Wat,
I yield to no man in my criticism of this government's record on education.
However, I wonder whether you're being entirely fair. For example, at primary level, many of the support staff are qualified nursery nurses, which is entirely appropriate for the function they're providing.
I also know more than one teaching assistant in secondary schools who is actually more highly educated than the teachers they assist, although they lack QTS. Often they're women with children who only want to work term time.
Independent schools have traditionally employed teachers with a larger variety of qualifications than state schools - and look at their results in comparison.
Wat,
You speak with such empathy for fully qualified teachers. I could almost believe that you were one yourself.
How the dice do fall.
John
Never, Watt, silly question.
All those unqualified tax money recipient educational assistants require a huge burocracy of beaurocrats to administer them. That's where you'll fuind the money.
What a surprise. Same with community support officers - the government says that police numbers are going up but actually the real, qualified employees are dwindling in number.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
Ohmigod,ohmigod,ohmigod! This woman with umpteen years of teaching experience wants to drop down to working 4 days a week to free up more time to spend with her own children. Obviously she is totally unsuitable to be counted as a real teacher any more. Kids who cannot come to the staff room on Fridays to consult her will be educationally crippled. (And in education we don't have the satisfaction of knowing that going part-time will kill her career stone-dead in the way it does for women in other sectors.)
And while we are at it, we must throw out that minister who comes in to take Latin classes and the lunchtime club. Better to stop Latin altogether than to have those kids subjected to a part-timer who has a life outside education.
You're not trying very hard here Wat.
Just as you could make more people die of heart disease by curing cancer, you can reduce the percentage of teachers in schools by employing more cleaners.
So what?
My kids are at the local state primary, and enjoy the attentions of hoards of teaching assistants, etc IN ADDITION TO their (fully qualified) teachers. They have far more attention and vastly nicer physical surroundings than I did in my crumbling Thatcherite classes-of-40-rain-coming-in-Portacabins.
There's still an argument to be had about value for money, but to suggest that everyone who hears a 6-year-old read to them must have a PhD isn't a strong point.
One support person for every two full-time teachers.
Blimey, Parkinson's Law is working well, isn't it?
When I was at school, (sixty-odd teachers, eight hundred or so children iirc), there were about four or five "support staff". Unless you counted the gardeners as well.
Things have changed a bit.
Don't knock support staff. The ones at the Junior & Infant School my kids are at are absolutely *brilliant* and worth every penny.
Dodgy PFI schemes are a different matter.
And so are the numbers of incompetent teachers who it appears can be out-taught by 16 year olds.
Not that there's anything new about that - my (maternal) grandfather was "Top Boy" of his school and took lessons when teachers were absent (1930s).
My father was also "Top Boy", but I don't think he ever did, (1950s).
So I suppose we are now returning to the 1930s in more ways than one!
"Wat,
You speak with such empathy for fully qualified teachers. I could almost believe that you were one yourself.
How the dice do fall.
John
Dr John Crippen"
Perhaps Wat was one, in a former life! Anyway, not many of us are as fortunate as the doc and his ilk who, having screwed the taxpayer for £150k plus a year, can now afford to opt out of our failing schools anf NHS.
The headmistress's point is that the quality of supply teachers is poor. Our experience of a family member's pretty good school suggests she's dead right.
The supply teachers our family has encountered can't teach. Either that, or they don't care.
They may replace, for instance, a teacher who's taking maternity leave. So children suffer several terms of ineffective teaching.
So well done to that headmistress ... up to a point. But what does such a commitment do for her sixth formers' education?
Unfortunately it's only sticking plaster for a fault that's probably pretty widespread in the system.
And another thing.
"A school is paying sixth-formers as young as 16 to teach lessons instead of hiring qualified supply staff. "
They do realise, I suppose, that these "staff" are dealing with young people and therefore need CRB clearance? (Or, in Scotland, "disclosure").
Don't they?
They're not breaking the law by ignoring that requirement, one trusts.
The words "hoist" and "petard" come to mind.
I write as a qualified and practising teacher.
I think the recruitment crisis is such that the long-term plan is to train up classroom assistants/teaching assistants to replace the outgoing teachers. There are already 3 categories of TA, so career progression is obviously a notion. And then the link with graduate status would finally be broken, so salaries could decline gently towards skilled labour rates.
Meanwhile, the use of CAs/TAs is as much for maintaining some residual discipline as for any constructive educational purpose. The system would explode without them.
"every teacher we know is severely hacked off" - in many cases, it's worse than that. Many have got to the point of resignedness - keep your nose clean and get through to retirement. There's no expectation of victory. We are at a dangerous pass. And now they're buggering-up A levels to disguise even more of the damage.
Meanwhile, primary schools are a picture of the accelerating decay of society. Ask any primary teacher for an honest account.
And since all these folk are on the public payroll I wonder how they will vote? But it didn't make much difference last Thursday. looks like another dud Nu Labour strategy bites the dust.
I expect my old school masters(and they were, all Oxbridge MAs and most ex WWII soldiers)are spinning in their graves.
Nu Labour cannot be trusted on education. They hated and destroyed grammar schools, dumbed down exams and a load of them send their children to fee paying schools. Balls of course is an exception, but hey, "So what?". Smug bastard.
Re Sixth formers and CRB. From my experience of Young Leaders in the Scout Association, CRB/Disclosure clearance is not required until a young person turns 18. So, if the school is only using lower sixth students there would be no need for CRB, as they are not considered to be adults.
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