Michael Gove in popularity push

[Guesty]

Some teachers are only in the job because of holidays, pay and easy sickness rules and now they're realising people are trying to change that (I know it's an unfair stereotype, but that doesn't make it untrue in some cases). They unfortunately stigmatise all the good teachers - some of whom would be happy to work a longer day or have less holidays. But their lives could be made easier - teachers are subjected to a stupid amount of unnecessary time-wasting paper work.

 

Because of employment laws you find bad teachers get given glowing references just to move them on and poor teachers are not weeded out.

 

I found that most head teachers were kiss-asses who were career-minded and saw their school as a business and stopped caring about students and members of staff a long time ago and concentrated more on targets. 

 

Ofstead inspections are a joke because even if they're supposed to be unannounced everyone knows when they're coming - and the school is a completely different better place. Gove has a point; if Ofstead is a major worry for you and causing you massive stress then maybe your school has massive problems.

 

They completely let down students with special needs as they mainly concentrate on students who will affect league tables and make the school look better. Sometimes they focus more of C/D students for the magic C grade ahead of A students.

 

I used to work in a school and that was what I found, but obviously schools are different. You tend to find with the educational system they cover their ass and won't admit that maybe things are wrong and sometimes changes are needed. I'm not sure Gove is the right person, but I'm happy someone is taking the challenge on and ruffling a few feathers or things will never change.

[Tielemans63]

The fact he was surprised by how hated he is shows you who in-touch he is with the grassroots. A cnut who doesn't realise he's a cnut.

He'll be remembered as a disastrous Education Secretary, I'm absolutely sure of that. Education in this country should be dynamic and progressive instead it's becoming increasingly regressive and corporate. Whilst I'll accept that he may be right about reducing university numbers and courses, there is simply no logic to the vast majority of his decisions.

He says he is determined to drive up standards and recruit more talented graduates to teaching - and yet his tactics are to aggressively cut pensions, to reduce incentives for good teachers e.g. AST opportunities, to enforce more prescriptive / less creative teaching, to significantly diminish job security, to alienate average pupils and to annihilate LEA funding so schools are forced to seek sponsorship. How does that work then Mr Gove?

I'm not going to lie, I'm not over the moon about my pay and conditions but I realise I'm comparatively lucky. However my hang-ups with that come a distant second to my concerns about the course Education is taking and what teaching might look like in 10 years - there are so many good things being destroyed by that **** I don't even know where to begin.

If he were, by some horrible quirk of fate, to somehow become prime minister (which is what all this is about - making his mark in whatever way he can - regardless of whether it actually makes any ****ing sense) then I'll be moving abroad. The guy will destroy this country if he gets the chance. Any chance of social mobility will be a distant dream.

I hate the bastard. He has no intention of bettering education simply of furthering his own political career. I hope his actions destroy him.

[MooseBreath]

Aw bless, you think a teacher's job ends when the kids go home.

 

Aw bless, you're choosing to believe teachers when they say they all stay behind "marking" and doing "lesson plans". Did you go to school? If you did you'll know that's absolute bollocks. Make friends with some teachers, in my experience they open up a bit after a brandy or two. They're only human, their main motivation is protecting what they've got.

[lavrentis]

Some teachers are only in the job because of holidays, pay and easy sickness rules and now they're realising people are trying to change that (I know it's an unfair stereotype, but that doesn't make it untrue in some cases). They unfortunately stigmatise all the good teachers - some of whom would be happy to work a longer day or have less holidays. But their lives could be made easier - teachers are subjected to a stupid amount of unnecessary time-wasting paper work.

 

Because of employment laws you find bad teachers get given glowing references just to move them on and poor teachers are not weeded out.

 

I found that most head teachers were kiss-asses who were career-minded and saw their school as a business and stopped caring about students and members of staff a long time ago and concentrated more on targets. 

 

Ofstead inspections are a joke because even if they're supposed to be unannounced everyone knows when they're coming - and the school is a completely different better place. Gove has a point; if Ofstead is a major worry for you and causing you massive stress then maybe your school has massive problems.

