ESA & The DWP

[MrsD]

Re: ESA & The DWP

I trained as a teacher and have working in and around education for 20+ years and like everywhere there are good and bad. I 've seen loads whose command of the English language was dreadful and everyone too worried about being accused of racism to say anything, happens in the best of schools. One of the big problems as I see it is the really good guys tend to graduate to the top of the pile and therefore influence policy, they expect everyone to teach to their inspirational standards, and trust me there are a lot out there that just can't and even more who just won't. There are still teachers who think dishing out piles of photocopied examples is teaching. this is my day for shooting down the public sector.................

[BBoo]

Re: ESA & The DWP

Trust me there are a lot out there that just can't and even more who just won't. There are still teachers who think dishing out piles of photocopied examples is teaching. this is my day for shooting down the public sector.................

This is very true. However, many of the mediocre ones can be improved, and those that think handing out endless worksheets is good teaching should be shot!

It has always seemed a shame to me that some heads see themselves as adminstrators rather than the Head Teacher. Good ones do rise to the top, but I'm not sure how much influence they actually have on policy. If they are good and they have an influence on policy, policy should be good. In my opinion current educational policy is far from good. It has pockets of good practice surrounded by much mediocrity and quite a lot of teaching to the lowest common denominator.

[MrsD]

Re: ESA & The DWP

Head teachers spend their time managing the budget (for which they have no training) being the HR person (for which they have no training) and managing expectations mostly the local authority's and sometimes the LA and the parents. They walk a tightrope all the time and its them that have to explain why things are not going too well while trying not to end up in a tribunal for making perfectly reasonable suggestions to non-performing teacher. I've had numerous conversations with HOD's who are in despair at the standard of probationers they are getting out of unis. but their hands are tied, the trainees come out stuffed with dogma which really doesn't work in the face of 30 yobbs effing and blinding and standing on the desks (seen this with my own eyes). You need training to deal with this and you need authority, lots don't have either and usually end up calling the police. basically to teach you need authority, respect and you've got to be interesting, if we all think back, that's how we learned, why should to-day's weans be any different???

[BBoo]

Re: ESA & The DWP

Very true, though the NPQH has solved the budget issue to some extent. Too much time on the NPQH is spent teaching prospective heads how to interpret performance information though.

A good teacher will almost always gain respect from their pupils, though sadly one has to face the fact that some are unteachable in mainstream schools now once the rot has set in.

What is wrong with the Head giving demonstration lessons to disseminate good practice? They do have time to teach, many just choose not to.

If you want a performance indicator, don't analyse tables, go and look at what's going on in the classrooms and talk to the kids. They'll tell you who's good!

[garlok]

Re: ESA & The DWP

I didn't want this to turn into a discussion baout teaching per se and did not want it to be specific. BUT the word "professional" has been hi jacked in exactly the same way as "gay" has, i.e. it means homosexual. In my eyes and bitter experience "professional" has now come to mean:- amoral, ruthless, hypocritical, utterly without principles and ethics other than selfish greed and worst of all polished and acomplished liar. This is self evident amongst the mandarins of the Civil Service, the medical trade, teaching, banking, adademia you name every walk of life.

Yes I am a product of the tripartite system of education and went to the local free County Grammar School but I had to earn my place there. Our masters carried themselves with dignity and authority as did the overwhelming mass of teachers and they were good, really good and wanted to be there, not there just because it was a soft option job. They taught and taught well and if you did not want to learn then they knocked it into you. End of. Universiries tended to run over subscribed courses in the useful degrees like medicine, engineering in all disciplines, sciences like physics, chemistry and mathematics. Drama and drug taking such as is taught today were almost unheard of. Now a degree is usually a worthless piece of paper for attending less than 6 hours lectures a week. Take a look at the prospectus of Birmingham University for one now and compare it with thirty years ago.

Yes I am old fashioned but at least we had a nation where there was hope and a future now we have the rubbish we endure to day. A culture of lies, deceit and duplicity from the very top downwards.

regards
Garlok

[BBoo]

Re: ESA & The DWP

BUT the word "professional" has been hi jacked....
regards
Garlok

Too right, as is the rest of your post. It is possibly best summed up by ACEA and CIVEA the bailiffs' "Professional Associations."

Just how many "professional" bailiffs do we come across? I've certainly come across plenty that are the exact opposite - I dealt with over 100 of them last year alone.