General Chat

Well said Gwynne x

Standards of literacy and numeracy have risen in recent years, Rollo. More young people are going to university than ever before.

I have no idea where you are getting your information from but it's very out of date. By and large Information technology forms a large part of the curriculum - at least it does in these parts and I can't think that other LEAs are so far behind. It comes at a price and some LEAs and education ministers don't want to pay for it. It would be excellent if there was more but Mr Gove doesn't want to pay.

It's plain daft to say teachers ignore best practice - that's what Inset is for and why they go on courses in their free time. The ones I know aspire to best practice within the financial limitations imposed upon them. I'm sure there are some who don't but I haven't met any.

Children are in school for a very short time. The rest of their time is spent at home with their families who have a far greater influence on them than school. If parents are happy to let kids play on computers instead of reading books or going out somewhere interesting that's not the fault of teachers.

The biggest problem in the classroom today is the lack of discipline in a significant minority of children. Some have never been taught to sit down and listen. Children are starting school unable to use a knife and fork and wearing nappies because their feckless parents can't be bothered to teach them the basics.

There's an awful lot that teachers to try to make up for but they can't cancel out bad parenting, no matter how much they would like to.

I agree with everything Mildred has said. As a qualified nursery nurse and someone who has done part of the graduate teacher training programme (I left for health reasons) I am now working as a teaching assistant in a year 1 class. The class teacher is in school by 7.45am and doesn't leave until 6 pm each evening. She teaches, supports groups of children, does playground duty, runs after school clubs, takes afterschool booster classes, liaises with parents/carers etc.... She takes marking home and does most of the planning and preparation for lessons at home. Her records are updated, data collected, reports written and meetings are attended. She comes into school during the holidays to do various things.

I, as her TA, come into school early, run lunchtime clubs, prepare lesson and classroom resources, put up displays, ensure the physical class environment is clean, tidy, inviting and safe, work with individual, small and large groups of children during the school day, keep records, prepare the classroom for the following day. I also prepare class resources at home. I often come into school and help during the holidays.

I could go back and complete my teacher training - I loved teaching but I don't want all the hassle that goes with it. There is over work, a continually changing curriculum, an expectation to jump through hoops and a government who do not appreciate the integrity or the worth of the teaching profession. It is not just down to the present government either. Successive governments have fiddled with the curriculum and exams and bashed teachers. Scrutiny of schools by the powers that be is intrusive and demoralising and never supportive. Teacher moral is extremely low and now a jumped up little man wants to get rid of support staff in schools!

Teachers are not the only ones who work long hours in the call of duty ... but they make much more of a shin dig about it than anyone else. Neither are they the only ones not getting very good pay at basic grades in the public service. Unlike the army, police or nursing the NUT feels that going on strike will advance their cause.

Well I demur.

I taught maths and rugby (league) for a year in Manchester and have had a bunch of teachers in my family so I know perfectly well what the job is like. It is hard work for sure but not impossible. The pay was and is dreadful but if the teachers want better pay then they need to up their game. Far too many settle for mediocrity or worse and a pension.

For instance by and large teaching in England today has very little idea how to use information technology in teaching young people. Here and there it is brilliant but mostly it is horrid. Why is the profession so reluctant to follow best example preferring to ignore or denigrate ?

Too many kids in too many schools are bored out of their minds. That is not the fault of the parents.

Mr Gove has exactly the right objectives but not the solutions.

He realises that for > 2 generations now the English & Wales educational system has not delivered anywhere near enough young people with the levels of numeracy and literacy that the UK needs to survive in a tough world. A very large chunk of blame for that has to be taken by the teaching profession at all levels although it refuses to do so.

Mr Goves mish mash solutions of back-to-the-future learning by rote, "free" schools, pupil teachers, teaching assistants and payment-by-results have zero chance of meeting his objectives.

The NUT should focus on something better which it won't do by striking. Teachers are very fond of complaining that their job is made difficult by a lack of respect from parents and children. True but respect is earned not given.

