No you're honestly not being offensive mate, that's not how you're coming across at all. As a parent, as a citizen in this country, you have every right to question the education process and I respect that you are. I never have an issue with that, parents who don't do that are the bane of my life, some just aren't bothered. I'm sorry you feel let down as there are bad apples and they NEED to be rooted out as it reflects on all of us. Mate, I've got no problem with anything you've said. I've liked some of your posts and I've ended up only really responding to the bits i wanted to debate and not really commenting on the bits I agreed on, and there were bits! ps. I think I'm above average, but then again doesn't everyone? Surely no-one wakes up in the morning and aims to be below average. I'm not amazing or anything, I've seen some amazing teaching and I just couldn't commit to that consistently, it must be draining.
Thanks mate. I may edit that jobs post as reading it back it sounds very OTT, it's all true but in hindsight it's a touch arsey to actually list them
My beef, with the original article, had nothing to do with the Teaching Profession specifically. They are not the ones who have proposed this draconian increase, It's a Local Authority who intend to do it and if they get away with it you can bet you house on it that others will follow. And I doubt that there will be many who will see this as an Educational step so much as a revenue opportunity. This is why I suggested a reciprocal right for parents. And though striking teachers were mentioned, this is by no means the only thing that gets schools to close. There's nothing we can do about Health & Safety Rules, but for example, leaking roof's and broken central heating are the result of Local Authorities failure to maintain of the school buildings. In the current economic climate I have some sympathy with them. But if their idea of a solution is to go for the parents then at least give the parents the chance to fight back. I like the idea of us mere peasants being able to get back at politicians, local or national. After all, we peasants, in England, have been revolting for over six hundred years. It's helped to keep 'them up there' on their toes and in their proper place.
As I understand it (and I'm sure Haslam can confirm if I'm right or wrong) it's actually the individual headteacher who is responsible for maintenance of the school building. But that's a different point. It seems to me, looking at the figures quoted in the remainder of the article that you provided the link to, that Lancs CC consider that they have a particular problem with unauthorised absences. When those unauthorised absences are having a negative impact on the OFSTED ratings of their schools or causing those schools to be levied with fines, I think its understandable that the local authority are trying to come down hard on those unauthorised absences. The real villains here are the holiday companies who see the school holidays almost as a licence to print money by cranking their prices up. But, while its a bitter pill to swallow, parents also have to realise that this is a reciprocal arrangement; their kids are getting a level of education, better than that available in most of the world, essentially for free (yeah, taxpayers' money blah, blah), so play the game and don't make conditions harder for the schools and those that work there.
Literally just don’t go on holiday for 1 year prices would be halved the following year they should stop blaming everybody else and get off their arses and do something.
To be honest my knowledge of school finance is pretty limited, I don't have to get involved with it and mostly avoid it. I like teaching so I have little ambition to climb the ladder as you end up doing very little of the actual job and money is little to no motivation to me. What I would say - and apologies for the tangent - is that most secondary schools (and I mean most as in more than 50%) in my area (around 30 secondary schools) have made redundancies of teaching staff in the past few years due to budget pressures. I suspect it's the same nationally but the figures are oddly hard to find and the press don't seem very interested. What is known is that the number of lessons being taught by non-qualified people has been on the rise for the past 5-10 years, especially in London. Cost-cutting left, right and centre is the order of the day and you very much get what you pay for!
Most of what you say there sounds familiar. I'm not sure that levying heftier fines for absences would make much difference to overall budgets though. I'm surprised at the number of redundancies. From what I hear, teachers are in short supply although I imagine there might be a lot of difference between primary and secondary requirements.
I don't know what happens to the fines but the amount of shortfall of most schools budgets that I know of is in excess of the 100k mark so it's a drop in the ocean. There is a general shortage of teachers in the country because the student numbers have risen but it depends on what people teach. The main shortages are Maths, Science and languages. Sadly many other subjects have been cut back by schools who worry more about the 5 GCSE's with maths and English than a rounded education so music teachers, PE, computing, art, etc tend to just be cut back further as its cheaper to offer a narrow curriculum and fill in the gaps with Teaching Assistants (who are generally very good but get paid not much over minimum wage and only for being in school so all lesson planning, marking, parents evenings, etc they do they are doing for free in their spare time - they would be financially better off to go work in a minimum wage job where they get paid per hour), it's a total abuse of goodwill.
You ever seen the Film ....IF ? Malcolm McDowell ? Sums it all up x (only joking but watch it if you haven't )
