Get your 'Think Tank' off our lawn!The news has been flooded this morning by stories based on some 'fresh new' research from the Institute for Public Policy Research that is calling for more top down meddling and monitoring for teachers to contend with. Surprisingly none of the media, for example the BBC, have even mentioned who the IPPR are, who they are funded by and what their conflicts of interest are, strange that. You can look through their raft of cracking new ideas here, amongst them are the following gems:
"Introducing a higher tier of managers, selected from head teachers due to retire in the next five to ten years, to improve the advice and support given to head teachers, and keep expertise in the system.
Rant: yep, more tiers of management, what a great idea, taking yet more experienced teachers away from actual teaching.
Using psychometric testing alongside exams to assess each candidate’s personality and suitability for teaching.
Rant: psycho babbling rubbish that has no evidence behind it, another brilliant part of their rafting turd
Improving performance management, with all teachers required to observe four lessons by colleagues per term and take part in six-monthly appraisals.
Rant: Yes, patronise teachers more, treat them like children and subject them to useless appraisals which simply serve to increase the rate at which rain forests are chopped down
Strengthening links between pay and skills and development.
Rant: vague political waffle, another idea that in practice would simply waste more money trying to make improvements that simply would not materialise as the IPPR do not have the brains to think through their nonsensical plans"
Has anyone at the IPPR bother to engage their slimy brains? I think not. The reason that a lot of the brightest and most able do not go into teaching, or quit teaching having given it a go, is because the government's top down control freakery has ruined teaching as a profession.
The government treat teachers as they treat doctors, with no respect and no trust, they have also enforced a 'raft' of controlling measures in the form of inspections, appraisals and box ticking that have done nothing to improve teaching standards, they have actually served to lower standards by wasting teachers' time and encouraging people out of the profession.
Less Stalinist monitoring of teachers, less bureaucracy, a bit of continuity and less tinkering with curricula, less changes to exams and the associated bureaucracy that goes with it, less wanky new subjects like citizenship, more power for teachers to discipline pupils who misbehave; these changes might go some way into improving teaching and attracting more excellent teachers into the profession.
Interestingly when one has a peek at who is funding the IPPR, then one sees quite a few friends of the government there including Lord Sainsbury, Accenture, PwC, London Development Agency and none other than the General Medical Council. It's funny how the wankers at the IPPR are so confident in their ability in telling teachers how to do their job better, when I doubt that any of their esteemed researchers has been anywhere near a real classroom since they were at school themselves. Cunts. I can tell you that the vast majority of teachers do a damn good job under very difficult circumstances, cirumstances that have been inflicted upon them by greasy fuckwits in Whitehall who rely on the illogical drivel that is spewed forth from think tanks like the IPPR, because none of them have a clue what is really going on the ground.
Dr Rant
Dr Cardigan
Dr Blue
Dr Brown
Rev Dr Green
Dr Mustard
Mr Orange
Dr Pink
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Ms Scarlet
Dr Informed
6 comments:
Mrs Jobbing Doctor is a teacher and she says that this kind of stuff is fairly typical.
I want her to retire.
She won't because she says she owes it to the kids.
So she risks her health and temper to do a difficult job as well as she can.
For any professional politicians out there, this is what professionals do.
But to be professional, you have to do a good job. Not like the idiots in the departments of health, or education skills and families.
Morons.
"Introducing a bursar for each school, to assist in day-to-day management, freeing up more of the head teacher’s time for issues such as staff management and inspirational leadership."
I expect the bursar will firstly be required to sort out who will pay his/her salary. I don't expect most schools have £40-50k hanging about to pay to get a decent bursar, probably need pay more. I wonder if the accountancy firms are behind this recommendation...?
Dicks.
with all teachers required to observe four lessons by colleagues per term
oh for God's sake.
As if bloody Ofsted hadn't done enough harm already.
Yes, amazing (through predictable) how managers routinely prescribe "more management by more managers" - plus "more management activities" like appraisal - as the solution to any perceived difficulties (often only visible to the managers) in the professions.
We have been through all this in the Universities too - appraisals blah blah performance review blah blah compulsory Mickey Mouse "skills training" blah blah endless "visioning the future" meetings blah blah. All totally useless.
What University staff would like is - would you believe it - a decently funded system, less incessant dancing to Govt-inspired top-down diktats and basically to be left alone to get on with what we are there to do. All clearly too "Rocket Science"-y for the management consultants and thinktank wonks to appreciate.
Sadly, the only major response of the Univs - not unlike the medical establishment of Dr Rant's "Twatterati" - has been "if you can't beat 'em..". Hence when the Russell Group Univs decided they needed a frontperson they hired Wendy Piatt as "Director General" Piatt's key qualification for the job was that, unhandicapped by never actually having worked in a Univ, she had been an important Blairista education policy wonk, latterly in Tony B's office and previously at... the IPPR!
Trebles and large salaries all round, as Private Eye would say.
I hate to be disloyal to my colleagues but there probably are some genuine problems with quality of teachers. Not on large scale, probably not one in a hundred, but it really doesn't take many to cause a problem.
The trouble is the actual solution to the problem is to pay more and attract more, and more able, people in the first place. As it is schools have no choice to accept the substandard and are, if anything, lucky there aren't more of them.
IPPR is a New Labour bordello - I do wonder if David Pitt-Watson is still involved now he has run away from the General-Secretary job at New Labour Central Committee ?
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