:-|

I SPENT SEVEN YEARS AS VOLUNTARY HELPER IN A CLASS OF TWELVE
CHILDREN WHO DISRUPTED CLASSES.
,THIS WAS WAY BEFORE ANY TESTS FOR LEARNING DIFFICULTIES.
I TOOK; THEM FOR ARTS AND CRAFTS AND COOKING BUT WOULD INCORPORATE
MATHS OR ENGLISH,I WORKED EVERY DAY THE TEACHER ASKED ME
TO DO WHICH WAS NEARLY EVERY DAY.
THAT WAS FROM 1974,
EVEN NOW ONE OF THE BOYS STILL ASK MY SON HOW AM I BECAUSE
HE REMEMBERS DOING THE COOKING AND HES 45 YRS OLD

Well said, Mildred.

So many ignorant people (like Gove) knock teachers when they have no idea of the job they do or the efforts they put in.

It was my chosen career and I never had any regrets, most parents were grateful for what we did. The others - well - one can only hope their children don't end up as bitter and ignorant as they did.

At last, someone with a bit of sense based on fact rather than plucking wild statements out of the ether!

Totally agree with Mildred, couldn't have put it better myself.

M.

I agree with you Mildred, particularly the last paragraph. I am a voluntary reading mentor in a local junior school and have an insight to some of the issues facing the teaching profession today.

I am sick of reading ill informed comments regarding the strike, teachers, their working life & the pupils & their personal difficulties they have within school.

Firstly it's not easy to get a child statemented for a condition. It can take months or years of a child struggling to get the extra help/funding to support that child, even in quite obvious cases! And children are accessed over time, in different situations so it's nigh on impossible for a parent to constantly feed a child E numbers all the time to provoke a reaction. A parent would have to be pretty thick to do this as the induced behavior would cause havoc at home too.

Added to that once a child has that statement they are not forgotten or pushed aside as problem solved, they have continuing support for their needs.

Regarding holidays

Teachers are paid on a pro rata basis, just as us other workers in a school do. That means, our yearly salary is divided over 12 months, so we get full pay during school holidays. That is why I may get more holiday pay than some of my work colleagues & some get more. It is dependant on how long we have worked there.That is added to our basic pay & divided. Yes holidays are long, but at least two weeks out of summer teachers are working from home, or in school updating rooms, planning etc. Shorter holidays I've known teacher friends spending most of that time planning, marking, entering data...the list goes on. Based on that fact, and it is fact as teachers HAVE to do these extra things as per contract AND would face the loss of their job if they fail to do so, that shortens the their holidays by at least 3 weeks, possibly more during the year.
Added to that the UNPAID extra hours teachers do each school day, starting at 7am onwards, finishing at 5-6pm...marking, data etc. Meetings after school, 1-2 a week or more which they don't get paid for as its expected they attend as part of their contract. Not forgetting after school clubs, special events such as concerts, parent teacher consultations, parents evening...all unpaid, although odd things are offered as lieu time.Then they go home often to mark the days work.

In conclusion, teachers deserve their holidays, they have worked with dedication to bring an education to our children often at the expense of their own family life.

INSET days

Get a grip, teachers are not on a jolly, they are updating their own teaching practices/polices, New methods of learning, safeguarding/abuse training.. To give your child the best updated education they can.
Interestingly enough, there are so many legal days children must be educated in school & these are NOT compromised by INSET days. The INSET days are added days to your childs holiday with the exception that the school can choose when they can/are able to take them. Hence same days are tagged at the beginning of term or the end.

It's not the dark age, school life was different back in the day. What worked then will not work now. Teachers have been set unrealistic goals for their pupils to achieve, and those goalposts are moving all the time. The government in turn, are putting more pressure on our children to achieve these goals earlier and earlier. Stealing their childhood is one thought.
They want to lengthen school hours, that means longer working hours for teachers who do actually work those hours doing marking etc,so then they will be going home to do more work before falling into bed at midnight.
That then takes your time with your child away. Younger kids will be home, dinner bath, bed. Although I suspect some parents will applaud the fact they have longer free child care.

For the hours the teachers actually work, including their own free time which isn't really free, the pay is p*ss poor. And to find out the pension which you have worked for is also going to be cut/reduced its no wonder that teachers are leaving the profession in droves.

