’t have to worry about having to justify yourself.
Frustration? Well as long as you don’t care how the kids do, then you’re set. You won’t feel frustrated when they don’t do your homework because that will mean all the less work for you. You won’t feel angry that your Head isn’t doing anything to improve the school because you’ll be grateful for the chaos that hides your incompetence.
Fire you? HA! It is practically impossible. First of all, you would have to have a Head who could be bothered with the procedures. If he is the Head of an inner-city school, he simply won’t have the time. It will take YEARS to fire you. First of all, you would need to be utterly incompetent to even qualify for competency procedures. You can avoid this status simply by turning up on time in the mornings, marking occasionally, and being SEEN to try to improve. Even if they start the procedures, it takes years of inspectors coming in to check up on you for anything to happen. And look, if after several years, they manage to get rid of you, you can always just get another job in another inner-city school! It’s foolproof!
And SHH… don’t tell anyone, but the pay is pretty good you know. Just make sure you’re in a union. They will fight for you all the way. I recommend the NUT. They are the most militant. They are the best at protecting useless teachers. They will fight so well for you that the school might pay you off. Imagine a sudden chunk of 20 or 30 grand. It might even be more if you threaten them with disability or racial discrimination acts. Not bad for being crap, eh?
The inner city is the perfect place for mediocrity to fester. And what of those outstanding teachers in the inner city? They eventually leave for the Independent sector. That, or they leave teaching altogether and get a job where they can enjoy feeling the insecurity that is felt in any job where standards are required, and where one can get fired.
33 comments:
Snuffle you are a saint. Your country needs you never mind the school where you teach.
How do we fix the situation you describe?
I told you that it would take 2 years tops before you give up. It doesn't matter how much sense you make, how irrefutable and internally consistent what you say is, people in a group are unreasonable by nature.
You cant stop the train wreck Snuffy, and however many times you improve a childs life - and i know you do that - there are many thousands more wayne and waynetas who don't get that chance and more to the point are indelible harmed, who then reproduce etc.
Just stand back and enjoy the show - It cannot really be fixed by rational means as modern societies dont work like that, and when the recession hits this country will be ugly, so make sure you have a way out.
You know i can make quite cogent rational arguments if i want, which i did do with you because i wanted to and because you have the ears to listen. But most people don't - I know you have a lot of guardian readers here so i like to tell them stuff like my d&b past etc - its pretty much irrelevant but its funny, right? A wigger in the BNP etc. All the world is a stage and never more so than now etc blah blah.
With what I can see you have gone way way above the standards set by your peers, and in a society where the majority worked to your standards out of habit I should think there is nothing to say that that wouldn't be entirely sustainable, but we live in a very different society and you are in the middle of it, trying to pull it your way with a rubber band.
Aint gonna happen - the train is coming off the rails. Don't try and stop it just get out the way. Nothing really matters but your family, make sure they are safe and then stand back and enjoy the show.
Here's W.B yeats;
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Or my favourite by Kipling;
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.
I wonder if this puts you in a relatively speaking good frame of mind; these are the hoops that apparently New York State has to jump through to fire a teacher
http://oldsite.reason.com/0610/howtofireanincompetentteacher.pdf
Dont worry Snuffy as a just ex-student nothing much surprises in education. I have a rather terrible feeling this is endemic everywhere in the West now.
Savonaroia
Welcome to my blog.
The solution?
Break the unions of course!
Anonymous
You must take a name please...
BaBa
Who would have thought that not only would I be chatting with a member of the BNP, but that he should be quoting Yeats and Kipling to me?
I referenced Shakespeare there too don't forget
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts. . .
:-)
As the old adage says, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
Except that a lot of those in teaching seem to be unable to do that too.
Or is it more the case that they could teach, if the crowds they had to try to educate were more controlled? Cos that was a major reason I didn't go into teaching, & that was thirty years ago!
Bronchikat
Of course there are good teachers who struggle because of the madness that is behaviour these days in school. But I don't mean them. In every school, there is about 10-15% of teachers who are lazy and who frankly don't give a damn about the children and are simply teachers because they would be fired in any other job.
There are 10% of wasters everywhere, Snuffy. Out here it's called one of the 80:20 rules. 80% of people are soldiering doing something like. The 20% are the exceptions. Alas, only 10% of these are the heroes. The other 10% are the failing, the failed, and the don't-give-a-damns. It is a manager's (Head Teacher's) duty to root out this bottom 10% and fire their asses. Over time, if nothing is done, people lose heart, give up and start to fall back into the Legion of the Damned.
