Teachers dispute settled?

[sir baconface]

SBF and JT - great posts, informative and interesting reading for me whose only experience of the teaching profession is from going to school myself and my children both who left school long ago.

Cheers BBB.

Once we stopped being confrontational we were able to hear what each other was saying.

I must try it more often!!!

 

[stonerblue]

I apologise for falling short of my endles targets, JT. I won't dwell on your punctuation. ;)

To be fair, that's a passionate post and you do sound like a great teacher. There are many others too; no doubt at all about that. And I do know that the wine and holidays stuff was tongue in cheek.

Phew ! I've got that out of the way. My principal beef is with the constant moaning. It has gone on for decades and it really grates. Since time immemorial, it would seem, teachers have opposed virtually every proposed change on principle. Their public utterances are invariably negative and confrontational. They project a precious view that - however much the world changes around them - their "contractual "entitlement" from days of yore must be honoured in perpetuity. Never mind the economics or the demographics or how it sits with the average punter.

Furthermore, some of the comments - and I don't mean your own - are shamelessly revealing about attitudes to parents and kids. I daren't even mention other stakeholders such as (spit) taxpayers and (spit again) government. They amount to utter contempt in one or two cases. I really hope those self-serving, staff-room lawyers are not representative because they do your side no favours at all.

Put these things together and there's little wonder that swathes of the public treat teachers like the boy who cried "wolf". The lips move but the words sail away on the breeze. Their lack of respect as a profession is due in large part to their unprofessional public persona. Unfair, you might say, but entirely self-inflicted.

Teachers do enjoy certain things for which others would be thankful. You know what they are and I won't insult you by listing them. And yes, teachers get plenty of shite too. They are not unique in that respect. They just make more noise about it.

I totally agree it is a difficult job in many instances. A good teacher is an absolute diamond. Unfortunately there is a proportion of sour-faced, me-first "entitlement" merchants who would be culled in most other walks of life.

Sir, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on some points. I wholly understand the point you make about certain sectors of our profession becoming a never-ending record. But, and I say this dispassionately, a lot of the complaints are genuine and come from some of the hardest working folk you're ever likely to meet. I detect a hint of "wouldn't last a second in the private sector" in some of your arguments - I understand where you're coming from - yes, I too worked in an American company, where it was target, target, target and if you couldn't handle that, tough shit. BUT, the targets were realistic - they were "in your hands" so to speak. I could have some fairly decent impact upon my success/failure. Teaching isn't like that. It's much more nuanced and you can't simply ascribe the same set of rules.

The point about tax-payers, voters etc - a very funny one to call. We'd all love bobbies on the beat, nurses and doctors at our beck and call. And we complain when we don't get that - but is that the fault of the nurse/policeman/teacher etc? I'd say not - I'd say, let these professionals decide what works - yes, we're talking billions of taxpayers money, but we allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking we, the public, through our politicians. know what's best. We don't. But we get scare-mongered by The Mail etc into thinking teachers, nurses etc are some hidden fifth column working against the liberal world. It just ain't so. The vast majority of teachers do a bloody good job. Yes, there are some shite ones. Not many, and certainly not as many as some of the right-wing, bile-filled press would have you believe. We may not always get it right, but, we do our best in very, very difficult circumstances.

If voices like yours came to the fore, JT, things would be a whole lot better.

I wish you well.

well played lads.

 

[johnnytapia]

SBF and JT - great posts, informative and interesting reading for me whose only experience of the teaching profession is from going to school myself and my children both who left school long ago.

Cheers BBB.

Once we stopped being confrontational we were able to hear what each other was saying.

I must try it more often!!!

I blame the red wine! It can get very heated when discussing your own job and yes, it takes a certain amount of "stepping back" sometimes to be more cogent. What started as tit for tat nonsense actually developed into a very good and reasonable discussion.

Think I'll too hit the "pause" button a bit more often!

 

[york away to this!]

Some well-informed debate here. My comments to the original poster should have been taken with the tongue firmly in cheek - yes, the hols are great but they’re thoroughly and utterly needed and deserved. I do teach. In inner-city Manchester. It’s fucking hard. Absolutely relentless pressure and the bar gets raised incessantly by non-educators. I’ve done many other jobs, dug roads, built hospitals, worked on oil rigs and none, not one, comes anywhere close to the demands of teaching. I moved from engineering to education for several reasons, primarily about helping the poorest, most desperate kids. Teaching in Ancoats is no bed of roses but the kids, by and large are the bees’ knees - parents are a TOTALLY different kettle of fish. I moved to a school in “measures” in Wythenshawe six years ago and it’s equally tough - and rewarding.