I would suggest that ill informed blinkered people, who think teachers have it easy to do some voluntary work in a school. My eyes were opened when I started helping in school around 10 years ago. They opened wider when I started working in the school, and now working full time & often staying later myself & attending diary meetings my eyes are agoggle at the dedication, hard work & effort our teachers put into their work & our children. And the constant government goal moving,backlashing & spiteful tongues of parents & the general public who look in & see a 9-5 cushy job with lots of holidays. :-P

Going back to left handers, my mum (born 1930) was left handed, and was never forced to write with her right hand. She even went on to win prizes for her handwriting. :-D
However, when she was at school, they used real 'ink' pens, so there was the danger of smudging what you had just written. She didn't write with her hand over the writing, she held her hand below the writing, like most right-handed people do.
Have to admit, when I was a LSA, I discouraged left-handers from 'crabbing' their hand and arm above their writing - as far as I could see, it took more energy and effort and put a strain on the wrist, making writing more of a toil and less of a plesure.

There are GCSE and A-level exams scheduled to be taken on the first three days of the week of proposed strike action in June.

But the union's general secretary, Christine Blower, said strike action "will not disrupt exams" and that any staff who need to supervise an exam will be given exemptions from taking part in industrial action.

As far as I can work out, there are A2 exams on the mornings of 23, 24 & 26 June. Not that many students will be involved.

A2 exams are the 2nd year of A levels and are sat by Year 12 (17 year olds)

It must have been awful to be a left hander in the 'old days'. An ex in-law, also a high flyer, ended up with a stammer. He didn't have the condition until his teachers forced him to use his right hand.

My relative had to move into the Private sector because all the State school jobs they applied for were given to NQTs. NQTs are cheaper. For personal reasons the rellie was relocating form a different part of the country and needed a job....any job.

Back to the child care discussion. On the rare occasions when our children's school was closed (INSET, heating on the blink, there was a water leak) if our parents couldn't help out, then the children were looked after by their friends mother(s). As a tit-for-tat arrangement, no cost was involved. Apart from INSET, there was no prior notice of the closure. We sorted it out between ourselves!

In this instance, the parents have just under 2 months to make tentative alternative child care arrangements.

Those with GCSE/GCE exams won't be affected even if their own subject teacher opted not to work. Most schools arrange for those students to go on study leave from May half term, only attending school for coaching lessons. It would be extremely unusual for every single member of the teaching staff to be members of the striking Unions, meaning that there would be Teachers on site.

[edited to replace OFSTED with INSET - it was too late at night!]

I am left handed by nature but was fairly firmly persuaded to be ambidextrous at school. This has been a wonderful thing as I don't have to worry about left handed mice, guitars and dealing with the service at the Lord Mayor's banquet and such. Being ambidextrous is a huge advantage for assembling IKEA furniture and playing piano duets. I am still free to bowl a left handed googly :-)

Modern academy schools can be pretty good. One of my younger rellies went here:

http://www.sirjosephwilliamson.medway.sch.uk/page/default.asp?title=Home&pid=1

and now he is a high flyer with Microsoft and earns a mint.

Agree with you Hayley, my husband used to be punished for being left-handed :-0

No child is thick......they sometimes need to learn in a different way at their own pace to be the best they can be.

The 37 in our class range have mixed abilities and 3 have learning difficulties, yet every day, for every lesson the teacher has the resources ready for them all to learn as much as they can in however many different ways it takes................I honestly don't know how she does it all with a smile on her face.

well said Maggie and Det thank Christ the education system isn't what it was in 60's and 70's where children word with blindness or dyslexia were constantly whacked on the head with a heavy book or wrapped across the knuckles with a ruler and called thick lazy and stupid .......my how these teachers were respected :-(

And still I am not just not getting it that 2 parents on low incomes can not arrange child care between them to cover a school day.

What Kay said :-D

Before I began working in school I thought teachers had short days and long holidays.....................boy was I wrong!!

Today, the year 6 teacher I work with was in school at 7.15 am, taught all day, including her lunchtime club and playground duty and will leave around 10pm tonight as she is involved in a talent show the children really enjoy.

Just one of many extras the youngsters enjoy which wouldn't be done unless the teachers and support staff didn't care so much about the children.

If teachers would only be left to do the job they do best with minimal intervention by successive politicians, everyone would benefit and our children would really be given the education they need.

Do people think that all teachers have no children in education who they are having to make arrangemnts to be cared for on strike day,!!!

I fully back my daughter and her colleagues for their stance.

If parents stopped whinging and got behind the strikers perhaps those in in higher places would realise what an important role they play.

without the importance of teachers there would be no education system.....!

No teacher will be striking on exam days Dizzi..............they care about their pupils and work blooming hard to make sure they get the best they can from our education system.