Sadly, it is probably the same with the kids.
Unfortunately, I fear that those working on education policy in central Gov't:
- Have the same nutty views as many at the NUT conference; or
- Believe that if we can all just be reasonable, we can sort out these problems together; or
- Share your view, but can't be ar**d to do anything about it (it's not just teaching, you know...); or
- Share your view, but know that the idiots that we have for Ministers will never agree. Maybe under the Tories.... then again, maybe not.
That's why I steered well away when posts related to education policy ever came anywhere near my way...
But, just in case, how would you break the unions? Vouchers? Creating an alternative source of employment support, etc. in a non-union form? [I've asked Norfolk Blogger about this too...]
Mongoose
But that's just it. It is nearly impossible to fire a teacher.
Bishop Brennan
To tell the truth, I don't know. I just think the unions have too much power. They hold Heads at ransom. And they make it so I cannot ever be fired. I hate that. They make a mockery of my profession. And they ensure there aren't any heights of performance that we must reach. It is stifling. And worst of all, the kids are the ones who suffer.
But I'm not sure Brown etc have the same views as those in the NUT. They are convinced by those in the NUT. The NUT is evil and it should be shut down altogether.
Snuffles, it is never impossible. I speak from nasty and unpalatable experience.
Why, it seems like it was 1985 only yesterday. "Are there any redundancies associated with this programme, young Master Mongoose?"
"Oh yes. I am afraid that there are."
"Remember now that we know where you live with that little girlfriend of yours."
"Do pop in for a cup of tea next time your are down our way. Now, shall we begin?"
What larks we had, Snuffy. But, yes, I agree that it is hard and takes a long time but you have to start somewhere - to encourage les autres, you understand. The slackers shape up, the hard workers - who should earn more btw - see that there is a point. Begin today, is my advice.
Mongoose
Sorry...I'm not following. Please explain!
If I had more time in life I'd read your comments, but I haven't so that's how it is.
I enjoyed reading this post with it's oh so sensitive picture of the joys of inner school teaching.
It does amaze me that it takes a whole year to sack a teacher though on the grounds of incompetence, so that's a whole year of continuing to screw with kids minds...
pxx
I was trying - badly, it seems - to show that there are far more horrible things and people out there in the world than a few lousy teachers. (And one can get shut of them. I'll do it for you if you want and if your Head can pay the fee.)
I cut my teeth hacking the die-hard monsters out of Britain's ailing manufacturing industry in the eighties. The people I fought threatened me to my face and intimidated my tiny lady by phoning her up throughtout the night while I was working away. Vermin they were but their union's bag of weaponry was a whole world away from the whining of a few teachers. We stood in line and we won. The mighty atom, the future Mrs Mongoose, all 100 pounds of her, stood her proxy ground too and faced them down, the cowards. We looked the Devil in the face and he backed down. That's what you need to do. You, and your Head, need to start now. At the very least, you - an aspiring Head - should resolve never to put up with the 10% of wasters who will drag your school down and hold your children back.
You, Snuffy, can do it.
In 16 years as an employment law Solicitor, I have yet had a case where a teacher has been dismissed
Thank you for being you.
Somehow love makes the difference.
The inner city is the perfect place for mediocrity to fester. And what of those outstanding teachers in the inner city? They eventually leave for the Independent sector.
That's funny - I distinctly recall reading a previous post on this blog where the author talked about how they loved teaching in a difficult school because it allowed the teacher to sharpen their skills - unlike those in the independent sector whose skills become dull for want of challenge. Was that someone else posting or do you have a split personality? Either way, you'd think you might try and get a consistent theme between y'all.
The solution?
Break the unions of course!
Yes, let's remove any protection teachers have from management and the state. That would overcome teacher shortages in the inner-cities in one fell swoop, thereby solving the problem you describe. Except it wouldn't.
Ah, found it:
The inner city is the perfect place for mediocrity to fester.
Contrast and compare with this:
It is no secret that some of the most ordinary teachers in the land are in the private sector. Some private school teachers are of course excellent. But simply because they don't have to be excellent in order not to be eaten alive by their children, there are many who are not
Back to what you wrote here:
And what of those outstanding teachers in the inner city? They eventually leave for the Independent sector.
I suppose you could try and make these arguments consistent but it'll involve some contortions on your part.
I was wondering when someone was going to attack me for my contempt for the unions. Finally! Shuggy - welcome to my blog.
And Od too, welcome.
Shuggy - I didn't mean get rid of the unions entirely. I just mean take away some of their power. They have too much of it and they don't put it to good use when it comes to teaching. Other unions for other jobs - I can't comment on.
