Gove at it again

[Disease]

Union Hysteria again, that's why I hate unions, TA's will not be sacked but not replaced after natural wastage, or retrained as teachers.

 

Bloody Unions.

 

230,000 classroom assistants face axe | The Sunday Times

[sonofsanta]

There are still specialist schools for certain types of children (disabled or behavioural issues), particularly in Lincolnshire, but oftentimes a child is served better by being integrated into mainstream education with some support than being split away into a specialist environment. It's about producing a rounded young adult as much as it is about teaching them, after all.

 

A TA does not need specialist knowledge of a subject to help the child. They just need to be capable of learning. If a French lesson is teaching facial descriptions ("I have blue eyes and brown hair"...) the TA only needs to have heard what the teacher has taught that lesson, and understood it, to be able to explain it again to the student in a manner that works for them. That's differentiation, education's favourite buzzword of the last decade. You have a choice of a) a TA helping the child/children who learn in a different manner or b) the teacher dividing their time between the majority of the class learning one way and the minority who need the topic approaching differently. Arguably it's a more efficient use of resources to have a lower paid TA concentrating on that minority of students.

 

Should TAs be leading whole classes? No. TA2 and TA3 can take small groups out to teach in a different environment when it suits, following a lesson plan set by the teacher, but TAs should not be cheap teachers. They have another, different role to fill though, and you shouldn't scrap them when their original purpose still exists.

 

TAs also shouldn't need to be there to control the class, but we all know teachers at each end of the scale, and if a TA is capable of enforcing some much needed discipline, why shouldn't they? It's not their purpose, no, but it's often something they can do well (if they are a Mum's Army, after all, who better to control a room of unruly children?)

 

I know of places where technology is implemented for technology's sake and the network isn't fit for purpose. I've seen network managers teaching lessons. Should we fire all IT technicians?

[Scifigirl]

I think when I was in school, there were whole schools which specialised in provision for those with more severe difficulties. Those don't exist any more which is where TA's came in

 

Special schools like that do exist-- I work in one, and was a TA a myself. TA's especial ours do an excellent job, and can, when working in conjunction with a good teacher enhance the teaching of the class. Everyone has skills that others don't have, and good teachers will recognise and use those skills for the benefit of the children.

 

The problem currently is most councils have reshuffled special schools and given them specific designations, is, PCSN, ASD, etc. Then they try and get special schools to take children that are not under their designation- and with population growth there isn't room for more children. We were new build 5 years ago, and now we are oversubscribed with a waiting list. We are now being asking to push outreach support for secondary and primaries in the area, and most of the time it is our experienced TA's who are asked to go and help other TA's. Specialist teachers do go out, but then it is their specialist TA's covering the class as ASD pupils will kick off at the thought of an unknown and new face in their classroom.

 

TA's help our teachers a lot- even if most of them cause problems for me- computer illiterate bunch!!lol- I understand the need for them.

 

and the usual ender

 

Gove is an idiot!

 

took too long typing it seems!

[Scifigirl]

A TA does not need specialist knowledge of a subject to help the child.

but in any school a TA will know the CHILD often better than the teacher- this gives them a better idea of how to get an idea across

[LeMarchand]

Should we fire all IT technicians?

 

Don't give him ideas!

[tmcd35]

Should we fire all IT technicians?

 

Didn't the last governement try that? (BSF)

[mthomas08]

Didn't the last governement try that? (BSF)

 

And look how that panned out, spent money like anything on everything. My previous school was in the planning phase (the final phase that didn't carry on). I was shocked at the prices of the equipment that we would have to purchase and all the good equipment going to be replaced. My boss at the time said to me it would get cancelled with the new gov and he was right...

[Flatpackhamster]

IPPR put out a paper called EXCELLENCE AND EOUITY, which quotes this ...

 

"This is largely because schools used TAs to work directly with lower attaining

pupils, which in turn deprived them of contact time with a trained teacher" (Blatchford et al 2012).

 

If I were you I'd put the IPPR paper in the recycling where it belongs.

[Flatpackhamster]

There are still specialist schools for certain types of children (disabled or behavioural issues), particularly in Lincolnshire, but oftentimes a child is served better by being integrated into mainstream education with some support than being split away into a specialist environment. It's about producing a rounded young adult as much as it is about teaching them, after all.

 

This is the argument being put out, but I'm unconvinced by it. I don't know if it's better for the SEN child, and just as importantly for the other children in that child's class, to integrate them. I think it depends upon the nature of the SEN.

[Trapper]

I'd like to see him come into a special after sacking all the TAs. We have on average 1:3 staffing (in some cases 1:1) - so is he going to hire an extra 50 teachers to replace the 50 TAs (50x £21,000 (max grade) or 50x £31,000 (max MPS))?

