The idea that standards can be improved by sacking teachers, bringing in people who have received no teacher training and handing schools over to those organisations that have already proved cannot be trusted to run schools seems a daft idea. But not if you are a Tory education spokesman.
Read more HERE.
Would we sack privates in the army if a military operation failed ? Would we sack police officers if crime went up ? Would we sack firemen if a fire cannot be put out quickly ?
Then if all these daft things were done, would we replace these people with untrained people ?
4 comments:
Too many idiotic middle/senior-managers in schools are thoughtlessly / unthinkingly implementing government policy or coming up with hare-brained theories on learning styles etc that have been roundly derided by academics.
There are lots of talented teachers in our schools and their morale is at rock bottom, never mind the stress from ridiculous (and usually irrelevant) expectations from senior managers. The joy and life has been taken out of the profession by people for whom only numbers, and not real education, matter.
"education is what's left when everything you've been taught has been forgotten" is a quote teachers should live by. Unfortunately we only give them the curriculum nowadays and the production line of personality-less new teachers can't give them much else.
"Lions led by donkeys" springs to mind. I can't wait to get out of it.
p.s. your grammar and spelling are doing nothing for your argument. Sorry Nich, I'm hopelessly pedantic :-)
I disagree.
The problem is government telling us what to do. Take for example the government's view of teaching synthetic phonics which has been proved to work in every school it is used in. What does the government do with this evidence ? Ignore it and go ahead with a scheme of their own which is almost completely ineffective.
What the Tories are proposing is that teachers who value their careers should not teach in difficult or underperforming schools. That will not benefits children and will instead see a further divide in education which can only be seen at present with parents moving home to get in to different catchment areas or driving their kids 30 miles to the other side of the county each day.
We always had good teachers and bad teachers but when I ws at school it did not really matter. We all went in, sat down, listened and learned. I loved learning and could si down and learn in every class as the criteria was set out and the same. i did not like cooking and sewing, but then the teachers were petty and had their favourites of which I was not one. But I could cook and sew at home anyway. May have good teachers, but not everyone is skilled at being part of the riot squad or should be expected to be. I should manage my behaviour the teacher manages what I should learn. i have no problem in that. i can sit down and shut up and listen why can't everyone do so now?
Most good teachers use phonics as part of a bag of methods to teach reading.
Unbalanced methods are lazy and less effective in my experiences as a pupil, parent, and in the opinion of my award winning teacher and head teacher ex wife.
Common sense may have roles to play, also in the assessment of the various methods?
A critical factor in the lives of many of us is propensity to read, acquired early most often. More important for a pupil to set out on the ocean of reading than to get a 2 month head start in reading age, all too easily lost a few years later imho.
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