As for your point about the independent sector, well remembered. How come I have never heard from you before? I did think of that post while I was writing this one, and again, wondered if anyone would insist on me explaining myself. Well done on forcing me to explain.
Teaching in challenging schools forces one to be outstanding, if one is really going to make a difference. But lots of people get disheartened by the struggle and leave - for the private sector, or leave teaching altogether. Others stay because it is a great place to hide, and be unsatisfactory. And some of course stay and continue to be outstanding.
In the private sector the need to 'perform' and 'pursue' is not so great, so when there, teachers don't need to work insane hours to feel satisfaction at a job well done. That isn't to say that the job doesn't have other pressures (like pushy parents etc), but when it comes to performing as inner city teachers have to do, in order to succeed with their kids, they simply don't have that kind of pressure.
And so yes - that's why I'm still there. I like the challenge of an inner city school. There are some others who think like me and stay on. But a number of them do not think as I do and leave. I never said private school teachers were unsatisfactory - I said that there wasn't the same pressure there to be outstanding.
And as for breaking the unions, I never said it would solve the problem of teacher shortages. But it would allow us to get rid of the bad teachers. And what's wrong with that?
School exclusion policy has often seemed to be a game of pass the parcel - but with nutty students. Now the government wants to formalise this arrangement.
>In 16 years as an employment law Solicitor, I have yet had a case where a teacher has been dismissed
od, shall we begin?
Sir Alan Steer, the head teacher of a specialist school and author of the report, said: “I didn’t feel we should have a situation where a school has a perverse incentive to exclude, knowing it would not have to accept a child with difficulties. We didn’t want a situation where schools were exporting without accepting their responsibility to import where they could.”
Heheh, so thats another version of twist or stick then.
'Hmm, LeRoi has a bad habit of stabbing his peers - twist or stick?"
Yes, let's remove any protection teachers have from management and the state.
Shuggy, I take this to be a sarcastic remark, implying a distrust of the states claims to benevolence. Isn’t that a very Thatcherite point of view?
It is usually the Left that is more willing to trust in the wisdom and good intentions of government departments (the DfES, NHS, etc)...
As for your point about the independent sector, well remembered. How come I have never heard from you before?
I left a comment at the other post as well, where I mentioned I'm a teacher too in the east end of Glasgow. I recognised much of what you wrote in that one but not so much in this one. A couple of points, if I may?
1) I'd said that while not impossible, it would require some intellectual contortions on your part to make these two posts consistent. So it seems, if I may say so, what you've given me here. In post A you suggest the private sector teacher lacks the survival incentive ("avoiding being eaten alive", I think you said) that the inner-city comp teacher has. In post B, on the other hand, the comp - especially the failing comp - becomes a haven for the incompetent because a) they are very difficult to sack b) because, according to you, no-one gives a damn. Now, while I'm sure you'll claim I've misunderstood you, I think most objective readers would come to a similar conclusion as myself. Perhaps if you were clearer about which factor is the most powerful incentive and whether you think, on balance, the independent sector has better teachers or whether it's the public sector.
2) I agree it's virtually impossible to get rid of an incompetent teacher but I think you misunderstand the situation if you think this is solely, or even largely, a function of union power. It isn't any more difficult to get rid of a bad teacher than it is to get rid of anyone else who works in a public sector bureaucracy. This has more to do with the conventions of said bureaucracy - i.e. difficult jobs in many cases but basically low risk is traded off against relatively low rewards.
3) I'd agree you get bad teachers but I don't think the performance of the education system has very much to do with this. I think we kid ourselves: there are a few virtuoso teachers and a few very poor ones but the vast bulk of us occupy some place in the middle. Who could disagree with the proposition that it should be possible to get rid of bad teachers? That's not the point: the systemic problems we have with education in this country has very little to do with the quality of the average classroom practitioner. After all, if the crime rate rises, you tend not to get politicians and journalists bleating that we need to root out the incompetent police officers, do you?
Shuggy, I take this to be a sarcastic remark, implying a distrust of the states claims to benevolence. Isn’t that a very Thatcherite point of view?
It is usually the Left that is more willing to trust in the wisdom and good intentions of government departments (the DfES, NHS, etc)...
This might be the view of the statist left but it is not my view. You don't have to be a Thatcherite to conclude from the history of the twentieth century that larger government is not necessarily better, to say no more than that. The left's support for institutions like the NHS has nothing to do with - or shouldn't have, anyway - deference to other's 'wisdom'; it's merely a recognition that it is appropriate for the state to provide services like this to correct for market failure. I much prefer the left tradition that is suspicious of power and would prefer to see it distributed more equally.