 

They completely let down students with special needs as they mainly concentrate on students who will affect league tables and make the school look better. Sometimes they focus more of C/D students for the magic C grade ahead of A students.

 

I used to work in a school and that was what I found, but obviously schools are different. You tend to find with the educational system they cover their ass and won't admit that maybe things are wrong and sometimes changes are needed. I'm not sure Gove is the right person, but I'm happy someone is taking the challenge on and ruffling a few feathers or things will never change.

 

 

Yeah the C grade target ****ed me off when I was there. It is probably right not all students are the same but they often misrepresented students who took the foundation paper who should probably have taken the higher paper therefore affecting their grade massively as they could only get a C. Teachers just didn't give a shit about this as long as the numbers looked right at a glance

[Mike the Metal Ed]

Aw bless, you're choosing to believe teachers when they say they all stay behind "marking" and doing "lesson plans". Did you go to school? If you did you'll know that's absolute bollocks. Make friends with some teachers, in my experience they open up a bit after a brandy or two. They're only human, their main motivation is protecting what they've got.

 

Nah, just the ones who take pride in their work and do a good job. The ones we need to protect to get the best out of people.

[maynefox]

Bit of a side track to what you guys are primarily speaking about:
I seriously think that the vast majority of pupils/students of contemporary Britain are quite frankly thick. I'm not your "Oxbridge" person, but hey I can read a novel comfortably, some in my English Literature class struggle to do just that. At my college, I really feel that most of the students are underachieving. My college is spending its budget on building a new flashy canteen where people can "relax", rather than extending the library facilities or study areas. Relax? Why the hell do students want to relax when they are at college to revise in their frees and do work! What kind of work etiquette does that set out for pupils in the future?

Gove is right. British pupils are slacking behind other European and Asian countries. He is also right that if a school is worrying about Ofsted inspecting it, then fvck me your school has problems.

As college student I honestly feel that the system needs altering, perhaps not major reforms, but it does need altering!

[Bilo]

Aw bless, you're choosing to believe teachers when they say they all stay behind "marking" and doing "lesson plans". Did you go to school? If you did you'll know that's absolute bollocks. Make friends with some teachers, in my experience they open up a bit after a brandy or two. They're only human, their main motivation is protecting what they've got.

 

Jesus.

 

I'm usually working till 9 or 10pm marking and planning.

 

When I'm on here, I often have this on one tab and my lesson planning sheet on another. That or Powerpoint.

 

I can assure you that no teacher's job, at all, ends at three thirty when the kids are on the buses and the chairs have been tucked under the tables. In fact, it's where a lot of the hard work begins. The 9-3 element is the implementation of the hard work that takes place with a coffee and a green biro. 

 

The stress, the hours we put in, the pressure we're put under internally and externally all warrant the holidays of which you speak. If we had four weeks off a year like McDonald's workers; you'd be able to watch the number of teachers going off sick with nervous breakdowns, heart attacks and the number of teachers leaving the profession sky rocket. I know that that proposal isn't on the table, though it wouldn't shock me with this clueless idiot in charge, but there will be huge problems with teachers leaving the profession and with recruitment if attacks on pay and conditions are allowed to continue. Paddy Akinbiyi sums it up brilliantly.

 

Nobody teaches for the money, we do it because it's a vocation that can be incredibly rewarding. However, it ceases to become rewarding when you are working with the sword of Damocles over your head. I know of numerous teachers leaving the profession for the reasons that have already been raised, good teachers who the kids benefit from having in the classroom are being forced out because of the actions and ideological crusade of an opportunistic journalist on an ideological crusade.

 

It makes my blood boil. 

[Jon the Hat]

Whether or not you believe teaching to be uniquely stressful or not, and I am a bit on the fence on this one, the stress of change is not helped by the relentless resistance of the teaching unions.  Instead of doing something constructive, they continuously give the impression that they are the only ones who have any valuable input to bring to the process, and anyone else is not worth talking to.  Or maybe that is just their press people.

[pSinatra]

I appreciate what everyone is saying & Gove does come across as a complete dick..........but don't you think that the majority of us are working under similar conditions - or worse?

