Friday 3 July 2009

5 year MOTs for teachers!

The government now wants teachers to have to pass a 'five year MOT' and obtain a licence to go on teaching. What complete nonsense ; presumably it is designed to provide a neat soundbite to appeal to Mr Suburban who thinks teachers do no work and have half the year off on holiday.
The problem with it is simply that it will fail to root out bad teachers. Indeed it is not intended to as the 'MOT' will not be based on outcomes but on passing OFSTED style lesson observations designed to impose a certain style of (often not very effective) teaching and on willingness to embrace technological trends. The government has an ideological agenda to dumb down state education and to churn out gadflies able to zip around from one transient enthusiasm to another while being completely unable to sustain an elongated thought process or cope with lengthy concentration.
The simple way to root out bad teachers is to measure their students' examination results and add on values.

8 comments:

Youth of Australia said...

To quote the Blues Brothers:

It looks like you're up shit creek.

sparacus said...

Not at all.

Youth of Australia said...

So you ARE confident you can pass the exam and get a licence then?

evangelion said...

Don't worry Sparacus, when the Conservatives get in they'll scrap it. Unlike Labour they know all the schools failings these days come from bad parents and an inability to discipline the children who are now practically untouchable.
My sisters a teacher and she's more frightened about the proposed MA requirement to teach. Why is this necessary? Why would an MA be useful teaching Alevel or GCSE when they are so "dumbed down" that they wouldn't even cover 1% a MA would need (I should know I have an MA)

sparacus said...

"So you ARE confident you can pass the exam and get a licence then?"

It wouldn't be decided via an exam.

sparacus said...

"My sisters a teacher and she's more frightened about the proposed MA requirement to teach. Why is this necessary? Why would an MA be useful teaching Alevel or GCSE when they are so "dumbed down" that they wouldn't even cover 1% a MA would need (I should know I have an MA)"

It is another gimmick by the government. I completely agree with your above comment.

Youth of Australia said...

It wouldn't be decided via an exam.

In which case you should worry - that's entirely the scenario you paint in your post. If that's not accurate, you need to rethink how to express concepts to people unless you want to give them the wrong idea.

Which is rather important to a teacher.

Pseudo said...

"Indeed it is not intended to as the 'MOT' will not be based on outcomes but on passing OFSTED style lesson observations designed to impose a certain style of (often not very effective) teaching and on willingness to embrace technological trends."

I'm not sure where you're getting the exam idea from, it seems pretty obvious from the post that the assessment is observation based.