 

Idiot.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Trapper

[ConradJones]

Gove's fag packet planning

 

Quote of the week for me.!

[localzuk]

Mmm, and she wasn't much cop either, although she was popular with the unions.

 

AFAICT the problem is that the number of TAs has tripled since 2000. Instead of doing what they ought to be doing, which is offering assistance to children with SEN to enable them to integrate, they're now taking half or whole classes, and they're neither trained nor qualified for that.

 

Anyone who's in favour of quality teaching in schools should balk at the use of semi-skilled labour. The teachers themselves ought to balk at it because it's doing down their profession.

 

Thing is, that argument falls flat on its face when you compare it to the other policies this government introduced into the education sector. Such as unqualified teachers being allowed in free schools and academies.

 

So, on one hand they're saying the army of 'cheap labour' are unqualified to teach and don't help anyone, but on the other hand they're saying unqualified people are ok to teach kids.

 

As far as I'm concerned, TAs are worth every penny they get paid. The job they do is important from an 'SEN' stand point but also from a 'letting the teacher teach' standpoint. Examples of this would be if you have a disruptive child in a class. If there's no TA, that disruptive child can knock a good 10 minutes from a lesson's teaching time. If there is a TA, that TA can deal with it, reducing the disruption to teaching.

 

The idea of 'inclusive' education is the problem in my mind. If a child has specialist needs, they should be taught in a specialist environment. The idea that they can be 'fixed' by putting them in a normal school is nonsense, and has been shown by a complete lack of improvement by including them in mainstream schools. Its damaging to the children in question, and to those around them, as more effort is put into them than the mainstream children.

[Guest Guest]

The idea of 'inclusive' education is the problem in my mind. If a child has specialist needs, they should be taught in a specialist environment. The idea that they can be 'fixed' by putting them in a normal school is nonsense, and has been shown by a complete lack of improvement by including them in mainstream schools. Its damaging to the children in question, and to those around them, as more effort is put into them than the mainstream children.

 

Couldn't agree more. Comprehensive education is the same in my mind. An academic child may go on to be a "rocket scientist" in the correct environment. A non-academic may go on to learn a trade. Put them together in a comprehensive school and theres a good chance neither will achieve their full potential. How can a teacher be expected to cater for such different children? The non-academic will be bored doing the written work and will disrupt the learning of the academic. The academic will leave school with lower grades than expected, the non-academic will come out with no skills at all and will probably have a dislike/hatred of education and not want to go on to college to learn a trade.

 

Bring back the eleven plus...

Edited July 6, 2013 by Guest

[Trapper]

On about IT techs I think we're much more secure now than we have been as a disparate group in years.

 

Academies and Free Schools are basically businesses, maintained schools are running more like businesses who appreciate professional diversity. It's now no longer all about the teachers. IT (corporate IT), finance (corp. finance dept.), pastoral (corp HR dept.) and business (corp. marketing and Ops management) are seen as equal professional partners by SLT and Governors.

[Ephelyon]

@Trapper, I'm glad to hear this is the case in some places but it isn't the case everywhere yet and that is an entirely different battle to be fought. It should be that way as you say, but the entire country isn't quite there yet.

 

When it comes to the specialist/mainstream debate, this has been going on for decades. At the end of the day it does always depend on the individual child of course, but there's also a case for suggesting that this is the very heart of the "differentiation" principle. Good teachers ought to be able to differentiate appropriately for individual classes and in principle this is absolutely true... however that depends on how well they are supported in doing so!

[witch]

When I was at school we didnt have TAs because we were taught in rows, at desks, with little or no differentiation between levels of achievement - leaving many children struggling and the very bright ones bored.

Now there is a much greater focus on group and peer-led learning which often means the class is divided up into small groups to do various differentiated tasks. TAs are invaluable here. I work in a junior school and although some TAs are indeed one-to-one, every class has a TA for the morning to help in literacy and numeracy. I can't see how the current methodology would survive without them.

[CyberNerd]

The idea of 'inclusive' education is the problem in my mind. If a child has specialist needs, they should be taught in a specialist environment. The idea that they can be 'fixed' by putting them in a normal school is nonsense, and has been shown by a complete lack of improvement by including them in mainstream schools. Its damaging to the children in question, and to those around them, as more effort is put into them than the mainstream children.

 

I think it's ok to have specialist units within mainstream schools. Infact I think it's a really good use of resources to pool specialisms such as ASD units into larger schools as long as the money ringfenced for them is spent in the correct way.