 

That doesn't make it right what Gove is saying or doing, but conditions for teachers & the expectations that come with that are no worse than what others are suffering.  We all have targets, long hours, unpaid overtime, bosses looking over our shoulders, poor pay, the threat of redundancy & there is very little we can do about it.  Most of us are not part of a powerful union that can hold the country to ransom.  If we don't like it, we are told "tough!!".  I'm now self-employed & I can honestly say that I work my spuds off.  I will never earn what the average teacher earns - not even close.  Holidays?  What are they?  I don't even get weekends!!

 

The one good thing about school holidays..........at least the roads are quiet in the morning & at around three in the afternoon if only for 6 weeks in the summer, 2 weeks at easter, 2 weeks at christmas, half-terms, etc.

 

I have friends who are teachers & I see exactly how hard they work.  They work hard & are well paid for it.  I also have friends who work equally as hard & are not well paid.  It's probably difficult for someone earning £16,000 & under pressure at work to have sympathy for a teacher earning £50,000 a year.

[Foxhateram]

Gove is an idiot, my school stepped through the new curriculum on Friday and my god it is terrible!

So fixed and tatty, history as an example is all about learning dates and events rather learning the importance of such events. I work in a run down area of mid Devon. What do my kids want/need to know about what year something meaningless happened, it is rubbish!

My specialism is ICT and the new curriculum spells out an ICT curriculum that is based on creating office workers, (with a tiny portion of programming). Yet the ICT industry are begging for programmers and website designers and office working has no vacancies. Go work that one out!

Maths concentates on flat number sentences and problems and forgets the vital bit of applying your skills.

Oh I could go on, basically this idiot was taught in a posh grammar school where he was spoon fed answers to get good grades, in a class size of about 10 and the kids around him were posh totties with big brained parents. He thinks all schools should be like that. It's never going to be like that.

As for Europe, and specifically Scandinavian countries. All their lessons are based around practical things, it's all creative and open ended, child led. They also go to school for only a few hours a day and are encouraged to use their skills outside in the real world. The kids out their respect education and enjoy putting their skills into place so do lots at home too. (Experienced it).

So then, using Europe as an example, you tell me why Gove is creating a closed curriculum? And attacking teachers left right and centre. Claiming longer hours (kids will just flag off and do f*all in the extra hours anyway) which is the opposite of Europe.

Ooh I could go on here but my battery is dying and oh yer I have marking of 90 books to do, followed by planning and resourcing, followed by assessing their most recent piece of writing, followed by an assessment of their curricula targets and finally then to update my NQT/ CPD folder. Bye bye Sunday and most of yesterday.

P.s asa for OFSTED inspection, we would not be worried about them if the inspectors actually had a clue what they were own about. Our most recent OFSTED inspection saw two ex army men look around our school who had only spent one year n education as teachers back in 1993.

They had no knowledge of current affairs and had only taking up the occupation as a retirement fund and were open about all this info. They had also made a decision about the school based on last years, year 6 grades without even stepping foot into school. As for everyone knows when they are turning up, we got 8 hours notice, now don't go telling me you can make a school look perfect in that time no matter what school your at.

[MooseBreath]

^ there we are, a more typical teacher speaks.

"Anything that makes life harder for me is bad for the kids"

[Foxhateram]

I appreciate what everyone is saying & Gove does come across as a complete dick..........but don't you think that the majority of us are working under similar conditions - or worse?

That doesn't make it right what Gove is saying or doing, but conditions for teachers & the expectations that come with that are no worse than what others are suffering. We all have targets, long hours, unpaid overtime, bosses looking over our shoulders, poor pay, the threat of redundancy & there is very little we can do about it. Most of us are not part of a powerful union that can hold the country to ransom. If we don't like it, we are told "tough!!". I'm now self-employed & I can honestly say that I work my spuds off. I will never earn what the average teacher earns - not even close. Holidays? What are they? I don't even get weekends!!

The one good thing about school holidays..........at least the roads are quiet in the morning & at around three in the afternoon if only for 6 weeks in the summer, 2 weeks at easter, 2 weeks at christmas, half-terms, etc.