Shuggy
Oooh... You're a teacher! How fab. Who has the better teachers, state or private? Impossible to say. It depends on the school. And frankly the very notion of 'good' teacher is up for grabs. Often the worst teaches a la Ofsted criteria make the better teachers (in my view). So... can't say. But I would say that if you do an outstanding job in a hard core school, you are pretty fantastic. And if you are really rubbish, the worst inner city schools are the best places to hide.
Not true - it is much easier to get rid of support staff in a school. Teachers are impossible.
I like your point about police officers. And yes, of course the main problems with education these days are not the terrible teachers. And maybe you are right to tell me off about suggesting that the issue is more important than it actually is. But the point still stands: I wish we could get fired - if only because it would mean more respect from the rest of society.
So you in Primary or Secondary? What do you teach?
But I would say that if you do an outstanding job in a hard core school, you are pretty fantastic. And if you are really rubbish, the worst inner city schools are the best places to hide.
Ha ha - we're struggling to agree here: I agree with the first point but not with the second. How can this be consistent with what you said earlier? Who's the weak teacher? Why it's the one being 'eaten alive'. Much easier to hide in a leafy-suburb school where there's no real discipline issues and poor teaching is unlikely to have much impact on results because the kids are all motivated and have private tutors and such like.
But the point still stands: I wish we could get fired - if only because it would mean more respect from the rest of society.
Again, agree with the first point, but I doubt the second would follow from this. For this to be true, wouldn't you have to show that the previously higher status the teaching profession enjoyed had something to do with a greater likelihood of being sacked? Yet this was never so.
So you in Primary or Secondary? What do you teach?
Secondary - like yourself? History and Modern Studies - the latter basically being politics in the Scottish system.
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Oooh, thats interesting.
Modern studies - Politics. How can one teach politics as a matter of fact?
I went to a fee paying prep and then a top-20 (academically) public school on a scholarship.
At the prep, up to about 7 or 8 all the teachers were good. Most of the teachers of those aged more than 8 were downright bad. There was one good languages teacher and (briefly) a good English teacher. All the others were idiots. Likeable idiots in many cases, but still idiots. When I started it was excellent, but a new head arrived who was a socialist implacably opposed to excellence. Once that sort of rot sets in, nobody except bad teachers wanted to work there. Only one teacher was ever (probably) sacked while I was there; in hindsight it was his paedophilia, not his poor teaching, that got him booted.
At the independent, almost every teacher was good if not excellent. All displayed complete mastery of their subjects, most were good at making the lessons interesting, and all would do anything you asked if you needed support - set and mark additional work, whatever.
I'm now a parent myself with a kid in a good state primary. I'm of the view though that good teachers are a necessary but a sufficient condition for a state primary school to be good. The other factor is parents who give a toss about their kids' education, who give them hell if they mess around, and who set high expectations.
We did that thing of moving into the catchment area and I feel no guilt at all. The school is only good because parents like us send their kids there. Distribute the troublemakers among all schools by lottery and they'll be equally crap. Good comps are rare because they're bigger and therefore can rarely avoid the catchment area encompassing the local scrote farm.
It's not my kids' job to civilise savage parents' feral children. If cash permitted, I'd still go private. I think of it as renting my kid some insulation from the kind of scrotes that Snuffle has to deal with. The argument that comps are good because they force middle class kids to mix with riffraff is bogus - people are segregated by intellect and achievement all their lives, so may as well start early.
How can one teach politics as a matter of fact?
??? You teach it like everything else. Institutions exist. Theories exist. Why would you think it differs from anything else? Marx wrote Capital - Shakespeare wrote the Merchant of Venice - we teach them because they represent investments in human thoughts, is all.
Shuggy
It wasn't talking about leafy suburb schools. I was talking about the private sector. In decent private schools, it is hard to hide because parents are too demanding.
In the very bad inner city schools, if you don't care about being eaten, and about chaos, it is very easy to hide.
I take your point about the respect issue. Maybe it wouldn't make any difference at all. But of course our jobs were not always secure... this has changed over time.
Gordon -
Hmm yes. I suppose I agree. Except for your conclusion about teachers. It is too crude. It is more complicated than how you interpret your own experiences at school.
Shuggy, you have listed many indisputable facts there of course.
But one could well teach what you have listed in history, while the subject in question is 'modern' studies. The politics comes before the twine has been twisted, whence it become history - what, then, of the contentious issues of today?
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