Quite. I'm sick of the public sector moaning, when they're living in a dream world. These lot included.

Academies can be a good thing, or a bad thing. Bit like most systems/tools. I love the idea of being able to teach what you want and how you want. But teachers (by and large) are like most public sector/local government workers - they don't like change. They train with all these high ideals of teaching kids, but then the system gets to them. And this is from personal experience, I know several current, former and retired teachers with a range of ages and experiences. The idea of academies could start to change all that and make teaching and learning exciting like it is in the teacher training ads, but people have to allow that training.

All that said, it does require people with vision and integrity to make it work and maybe the head in this case is neither and just grabbing for cash. I couldn't really say that without being a little closer to the situation...

The academies aren't even required to use qualified teachers.

As always with these stories, there's not enough information available for the reader to make a well educated assessment. It's easy to guess that the head might be a visionless evil money-grabbing whore, but that judgement might be totally unfair.

Regardless, I'm generally against the idea of ransoming the children's educational future.

Hilarious that the entire country seems to be against academies though, when there's no evidence to back their claims.

Sure, they could turn out to be the next communism, but we don't know that yet. I'd love to run an academy. I'd have the best teachers who were motivated and interested, and my kids would be inspired and driven at whatever they felt were their "things".

Either way, striking is gay unless there's a real global issue at stake.

Generally speaking people do tend to be against change if they can see no valid evidence that the change will improve things.


I suspect if it was your job on the line , that would qualify as a 'global issue' all of a sudden.

Jon

I think the sentiment that workers should take whatever crap is thrown at them by employers without question is highly dubious and immoral. The fact is that there is a contract teachers have with their employer (which is NOT the school, but the Local Education Authority). Turning a school into an academy requires employment status to change, and that would happen without negotiation or consultation. It would be imposed, with the mantra “if you don’t like it, leave”. That’s a shallow, capitalistic attitude which is used as a rod to the back.

I support the striking teachers - it’s not about ruining the education of pupils at the school, but ensuring the system works properly with pay and conditions commensurate to those. Academies will create a two tier educational system - either the switch to academy status is done 100% across the board with proper negotiations with the unions to ensure preservation of pay and conditions, or not at all.

+1

That’s the key point. As far as most people here are concerned, this is somebody else's problem and therefore nothing to be worried about. One day, though, it will be you in the sights. Then what?

Not true. I've been threatened with redundancy plenty of times and I've actually been made redundant twice. I'm no stranger to the ways of the capitalist market economy.



I agree. But it is the way the world works and as much as I don't like it, I've learnt to accept it and adapt my behavioural patterns as an employee. Cultivating multiple skillsets and being adaptable is the modern equivalent of the hunter gatherer tribes moving to new hunting grounds when their food supply ran out. Learn the game, then play it to your best advantage. I'd much rather be a socialist/humanist/give a crap about the human race, but there's not much call for that it seems.



THIS, is the kind of "global" issue I was referring to. If academies are a problem (and I don't happen to think it is, but I appear to be in a very small minority) then it needs a proper discussion, not just one school striking.

Don't let the Man beat you down!

I'd love to teach at one, by the sound of things...
I'd love to teach, but the way schools are currently run I don't want to be stuck there teaching people how to put a border around their invoice created in Word...I would want the freedom to teach useful, transferable skills and have the ability to adapt a while module to that of the class.

Pretty much my opinion too. Love to teach, but be a teacher? In a school in the current academic system? No f'ing way.


And on those occasions, did you have any other choice than 'bend over and take it'? I suspect not. That's what we'd have if we were all individual employees - companies would be able to do whatever they felt like. That's the whole point of unions, they give the PBI at the bottom an extra option, in theory. And if you have unions, you will get some strikes at some point. Because the only 'asset' you have is your labour/skills and therefore (to put it in a capitalist way) if you want to realise the proper value for it, you have to protect it and, sometimes, ration it. That's the only way you can impress on anyone what you are 'worth' - expose them to the situation of you not doing your joband see how much money they lose. And to do it collectively has more power than to do it individually.

