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The Michael Gove File

According to an email from the NUT, Gove has asked the School Teachers' Review Body to consider:

Removing statutory limits on working time
Removing any existing protection against non-emergency cover for other staff, and non-teaching-related administration tasks
Changing the amount of time (currently 10% of teaching hours) which should be allocated as PPA time "free periods" for planning, prep and assessment).
Removing the right to a lunch break beyond 20mins

Gove is trying to kill us. No other explanation.
 
spanglechick said:
According to an email from the NUT, Gove has asked the School Teachers' Review Body to consider:

Removing statutory limits on working time
Removing any existing protection against non-emergency cover for other staff, and non-teaching-related administration tasks
Changing the amount of time (currently 10% of teaching hours) which should be allocated as PPA time "free periods" for planning, prep and assessment).
Removing the right to a lunch break beyond 20mins. <snip>
Click to expand...
Insane, those things are there for a reason - most teachers are already inclined to work harder and longer than is good for them.
 
Greebo said:
Insane, those things are there for a reason - most teachers are already inclined to work harder and longer than is good for them.
Click to expand...

Quite.

Any pretence that gove's assault on teachers' P&C is, in any way, driven by a concern for standards of teaching and pupil experience, is utterly undermined by such a vindictive, bullying approach to the profession. There are already far too many HT/SMTs ready to push teachers to the brink of physical/mental exhaustion; they do not need encouragment like this.

They're so in a rush to 'complete the project', aren't they? And, as ever, the real killer is the knowledge that Tristran Sounds-like will do absolutley stuff-all to reverse any of this dogmatic erosion of hard fought for conditions.

The enemy within.
 
spanglechick said:
According to an email from the NUT, Gove has asked the School Teachers' Review Body to consider:

Removing statutory limits on working time
Removing any existing protection against non-emergency cover for other staff, and non-teaching-related administration tasks
Changing the amount of time (currently 10% of teaching hours) which should be allocated as PPA time "free periods" for planning, prep and assessment).
Removing the right to a lunch break beyond 20mins

Gove is trying to kill us. No other explanation.
Click to expand...
Do teachers even really get a "lunch break" it seems they're always on duty.
 
_angel_ said:
Do teachers even really get a "lunch break" it seems they're always on duty.
Click to expand...
Well, they supposedly get one. Though my experience is that it is extremely unusual for a teacher to actually get such a break. Even if a teacher is in the staffroom for their lunchbreak, there's usually a queue at the door of kids needing to talk to them about something.
 
A lot of the new academies have been built without staff rooms and teachers are expected to eat in their classrooms, an obvious anti-labour tactic.
 
It makes me sick that fucking Tory MPs, the destroyers of society, are scapegoating people who actually do something useful. People who don't actually usually get a proper lunch break anyway let alone the luxurious hour long meals with booze subsidised by the taxpayer that MPs get.
 
J Ed said:
It makes me sick that fucking Tory MPs, the destroyers of society, are scapegoating people who actually do something useful. People who don't actually usually get a proper lunch break anyway let alone the luxurious hour long meals with booze subsidised by the taxpayer that MPs get.
Click to expand...
And teaching - constantly "on show" for several sessions totalling a few hours every day in front of an often critical audience of 20-30 - is a pretty full-on job, of the kind that most MPs wouldn't know the meaning of. Sure, they get to stand up and make speeches, but that's substantially different from what a teacher is doing every working day.
 
_angel_ said:
Well that's what I mean. I wasn't aware of teachers getting a "break" as such. I think the days of the staff fucking off to the pub on a Friday dinnertime are probably long gone.
Click to expand...
Not quite. We finish at 2.00 on a Friday. Teachers are drunk by six. :D
 
J Ed said:
It makes me sick that fucking Tory MPs, the destroyers of society, are scapegoating people who actually do something useful. People who don't actually usually get a proper lunch break anyway let alone the luxurious hour long meals with booze subsidised by the taxpayer that MPs get.
Click to expand...
I have never understiood how we, as a society, have allowed what appears to be the mass scapegoating of teachers - fucking teachers - to occur. What do people think this achieves? Are we following the po.licies of people who didnt like matron at boarding school because she found their secret porno and fags stash and are now taking it out on the rest of us?

I've no experience of teaching beyond my time at school. My experiences there were good and bad like most people, but in recent years I have developed quite a fondness for the profession and I find it sickening when it's brought into discussion in the media for curtain twitchers and little englanders to run down. "oh they get 6 weeks holiday", "it's an easy job, try driving trucks for 60 hours a week" and so forth.

FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
 
Awesome Wells said:
I have never understiood how we, as a society, have allowed what appears to be the mass scapegoating of teachers - fucking teachers - to occur. What do people think this achieves? Are we following the po.licies of people who didnt like matron at boarding school because she found their secret porno and fags stash and are now taking it out on the rest of us?
Click to expand...
One of the commonest tropes about teachers - "they only work 25 hours a week, and get 12 weeks' holiday a year" - plays straight into the politics of envy playbook so beloved of this shower of coalition shit.

It really isn't at all hard, it seems, to whip people up into an envious rage at how easy other people have it: look at the main tactics used to attack benefits claimants, single mothers ("just having a baby to get a house, while WE have to slave 25 hours a day and eat hot gravel just to be able to afford...etc"), and so on.

I wouldn't be a teacher for quids. I often look at them doing their job and think "ooh, I'd quite like to have a bash at that, I reckon I could be quite good". And I would, and I could. For maybe, like, one lesson a week. As and when. With days off when I felt like it. But to do that job week in, week out, year in, year out...nah. The standing up in front of the punters, bloody hard as I know that can be, is the easy bit. Then you've got the preparation, admin, paperwork, working for a local authority education department in some headmaster's personal fiefdom (which can be great if the head's OK, but a complete nightmare if they're not...and they are often not), the responsibility (child protection stuff, risk assessments, discipline, parents' evenings....), a hostile inspection/assessment regime, endless fucking "initiatives" from Government, and the expectation that you're prepared to stay late/go off on trips as part of enrichment activities (or to help the head big up his school come the next inspection).

Sod that. And I haven't even mentioned the salary. I have nothing but respect for the people who do go for it.

(this jaundiced view was brought to you partly by Having-A-Teacher-For-A-Dad Enterprises, Inc™)
 
Yeah, teachers can't just have a day when they're not feeling it. They have to be making their best efforts ALL of the time or young lives can be damaged.
 
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