Giving bad teachers the boot
In over 15 years in state education in this country, I’ve encountered enough bad teachers to know they don’t deserve the time of day. In fact, I was suspended from secondary school for having the temerity to suggest that one be given her P45. That’s the sort of gratitude I get for saving them all that money on HR consultancy fees…
And so it’s nice to hear that the government is finally taking my advice and kicking out the lazy socialist bums that congregate in the nation’s school staff rooms. Well, at least an adviser is now advising the same. Sir Cyril Taylor, chair of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, has said:
We’ve got 400,000 of our children attending low-attaining schools; 75,000 leave schools at 16 with hardly any qualifications at all; five million adults are functionally illiterate. That’s a serious problem.
Clearly. I don’t think it’s that major a problem that people leave school without being able to analyse Shakespeare’s sonnets, but reading is slightly more important.
The head teacher that is good can take the necessary action; you get the wrong people off the bus and get the right people on the bus in the right seats.
Get off the bus and on your bike? I likesies. But the lefties are, quite predictably, angry. After all, the fewer socialist bums there are picking up taxpayers’ money, the… fewer socialist bums there are picking up taxpayers’ money. Good old self-interest.
But the main point of ROFLMAOing as far has to be the head of the NUT, John Bangs, who said:
I cannot understand where he’s got those figures from. We have the best teaching force we’ve had for years and years.
If anyone in the country thinks state sector teachers are better today than they were a generation ago - achieving worse standardised results with vastly more money and better technology - they’re kidding themselves. If anyone overseas looks over at the UK and envies our teachers - who can’t control a class or teach the most docile of grammar school students - they have similarly poor judgment.
The fact is that the introduction of a stick by which to beat bad teachers around the head can only be a good thing. A carrot, in the form of truly performance-related pay, would be a nice addition, but striking the fear of God into teachers with a massive stick with spikes in sounds like more fun.
For, you see, children, that’s called incentivisation. It’s what makes the free market so damn good: rewarding productivity and success and not rewarding inefficiency and failure. I know, the lefties will tear this policy apart with their fearsome argument of reductio ad capitalisum. But it’s true, and the opposite system, of teachers being rewarded for failing to teach 16-year olds to read, sounds a trifle absurd.
So, there you go. Unions prefer state schools remaining inefficient bastions of tenured teachers, depressing teaching quality and hindering the advancement of those pupils that the state forces to attend such inferior schools that they see fit for the taxpayer to fund. Sadly, unlike his heroine Baroness Thatcher, Gordon Brown hasn’t got the best track record of standing up to public sector trade unions, so you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll pay no attention whatsoever to Sir Cyril. The result can only be 17,000 useless teachers, and 400,000 betrayed pupils.
Categories: schools, labour cartels
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Stuart Davenport said,
November 12, 2007 @ 1:44 am
There is a major problem in the selection of teachers in this country: the system relies on academic qualifications and the hoop jumping of the PGCE. A teacher may be an outstanding mathematician but if he/she can’t explain to an average child the basics of arithmetic they might as well not turn up.
I would like to see more mentorship, a more draconian approach to the continuation of a teaching contract and, like you say, performance-related pay. The problem for this is that some students are better behaved, innately intellectual and comparison between groups is difficult. However peer review, like in the academic world, might be a way forward. External assesseors looking at exams results etc. but this all adds to the bureaucracy.
In the end a pseudo-privatising of schools would remove all of these problems and I think Michael Rock touches on this argument in the latest edition of the UCL Conservatives in house publication, the Caerulean.
Oli Cooper said,
November 13, 2007 @ 2:34 pm
Michael does a good job at examining the state education system, and, despite not touching on particular policies, those two watch-words are clear: accountability and choice. These are the hallmarks of a free society, and the denial of accountability and choice in access to government services are the hallmarks of a despotic society.
Let us assume that government continues to see the provision of compulsory education up to the age of 16 (to hell with 18…) as above reproach. Given that proviso, the ways that a government could introduce the principles of accountability and choice are manifold.
* Transferrable school vouchers to promote competition between schools, bridge the gap between state and independent schools, and allow access to independent education to those that could not otherwise afford it.
* The complete reintroduction of grammar schools within the state sector to cater for a range of educational backgrounds and abilities. Children aren’t all the same, and to assume that they all need the sort of education that they would receive in comprehensives is an absurdity, particularly when that education is so poor.
* The scrapping of the National Curriculum and its replacement by choice at either LEA or school level to allow regions or schools to specialise their teaching in favour of topics that benefit their pupils, and give parents a choice as to what education best benefits their children.
* Performance-related pay within schools to promote the highest standards for teachers: allowing the very best teachers earn the professional salary that they deserve, removing from the system those poor teachers that are simply inadequate, and removing budgetary pressures on the poor comprehensive schools that are left with no choice but to hire below-average teachers.
* A focus on the basics of education, particularly the 3 Rs, and the continuation of this emphasis until it is achieved. Pupils without basic literacy skills are unproductive, unruly, and unteachable. There is no point trying to move these children onto reading Shakespeare when they can’t read Dr Seuss.
No prizes for guessing that all of these measures would be opposed by the teachers’ labour cartels. But, then again, maybe that’s the litmus test of a sound educational policy? Sadly, I can’t comment on the PGCE, because I don’t know the first thing about it. However, I’m sure the NUT would oppose reform of that, as well.
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