The job has changed massively, even in the relatively short period I’ve been doing it - 8 years. We are now social workers, physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, sports coaches and from time to time we get to teach. I keep getting told poverty is no barrier to success and that my kids in Ancoats/Wythenshawe should do as well as the kids in Didsbury/Richmond etc - utter fantasy and nonsensical. I’ve had kids come to school with no bedding, no wallpaper, no food, no underwear, no love. Day in day out. And I’m expected to overcome all that and deliver kids who can hold their own against the sons and daughters of the well-heeled. It’s led to a climate of fear, of Manchester teachers working ridiculously long hours in the hope we can get these kids to scrape the attainment barrier. And if we fail - all the teachers’ fault. I’m a Deputy head and I’m expected to put these “underperforming” staff through the fucking mill with endles targets; moving of goalposts. I try my best to deflect the pressure I’m getting from above, to dampen the yoke of expectation, but it’s fucking hard.

So, yes, I do treat myself to a bottle of red now and again and yes, my wages are paid for by the state, but forget not, I too pay tax, I too give my pound of flesh to the common good. But when your profession is constantly undermined (“ we don’t need qualified teachers” - funny, replace teachers with airline pilot, doctor, nurse - would you?) and you’re asked to work even longer, harder and for less, it’s small wonder we have reached the end of our tether.

Incidentally, OP - “Teachers dispute settle?” should read “Teachers’ dispute settled?” - weren’t you taught grammar?!?

And finally, if anyone feels I paint a false picture of teaching, you are very welcome to train, to experience the “coal face” then decide if you want to join us for our "holiday-fest", "gold pension-filled" career. Or, like most of those who bleat about us, will you stick to the Daily Fail version and yada yadda from the sidelines?

Fantastic post! One thing to add - if these kids don't make as much progress as the kids in the leafy areas, then your pay rise can wait until they do.
(I'm guessing you are on leadership scale so may be different for you JT)

I am indeed on the leadership scale - and I’m well paid. Salary isn’t my main concern. It’s the constant change of goalposts. Take a look at SATs results. When they started I recall some Manchester schools with fewer than 20% getting level 4 in English/Maths. Some twenty years later most are now nudging 70-80% and beyond in some cases. Now, are we saying the children are 300 / 400% cleverer? The teaching 300%/400% better? No, we’ve simply adapted our teaching to suit the target-driven culture we work in. And it’s lead to the situation we face now - 40% of NQTs leave by end of fifth year - a rate of attrition they’d be proud of in Flanders' fucking fields! It’s not sustainable.

Performance related pay has been held up as the paragon we should follow - it works in the priveate sector we’re told. But I’m dealing with kids and all their inherent whims, desires, needs. Not cars. Not machines. And I can’t simply keep getting ever-increasingly better results without it harming my welfare and the staff I work with - they are shagged out with assessment, planning, differentiation - all so that we can show all kids can progress equally.

It would take a very brave politician indeed to make education far less political but I really would call for an “educational spring” - get all involved, teachers, parents, children, politicians, employers etc - what do we want from our education system - look at Finland. They took a ten year hiatus from their curriculum, placed it in the hands of educationalists and asked “what works?” - they didn’t get the government to cook up some ten minute curriculum and say “off you go” to their teachers. They now stand head and shoulders at the top - thy don’t have inspections, thy don’t have testing ’til 18. ALL education, by law, is free there. And if any changes are requested, it has to be proven to work - large numbers, longitudinal studies. Only then, is it adopted. We have such a fucking miss-mash of stuff here. Politicians saying kids need preparing for the “global race” - really? tell me, how will we know when we’ve won it? Then what?

I don’t hark back to some atavistic, halcyon time when teachers could cut out pictures from a magazine and ask all 30 kids to write something whilst I had a crafty cigarette, but I would ask that we’re left to see what works. And what doesn’t. And to accept, some kids just ain’t as bright as others, some will do brilliantly, some not. I’d also ask why the role of parenting is the great “unspoken” in education - give me a pupil with an average teacher with brilliant parents over a brilliant teacher with shite parents every day of every week. We have the pupils for 19% of the week. Over four fifths of their time is spent at home / not in school. Let’s stop kidding ourselves that teachers can and will make the difference. We can only do so much. We have reached a breaking point.

Wow! I don't think I have ever seen such a passionate, balanced, eloquent series of statements on Bluemoon. Ever.

Well done, you have really got me thinking...are you ever tempted to have a dabble with the students?