Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 October 2005 00:04:14
The Government, in their great wisdom, has decided that a restructuring of school heirarchy is necessary. Many feel that this is because teachers made a fuss about not wasting time doing jobs that others can do, but that take away valuable time from doing things that teachers should be doing - like teaching. The Government has done this by saying "No more management responsibilities, now you have teaching and learning responsibilites". OK, fair enough, this means that teachers shouldn't be doing administrative and clerical tasks. Except that some schools have looked at it as a way to get rid of the positions you can work towards before you can run a department. The sort of positions that give teachers an incentive to do all the extra things they do, perhaps thinking "Maybe then one day I will be able to take a step up the ladder towards the head of department role". They have removed the jobs that enable people who run a large faculty to delegate, knowing that it is fair to do so because their colleague is getting paid for it. An example would include arranging all the special needs maths for the department, so running catch up clubs, producing work suitable for this ability, and generally catering for an increasingly large sector of the school. Now that position will cease to exist and the responsibility will return to the head of department, or any mug that will take such a thing on on a school wide basis rather than just for their own classes without getting paid.
Apparently many schools are 'assimilating', meaning transferring people from the old system into the new, not cutting back on positions with points, just moving over to the new system. We aren't doing that, we're scrapping all the 'in between' positions and going with heads of department only. That's it. I'm a head of department, it doesn't affect me in direct terms but I think it's really bad that plenty of people are losing their points or don't stand the chance of getting any points until someone finally gives up their higher position.
Staff morale is low, very low, this is not good.