I have friends who are teachers & I see exactly how hard they work. They work hard & are well paid for it. I also have friends who work equally as hard & are not well paid. It's probably difficult for someone earning £16,000 & under pressure at work to have sympathy for a teacher earning £50,000 a year.

Mate not sure where you get your figures from. I'm an NQT and I only earn 21,000 a year not much more than your 16,000 and am taxed very heavily on it. I appreciate everyone works hard and everyone does unpaid overtime etc etc. Let me ask you this though. To maintain your status as a 'good' or outstanding teacher you will have no evenings or weekends or holidays until the big one in the summer which admittedly is a nice 4 out of the 6 weeks off. (Most people can accumulate 4 weeks a year off in their job or not far from it). So my question is does the case study fit what you do?;

Weekdays - leave for school at 7.10, arrive at 8.50. Photo copy and get resources together for the day and com,ete appropriate paperwork. Kids arrive at 9.50, teach until lunch which is at 12.20. Spend your whole lunch time marking and gathering sources for the afternoon sessions. Teach until 3:30. Mark and fill out appropriate paperwork/ deal with moaning parents and needy other members of staff ( in my case fix people's computers as my school made me take on IT TECHY at no extra pay) leave at 6. Get home at 6.40, make dinner and eat it. Now start filling out appropriate paperwork, finish marking that I didn't get done earlier due to IT issues and paperwork.

Weekends - Saturday morning go and coach football earn a bit of extra down to pay for petrol to get to work which I can't claim back. Saturday afternoon: have to your self for a few hours. Saturday evening, mark one set of kids books (30 books out of 90) and fill out paperwork that goes with the marking. Sunday spend all day planning and resourcing for the week, followed by marking the remaining books yet again.

'Holidays' - a new topic will be happening after the holidays so I will be marking books for they first bit of the week and then planning and filling out paperwork for the new topic and creating reports and updating the pupil tracker. On average in the two weeks holidays I get about 2 days to myself and in the one week ones maybe a day.

That is my average week in education, maybe I work harder than some? I don't know, but I feel to maintain my status which I'm lucky t have as an Nqt then I need to do this every week.

Now please, if any other job takes that much of your unpaid time please tell me as I may be wrong but in my time working in an office I left at 6 and did not much at home and had weekends off. My job at tescos I left at the end of my shift and had nothing to do. In my job as a waiter I had nothing to do at home, in my short lived carreer as a chef (two weeks) I had health and safety forms to fill out but that was it. This job is the most high pressured job in the world and to hear people slagging teachers off and people likes moose breath showing no respect what so ever, and Goves flat attacks at my profession makes me feel worthless and makes me wonder why I bother doing all this work. Then I remember yer, I do this for the kids and not because the school is a business, as he describes the education sector.

[Foxhateram]

^ there we are, a more typical teacher speaks.

"Anything that makes life harder for me is bad for the kids"

Not sure why I am rising to your obvious attempt at wumming, but I ally do wish you would read what I put. The fact of the matter is the new curriculum will be easier for me to teach you because it is prescriptive and almost planned for you, but it won't benefit the kids or the education system.

I also backed up my point with evidence from Europe where grades are far better, so unless you have a alias tic counter argument? Which I truly doubt you do. Then why don't you just do one? Go back, read and check your work. Does it really make sense? Re write it properly please moose breath.

[sdb]

Think it's about time teachers showed him some respect. They might be on the 'front line' but that doesn't mean they know what's best for every child in the country.

 

People higher up the chain have a better perspective from where to make changes and ought to be armed with the best research available. In any other profession when orders come down from the top they're to be respected. It often makes things more difficult for those on the front line but that's work.

 

In the real world, the minute you stop being able to adapt to change you're out of a job. Seems like teachers don't think this should apply to them, as if standing in front of a group of kids all day somehow gives them special status. Their job is to do what they're told. That's what they should do.

 

surely people who teach and interact with dozens, possibly hundreds, of children a day know more about what's best for them than some grey man in a grey suit who knows so little about state education? he's trying to prepare young people for 100 years ago. education is about preparing youngsters for their futures, not for learning arbitrary facts, latin, and a whole host of things that have no relevance to today's society. and that's just one of my many, many gripes with this out-of-touch, patronising, self-centred, deluded man.

