More teacher strikes

Steampunk said:
People have this idea that teachers only work when their kids are at school. That's not true at all. Teachers get in earlier, work later, are working during holidays, and inevitably take work home with them for the week nights and weekends. They are down to work from 9-5:30, they don't go home when the kids do. The schools are open during the holidays, and staff are there working. Sure they have their holidays to take the same as everyone else, and when my wife was teaching, she was not allowed to take holidays in term time, so of course her holidays would coincide with the student's holidays, but she had many less days off than the kids did.
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That's not really the case, yes they do have a few days less than the kids but certainly not "many less days off".

Steampunk said:
She taught about 30 contact hours in a week, and still did course planning and marking for another 20-30.
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What on earth did she teach that she was teaching 5 hours more than students are in timetabled lessons and then did 20-30 hours planning and marking?
 
Jon33 said:
I was actually writing a reply then I stopped... don't feed the trolls.
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It was a bit obvious wasn't it?

0/10 for effort EuroFighter - as your teachers used to tell you all the time - must try harder!
 
Edrof said:
You seem to be one of those people that will always vote for the Tory Party no matter how terrible that party might be, therefore, to intelligent and objective people, your opinion counts for literally nothing. Sorry.
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It really isn't that simple I am afraid. Whilst certainly unpopular amongst teachers a lot of what Gove is doing is actually pretty good and he does have a reasonable amount of support with quite a bit of it.
 
Xordium said:
Teaching is a damn hard job - most deserve double what they get and some deserve a whole lot less. I personally don't blame them for trying to get a better deal but I think they also need to appreciate there are public sector workers who have a far worse deal than they do.
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At the same time no one goes in to teaching without some understanding of the hours required, it was certainly drummed in to me all the way through the application process, the first weeks at University and during the first placement. If you manage to get through your PGCE and still don't understand how much work is involved then you probably shouldn't be teaching! :D
 
Good Teachers, like nurses, would do much better if national pay bargaining were to end and they were allowed to negotiate their own deals. Of course, the militant union members and the good teachers are almost certainly a mutually exclusive list, and the union members are most likely to suffer when they have to prove themselves worthy.
 
Dolph said:
Good Teachers, like nurses, would do much better if national pay bargaining were to end and they were allowed to negotiate their own deals. Of course, the militant union members and the good teachers are almost certainly a mutually exclusive list, and the union members are most likely to suffer when they have to prove themselves worthy.
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My mate is a union rep, also head of department and works like a dog during term time so I think your sweeping generalisations may be a bit flawed.

Not to mention that it is somewhat unclear what the measures will be to determine how well a teacher is doing, if it is just grades then you are letting yourself in to a whole world of trouble and you will not have anyone wanting to teach in economically deprived areas. If it is value added then you are going to need another layer of assessment in place to ensure that Primary schools are being honest with their stats.
 
Nitefly said:
What do you mean by that? I don't think going to university should necessarily give you any pay boost.
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Not necessarily but they're still seen as being more qualified even if they have less experience.

Out of the teachers i've known, their working hours all depends on their role. Some worked long hours, marking on a night time and week end, making sure the work was well prepared before the school day started, where others had little marking and weren't that fussed about getting much work ready, reliant on text books and other resources. Fair to say, the quality of the teachers themselves varied whilst their pay did not.
 
RDM said:
My mate is a union rep, also head of department and works like a dog during term time so I think your sweeping generalisations may be a bit flawed.

Not to mention that it is somewhat unclear what the measures will be to determine how well a teacher is doing, if it is just grades then you are letting yourself in to a whole world of trouble and you will not have anyone wanting to teach in economically deprived areas. If it is value added then you are going to need another layer of assessment in place to ensure that Primary schools are being honest with their stats.
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Is he a militant rep though? Perhaps I should have included the qualifier a second time.

As for developing a balanced performance approach, it isn't that complex. There is a decent range of gathered performance info already, and you don't want to exclude personal metrics which are easy to collate. With some existing data and some desired drivers I could probably come up with something balanced and well distributed within an afternoon.
 
Dolph said:
And is one of the major reasons the NUT want to strike ;) they want it reinstated and any attempt to link performance to pay ended.
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I didn't say it was a good thing.

Giving heads and the governing body de facto authority to award pay rises and stop others - what could possibly go wrong?

All the bum lickers will get along fine and anyone daring to stand up to bad mgmt practices will be **** out of luck. No wonder NUT membership is going up recently.
 
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My heart bleeds for them. I gained my PGCE 5 years ago. I got no contract or paid for the long 16 weeks holidays. No gold plated pension or teaching assistants.

Schools mostly have lesson plans loaded to their systems, and classwork and homework is rarely marked from what I have seen from my Fiance's daughters who are now 13 and 15. I have been with her since they were 7 and 10.

Not knocking teachers but with the extra help, aka teaching assistants and smaller classes I cannot see why they feel so over worked.

I 100% support their strike action over disruptive pupils they have been stitched up with.
 
Nitefly said:
It's kinda hard to judge performance though. Get given crappy kids and crappy parents... good luck :/
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Which is why you build a balanced performance management model. A pure results or pure improvement model won't work, but then they don't really work anywhere, so that doesn't make teaching a special case.

Of course, saying it is possible doesn't mean they'll actually get it right, because it requires careful design and managing pressure of vested interests from all directions (I including employees, management, unions etc), but it certainly could be done. Rates available on request ;)
 
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Nitefly said:
It's kinda hard to judge performance though. Get given crappy kids and crappy parents... good luck :/
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I agree, to be judged on your performance when it is mostly out if your hands is unfair. Sure some years you will get good kids and some years you will get your fair share of stinkers
 
amigafan2003 said:
I didn't say it was a good thing.

Giving heads and the governing body de facto authority to award pay rises and stop others - what could possibly go wrong?
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Lots, but the same applies in every company. What should happen if allowed though is the well managed schools thrive and those that aren't fold.
 
Dolph said:
Which is why you build a balanced performance management model. A pure results or pure improvement model won't work, but then they don't really work anywhere, so that doesn't make teaching a special case.

Of course, saying it is possible doesn't mean they'll actually get it right, because it requires careful design and managing pressure of vested interests from all directions (I including employees, management, unions etc), but it certainly could be done. Rates available on request ;)
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I don't see how it could work effectively without yet more administrative burdens.

The nature of the beast I suppose.
 
Dolph said:
Lots, but the same applies in every company. What should happen if allowed though is the well managed schools thrive and those that aren't fold.
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Which is pretty irresponsible when dealing with children's education..if schools are closing all the time then there would be a shortage of places and good schools would be oversubscribed creating a catch 22 situation.
 
Castiel said:
Which is pretty irresponsible when dealing with children's education..if schools are closing all the time then there would be a shortage of places and good schools would be oversubscribed creating a catch 22 situation.
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Yeah, but that's what happens in the private sector so it's fine.
 
Steampunk said:
People have this idea that teachers only work when their kids are at school. That's not true at all. Teachers get in earlier, work later, are working during holidays, and inevitably take work home with them for the week nights and weekends. They are down to work from 9-5:30, they don't go home when the kids do. The schools are open during the holidays, and staff are there working.
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Some teachers do this.
A good teacher works very hard. I just found there were more bone idle ones who don't do the above.
 
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