Heads support axe for poor teachers (From Worcester News)

What about incompetent head teachers? Or government ministers, or governments? Could we have them sacked in a couple of months?

Exactly Karl the teachers are what the Head teachers make them, if the Heads have not spotted a problem there is something wrong in their management.

You Cannot abuse employee rights if you are not performing to a standard then you should be able to get up to the required standard. Parents should ask is their something they can do to help their children it should be a two way street. Teachers who are not performing well should have the chance to improve and in a set time not a term like any job you get better with experience and if you sack teachers to soon then they will not get the experience.

I was placed on competency procedures by my head teacher because I complained about lack of support in dealing with anti-social and unsafe behaviour. At the time I had the best exam results in the school well above the school, county and national average and a good OFSTED report. I had to resort to calling in the Health and safety executive to get working conditions changed. I believe excellence is a standard not a goal in teaching, but without support in behaviour management, teaching to the best of ones professional ability is not possible.
I welcome the changes as long as there is complete accountability on the part of head teachers. Alun Williams is an exemplary head teacher, who would clearly implement competency procedures in a fair, just and reasonable manner. However there are some heads who would use this as means to intimidate good teachers who raise concerns about support with unsafe and anti-social behaviour. Worcestershire is in a state of meltdown regarding management of the most disruptive pupils. If any colleagues find themselves decreed to be incompetent when there is incompetent support with behaviour management, I would advise them to take two courses of action:

1). Register a statutory complaint with the health & safety executive, current legislation makes no distinction between physical and psychological working conditions and the HSE are duty bound to investigate. They were very helpful in my case, as a result the entire school behaviour support system was changed to avoid an improvement order being served. Needless to say this made me very unpopular with the SMT and Governors and was kept very quiet.

2). Inform your SMT and/or Governors that you will report anti-social behaviour to either the police or the County, Worcestershire County Council has a legal responsibility under Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which places a statutory duty on named partners to consider the reduction of crime and disorder when exercising their core functions. This includes anti-social behaviour. The class room is not exempt from this legislation, if pupils behaved in a public place as some do in the classroom the authorities would not hesitate to make an application for an ASBO.

Good teaching is not possible good behaviour support, no good teacher should be dismissed on grounds of incompetency without the schools behaviour support policy being independently assessed. Hopefully the Unions will do something about this.

Well said 'Jannus'

There appears to be a lot of hot air and unnecessarily negative rhetoric about teachers performance - but little about what safeguards there might be to raise standards of Headteachers or ensure fairplay and proper management practice from them.

I am aware that some Headteachers fail to address a number of managerial issues in their schools and can actually bully staff who complain etc about poor practice. If this change is not done properly it might lead to Headteachers having a licence to bully staff and get rid of them, even good staff.

There are already employment laws and ACAS guidance etc on performance and discipline; and I wonder why Gove has chosen now to do this?

I think it's just a headline catching Gove gimmick and another example of how he has no idea what's going on, what employment rules exist, and so is driven by his own prejudice and lack of understanding.

That this guy is in charge of Education is quite frightening.