[sdb]

Aw bless, you're choosing to believe teachers when they say they all stay behind "marking" and doing "lesson plans". Did you go to school? If you did you'll know that's absolute bollocks. Make friends with some teachers, in my experience they open up a bit after a brandy or two. They're only human, their main motivation is protecting what they've got.

 

that post says more about you I think. a sweeping generalisation that is inaccurate and uninformed. to be fair if my posts and opinions were based around what drunk people told me then they'd be similarly deluded. as a teacher i work 60 hour weeks, throughout half terms and half of the other holidays. a lot of people would scoff at my wage but i take it because i enjoy the job and the reward i get from helping young people. Gove on the other hand, is a complete tool. You cannot be this hated without doing some pretty shit things. It seems to be his mission to do something shit most weeks.

[Bilo]

that post says more about you I think. a sweeping generalisation that is inaccurate and uninformed. to be fair if my posts and opinions were based around what drunk people told me then they'd be similarly deluded. as a teacher i work 60 hour weeks, throughout half terms and half of the other holidays. a lot of people would scoff at my wage but i take it because i enjoy the job and the reward i get from helping young people. Gove on the other hand, is a complete tool. You cannot be this hated without doing some pretty shit things. It seems to be his mission to do something shit most weeks.

 

 

A school in my area apparently has a 'Gove watch' board in the staff room where they put stupid things he has said every week.

 

He hasn't disappointed them yet. I'm not sure if that's hilarious, incredibly depressing or a paradoxical mix of both.

[MooseBreath]

Not sure why I am rising to your obvious attempt at wumming, but I ally do wish you would read what I put. The fact of the matter is the new curriculum will be easier for me to teach you because it is prescriptive and almost planned for you, but it won't benefit the kids or the education system.

I also backed up my point with evidence from Europe where grades are far better, so unless you have a alias tic counter argument? Which I truly doubt you do. Then why don't you just do one? Go back, read and check your work. Does it really make sense? Re write it properly please moose breath.

Out of all the "evidence" available abroad, you chose to use the Finnish model, in which you would have to do much less work, rather than the better performing Hong Kong or Singapore models, which would see you working longer hours. How curious.

But it's all about the kids, promise.

[Foxhateram]

Out of all the "evidence" available abroad, you chose to use the Finnish model, in which you would have to do much less work, rather than the better performing Hong Kong or Singapore models, which would see you working longer hours. How curious.

But it's all about the kids, promise.

Hong Kong? Idiot! They treat their kids like they a puppets. You are such a fool. We have children in our school from Singapore and they are quick at maths admittedly but are crap at applying it in a real scenario. Oh wait that is what Goves new curriculum will do too our kids too.

I chose Finland and the Scandinavian model because they ARE the most successful education systems in the world at everything. Argh you are just beginning to annoy me now. I am still awaiting your well written counter argument.

[Tielemans63]

I appreciate what everyone is saying & Gove does come across as a complete dick..........but don't you think that the majority of us are working under similar conditions - or worse?

That doesn't make it right what Gove is saying or doing, but conditions for teachers & the expectations that come with that are no worse than what others are suffering. We all have targets, long hours, unpaid overtime, bosses looking over our shoulders, poor pay, the threat of redundancy & there is very little we can do about it. Most of us are not part of a powerful union that can hold the country to ransom. If we don't like it, we are told "tough!!". I'm now self-employed & I can honestly say that I work my spuds off. I will never earn what the average teacher earns - not even close. Holidays? What are they? I don't even get weekends!!

The one good thing about school holidays..........at least the roads are quiet in the morning & at around three in the afternoon if only for 6 weeks in the summer, 2 weeks at easter, 2 weeks at christmas, half-terms, etc.

I have friends who are teachers & I see exactly how hard they work. They work hard & are well paid for it. I also have friends who work equally as hard & are not well paid. It's probably difficult for someone earning £16,000 & under pressure at work to have sympathy for a teacher earning £50,000 a year.

I appreciate what you're saying and as I said in my post, I know that I am relatively fortunate to earn what I do. You ask why teaching should be different to any other business and that is where I think the government and Gove are going massively wrong.