[Ephelyon]

Agreed - we're the recognised centre for that in our LEA and the school turns out a high proportion of successful children with additional needs through good differentiation and high levels of TA support during lessons. We have around 35 TAs, which isn't far off the number of QTS staff. This school would quickly become completely unrecognisable if the TAs were removed or simply not replaced.

[CyberNerd]

this is worth a watch

[Ephelyon]

It's a good video and raises some good questions.

 

I also like this one:

 

BBC Breakfast: Michael Gove on axing crap school teachers (13Jan12) - YouTube

 

Particularly at the end... it's quite an interesting exposé of Gove's logic from the horse's mouth.

[localzuk]

It's a good video and raises some good questions.

 

I also like this one:

 

BBC Breakfast: Michael Gove on axing crap school teachers (13Jan12) - YouTube

 

Particularly at the end... it's quite an interesting exposé of Gove's logic from the horse's mouth.

 

So basically, he seems to think that teachers should also be social workers and quite simply, magicians. What he is saying that teachers who have a poor term should be sacked. So, should we also apply this concept to his job then? If the results in education don't improve in a single term, he should be sacked?

[Ephelyon]

Interestingly, that was one of the comments on the video

 

Listen again. He is not saying they should be; he is allowing HTs the freedom to decide whether or not they should be. Presently it has to take at least a year or something, and doesn't it seem strange that if a teacher's classes are making little progress, it has to be at least that long before action can be taken?

 

But the most interesting part is the questions he raises at the end and the interviewer's response. Nobody ever seems to want to engage with Gove when he talks about things like that!

 

Just food for thought.

[localzuk]

He isn't giving the heads that flexibility though. He also says that if a head teacher isn't doing this then they are a bad head teacher...

 

The questions at the end are very carefully crafted. They make out that if you don't support his changes, then you are happy for children to fail, but that isn't what is up for discussion with him. The question is, are teachers solely to blame if a child doesn't make progress in a term? His answer is yes, and if the head allows it then they'll end up out too...

Edited July 7, 2013 by localzuk

[Ephelyon]

Agreed, both his questions and the interviewer's are crafted in the manner you'd expect for this kind of interview.

 

But I think the issue for debate that Gove is raising centres around the question of this perennial "good teacher".

 

What is a "good teacher"? Gove's answer is that a truly good teacher is someone who can always get the best out of any pupils they are presented with (and I can think of worse definitions). He then seems to say, almost philosophically, "Wouldn't it be nice if that were the standard and became the norm?"

 

A similar debate has been raised on EduGeek before about the standards (or lack thereof with the exception of FITS) for our own profession. We're expected to do the impossible a lot of the time by literally knowing everything about IT, but wouldn't it be nice if we could have the kind of training and career pathway framework that actually promoted that as far as possible? Coupled with standards for accountability as well, real change could be achieved. It creates both a mechanism and a context for improvement.

 

But then the issue is raised of whether this could be used as a stick to beat us with, and we are back to the start again. Essentially I think the above is what Gove wants for teachers, and the stick-beating argument is being raised by the interviewers (and many teachers) as well. Ultimately it will always depend on the implementation, but I don't think the idea alone of having those standards is a bad one in principle.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Ephelyon

[Flatpackhamster]

Thing is, that argument falls flat on its face when you compare it to the other policies this government introduced into the education sector. Such as unqualified teachers being allowed in free schools and academies.

 

So, on one hand they're saying the army of 'cheap labour' are unqualified to teach and don't help anyone, but on the other hand they're saying unqualified people are ok to teach kids.

 

Prep and public schools also allow 'unqualified' teachers. All 'unqualified' means is they don't have a PGCE. Doesn't mean they can't do the job or they aren't educated.

 

As far as I'm concerned, TAs are worth every penny they get paid. The job they do is important from an 'SEN' stand point but also from a 'letting the teacher teach' standpoint. Examples of this would be if you have a disruptive child in a class. If there's no TA, that disruptive child can knock a good 10 minutes from a lesson's teaching time. If there is a TA, that TA can deal with it, reducing the disruption to teaching.

 

Depends on the school environment. If the TA is dealing with that sort of issue, fine. I think Gove's concern is that they aren't dealing with that, and they're taking on half or whole classes.

 

The idea of 'inclusive' education is the problem in my mind. If a child has specialist needs, they should be taught in a specialist environment. The idea that they can be 'fixed' by putting them in a normal school is nonsense, and has been shown by a complete lack of improvement by including them in mainstream schools. Its damaging to the children in question, and to those around them, as more effort is put into them than the mainstream children.

 

Inclusion is an article of faith now, and if you oppose it then you're basically an evil racialist disabled-hater.