I always wonder what it’s like for those teachers that seem to get the raw end of the deal. The teachers that end up with a higher SEN quota or more behaviour issues in their classrooms. And then they are soon under scrutiny. Seems unfair to me. How can that be equal. Then there are those that always seem to get the less problematic groups.
My LEA school had an excellent reputation for SEN provision, but we saw the proportion of SEN pupils rising as more and more were excluded from Academies. These tended to be those with behaviours issues.
At the same time class sizes were increasing due to funding cutbacks and teachers being made redundant so larger numbers of pupils with a larger proportion of specialist attention required.
On top of that staff cutbacks meant there were less and less teaching assistants attached to SEN pupils so a higher proportion of need, and fewer resources to deal with that need.
Class sizes increase with an increasing proportion of need, regardless, there is the constant pressure to raise standards.
Your last sentence points to a manor problem in that under such pressure a school becomes less and less collaborative and more and more ‘every man/woman for him/herself’. I have represented teachers who have had their most able pupils removed from their class and ‘elevated’ to a class taught by the deputy head. Those pupils replaced by pupils ‘demoted’ from the deputies class.
I put ‘demoted’ in air quotes, but the truth is that such pupils very much feel demoted which only adds exponentially to a decline in their self esteem and ability to make progress.
The point that I would like non teachers to understand here is that as part of the Performance Management Programme, a teacher has to set targets for pupil outcomes against which their own performance is measured at the end of the cycle. This is right and reasonable if done fairly. But in the case noted above, the pupils might change, but the targets stay the same with the result that the deputy head exceeds their target, but the ordinary teacher does not.
Another problem with target setting is that they are often set by the school. I know fairly certainly that a class will get say 70% A* to C, but a head might decide they want the school to get 80% and so imposes an 80% target. I know from personal experience one case where a head imposed and 85% target in a school that historically had only ever achieved a high of 64% (and an average far lower). I have represented a host of other similar cases where the numbers are less dramatic but still very obviously unrealistic and teachers find themselves in Capability proceedings as a result.
Most head teachers are good, but many, far too many, are bullies and Michael Gove’s reforms are a Bullies Charter. To give just one example, one part of the new Teacher Standards is to “make a contribution to the wider school” and this is used to pressurise teachers into doing more and more extra curricular activities. Even where a teacher, for example runs an after school club, what they once did voluntarily because they wanted to, suddenly becomes part of the Assessment which they are measured against and the after school club that they did out of the goodness of their heart suddenly has to demonstrate that it has planing, pupil progress, attendance etc.
There is a government policy to force LEA to convert, and obviously a school like mine will suffer more and more. My old LEA school has now converted to an academy because there are financial advantages.
Government policy is driving this ideology, underfunding and unrealistic target setting are among the tools they use and Ofsted is undoubtedly another tool. For a school not meeting our Government’s agenda, Ofsted is not supportive.
Our education system is in crisis and teacher stress is a very real and growing problem. Teachers are not snowflakes, they are targets in a political game.
Teacher recruitment and retention is a real and growing and deliberate problem caused by ideological choices made by our politicians.