IMHO We have to stop treating education like its a business, a money-making enterprise that must make a profit. Education (and I'm not talking here about teachers pay / pensions etc) should be sacrosanct, something that should be relatively free of market forces. I'm expected to improve on my depts results on a budget that has more than halved since last year and is probably 65-70% down on what it was 3/4 years ago. How is that good for my students?

As far as I'm concerned, in times of recession the funding for education (not teachers pay but funding for pupils) should at least remain the same if not increase. Why? Because an excellent education system will ensure prosperity for the country in the future and produce young people with the skills to make us an even more competitive force in the world. We are increasingly lagging behind countries that put education at the top of their list of priorities.

Taking money out of education, alienating teachers and the vast majority of the nations young people will only see the current woes perpetuate.

[Bilo]

People saying we should take parts of Hong Kong's education system, parts of Singapore's education system, parts of Finland's etc are missing the point.

 

Their education systems are only successful because all of the elements work together so well. You can't just cherry pick elements you like and leave the ones that don't suit you. Singapore still has corporal punishment for male students for example. 

 

Education is one of the most important things to get right in a country. It secures a successful and prosperous future for citizens and the country as a whole when it is well managed and the curriculum meets the challenges of the world around it, but Gove's curriculum and management are woefully unfit for purpose. Teachers are alienated and morale is at rock bottom, behaviour in the classroom is getting worse because of the divisiveness of league tables that leaves kids who either definitely will or won't get at least a C in the cold and the new curriculum is frankly dreadful. 

[leicsmac]

Out of all the "evidence" available abroad, you chose to use the Finnish model, in which you would have to do much less work, rather than the better performing Hong Kong or Singapore models, which would see you working longer hours. How curious.

But it's all about the kids, promise.

 

The Far Eastern models are great for learning by rote and looking good on statistics. Also fantastic for classroom discipline and hard work.

 

They're also good for kids jumping off bridges and having trouble applying knowledge in any creative fashion. Again, having worked in a Far Eastern education system I have seen evidence of this.

 

I will always maintain the Scandinavian system is the one to follow for those reasons alone.

[leicsmac]

I appreciate what you're saying and as I said in my post, I know that I am relatively fortunate to earn what I do. You ask why teaching should be different to any other business and that is where I think the government and Gove are going massively wrong.

IMHO We have to stop treating education like its a business, a money-making enterprise that must make a profit. Education (and I'm not talking here about teachers pay / pensions etc) should be sacrosanct, something that should be relatively free of market forces. I'm expected to improve on my depts results on a budget that has more than halved since last year and is probably 65-70% down on what it was 3/4 years ago. How is that good for my students?

As far as I'm concerned, in times of recession the funding for education (not teachers pay but funding for pupils) should at least remain the same if not increase. Why? Because an excellent education system will ensure prosperity for the country in the future and produce young people with the skills to make us an even more competitive force in the world. We are increasingly lagging behind countries that put education at the top of their list of priorities.

Taking money out of education, alienating teachers and the vast majority of the nations young people will only see the current woes perpetuate.

 

Exactly this. But short-termism is symptomatic of any Government. If it doesn't produce profit/results right away, it's not considered.

[Tielemans63]

Exactly this. But short-termism is symptomatic of any Government. If it doesn't produce profit/results right away, it's not considered.

Absolutely Leicsmac. Couldn't agree more. If I felt that Gove's policy could ultimately be a really good thing for education then I could accept the short term pain but sadly I think his tenure could be disastrous. The Labour government were almost as bad so I'm not picking on Gove becuase he's a Tory, I'm picking on him because he's a massive liability.

[ADK]

Don't think one size fits all works particularly well to be honest.

[MooseBreath]

The Far Eastern models are great for learning by rote and looking good on statistics. Also fantastic for classroom discipline and hard work.

 

They're also good for kids jumping off bridges and having trouble applying knowledge in any creative fashion. Again, having worked in a Far Eastern education system I have seen evidence of this.

 

I will always maintain the Scandinavian system is the one to follow for those reasons alone.

 

Finland has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, so I guess that's that argument out of the window