I'm not in favour of the way unions have been run in the past or indeed the way some of them are run today but the idea of unions - and therefore the notion of strikes - is a fundamental part of balancing a capitalist economy. A capitalist economy will push it's workers for every ounce of work it can - that's just the way it works, it's fundamentally about optimisation. Unions are the brake on that tendency and strikes are how that brake is applied.You can have one extreme like we had in the 1970's when every fecker was on strike and the unions being run by idiots and at the other extreme you have some of the places in the far east, which are effectively slave economies. The healthy point is somewhere in the middle, where collective worker influence is balanced with the profit imperative. Germany's a pretty good example, actually.

Jon

Moi aussi. Been told millions of times that I'd make a good teacher. Spent a lot of time over the years helping out in friends classrooms and on field trips etc. and my little sis and her friends have had their fair share of tutoring. But I wouldn't touch the current system with a bargepole. Which is one of the reasons I like academies. I imagine half the people in NASUWT and the NUT are crap at their jobs and old, so like many public sector workers they're desperate to cling on to them for a few more years until retirement. Ok, that's not everybody, but if academies would allow us three to teach, I can only imagine what other kinds of cool people are out there in a similar position. These people could make a real, positive difference to the education of our children. Anyway.....



On two seperate occasions I was offered alternative work (as they have to these days) for a lot less money and crappier "conditions". I refused on both and walked. On both occasions, it's worked out. Would I do it again in the current climate? Maybe not, but that's why I made my point. EVERYBODY has to adapt to the current climate, and those that do best will survive. It's called evolution. My answer is to do one to somewhere less depressing and get paid by a company in what is pretty solid position in a fairly solid industry. But everybody has to find their own.

I agree that more balance would be good, and I don't think these teachers are going about it the right way.

Firstly, total crap.

Secondly, to explain, most of the people in teaching are at least adequate at teaching. If ever there was an environment in which survival of the fittest could be seen, comprehensives are it; the crap teachers simply don't last very long. I know many crap ex-teachers; I know very few crap teachers.

The problem with teaching is not the lack of discipline nor poor management, the crapness of the national curriculum nor the stress. The problem with teaching is the paperwork and inspection. In my last week of teaching I worked 137 hours which consisted of 32 hours of teaching and 111 hours of paperwork. I was sleeping one hour per night and eventually I cracked - and am still dealing with the psychiatric injuries that resulted. Teaching killed my father, nearly killed me, destroyed my sister and made my mother very old. We were all brilliant teachers - one OfStEd inspector said I was the best teacher he had ever seen - but three of us were lost because of paperwork and inspection.

The academies will remove money from other perfectly good schools and essential LEA oversight but they won't remove one iota of paperwork - they're an administrative fig leaf to get money to Tory stooges and the difficult statistics out of the system so the government can claim an improvement.



And how are they supposed to go about it? Sit around and sing "Kum-ba-ya"? Write angry letters to greedy people who aren't ever going to listen?

These teachers are on the ground and know exactly what an academy would mean. They only have one bargaining chip - their labour - and are using it to make a much-needed point.

As a school governor I am all for acadamies as it means the school gets all the money - none being creamed off by the local council. The school then gets to set it's own budget knowing exactly how much money it has to spend and is in control of it's own destiny.

The school I look after still does not know how much money they are getting from the council for 2011/12 so that means we cannot plan a proper budget thus fueling uncertanty and rumours over staffing levels.

The council have also re-graded all teachers and teacher assistants meaning quite a few get less pay now than they did before - whereas if we were an academy we could give them fairer pay as we would get more money in the first place.

As for teachers going on-strike - the council will be happy as it means they won't have to pay them.

The things that concerns me is that with no local authority oversight, there's no-one to kick the school's arse when they act inappropriately or fail a pupil/group of pupils - such as the victims of bullying.