09/12/2019
I completely agree. I have always thought that this country was astonishingly disrespectful towards teachers. 4 years at university, minimum, and a tough probationary year..
And in school they have constant monitoring, learning walks, observations, pupil progress meetings...
It's tough here, it's rigorous and it's exciting.
But this idea that if children aren't learning, it's the responsibility of the individual teacher is one of the serious weaknesses in the system. Teachers are not trusted to plan and assess using their professional knowledge and skills, they have to follow plans imposed by the school, assess according to imposed criteria.
If a child isn't learning/working at a level that we want them to, the teachers are held responsible, then we have to say that if a teacher is not learning/working at a level we want them to, the school is responsible. And the school? The wider community is responsible. We are all responsible for the education of our children. We need to work on developing a level of respect for our colleagues, for the hours they work, for the commitment they show to their children, for the pens, shoes, tampons they buy, the lunches they pack, the snacks they just happen to have in their bags..
We need to live in a society that respects children, where they are living good, healthy, happy lives, where there is enough for all of us, and we can all feel more generous and supportive of each other. Ofsted is supposed to hold the child at the centre of everything. This is the philosophy that underpins the process of inspection. In reality, Ofsted has become politicised, a weapon to beat schools and teachers. I do hope this new framework will change that, but as we wait for it to bed in, why don't we all make sure that we are as positive as we can be about people doing their best, because in the main, their best is actually pretty good.
EXCLUSIVE: Andreas Schleicher, head of the Pisa global education rankings, uses Tes interview to warn that 'nothing has changed' for teacher workload in England and to advocate for light-touch school inspection
