Wednesday 24 November 2010

Dear Mr Baker...

Dear Mr Baker,

I just read your article on the BBC website.

I agree that the plans will churn out top quality teachers, but it will also result in an even greater shortage of quality staff than already exists.

The idea of "teaching schools" will prevent married people, tied to their family's location, from taking up the profession, and people burdened with student loans will not be able to afford even more house-moves.

There are three things we need to be good teachers:

1. More realistic targets with less administration required to track them.

2. More non-teaching time to keep up with the admin, tracking, marking, planning, training ...

3. Respect.

Of course, we will never get these

1. If they make the targets realistic, they will not have the excuses to keep adopting "improvements" which also happen to save money (our local authority [Suffolk] is closing all the Middle schools, allegedly to improve standards, but they have already admitted that it was really to save money - after July, two thirds of the staff in my school [including me] will be made redundant as the pupils are crammed into over-large classes in an under-resourced high school).

2. Requires more teachers, when there is already a shortage.

3. We haven't had the respect of government or public for years - empty words from the front benches won't change that (and the media doesn't help, only reporting on poor examples, and showing unrealistic rubbish like Waterloo Road).


Regards

Kiteman.

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