NEWS FOCUS SecEd: On Your Side


Questions over teacher regulation


It has been one year since the coalition government announced the scrapping of the General teaching Council for England (GtCE). the news on June 2 last year


Pete


Henshaw Editor SecEd


was cheered by many teachers across England who perhaps see the GtCE as a mysterious organisation that they never have any dealings with other than that £36.50 fee. however, with the Education Bill making steady


progress through Parliament, the GtCE’s demise in March 2012 is moving ever closer. In the Bill, education minister Michael Gove is to


take over responsibility for teacher regulation fromapril 2012. the big question continues to be how Mr Gove will perform his new duties. the Education White Paper set out plans for a new


teaching agency which the government has since said it would delegate regulatory responsibilities to.a statement put before the Parliamentary committee scrutinising the Bill also set out a system of filtering teacher referrals from the public, schools, police and the Independent safeguardingauthority, and of conducting public hearings for appropriate cases. a consultation is promised on these proposals and one


of the main questions it will need to tackle is the fact that Mr Gove and his new agency will only have one sanction available to them – that of banning a person from teaching. Currently, the GtCE has a range of sanctions including reprimands, suspensions and prohibitions. so what will happen under Mr Gove’s watch when a


case is not considered serious enough to warrant a hearing and possible banning order, but which under the GtCE would have perhaps resulted in a suspension or a warning? another issue is that headteachers are currently


“required” to refer to the GtCE teachers who are dismissed or who resign before being dismissed (and governing bodies are likewise compelled to refer headteachers). however, the government’s plan is to introduce a “duty to consider” referral only. Research already shows a reluctance in heads to refer teachers, and this will be made worse by removing the duty to refer. a system which has barring as its only sanction and


which has no duty to refer will only pick up the worst cases of teacher incompetence. More minor cases, or cases where teachers merely need a bit of support to help improve their practice, will be swept under the carpet with these teachers being passed from school to school and being recycled through the system. In addition, last year, 676,000 checks on teachers’


registrations were carried out online through the GtCE (answering requests from parents and employers) and it has 568,000 fully registered teachers on its files. But as chair of the GtCE Gail Mortimer says in her


article for SecEd this week (see page 7), it appears that there is no intention to maintain such comprehensive professional registration, with the only list Mr Gove will keep being those who are barred. Ms Mortimer has some serious questions about this and her article is worth reading. Fundamentally, I believe that the closure of the GtCE


does not save enough money to be warranted and the costs in time and money of the extensive two-year handover process will be high. I also believe that Mr Gove will slowly discover that having a system which only bars teachers is not workable. he will need more sanctions and this will mean more hearings and more cost. I also think that he may be persuaded to keep the register too. In fact, I believe that we will see much of the GtCE


operation kept intact, just in a new building with a new name, and this will beg the question: why did we scrap the GtCE in the first place? I agree that the wider CPD work of the GtCE was unnecessary, as good as it was. But I also know that the GtCE was happy to reform its work and focus on its core duties, but that Mr Gove never gave them a chance to put their case. If he had listened, he would have saved a lot of time, effort, and expense.


• Pete Henshaw is publisher and editor of secEd. Email editor@sec-ed.co.uk or visit www.sec-ed.co.uk. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SecEd_Education


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Pay row divides unions in Scotland


Controversial changes to pay and conditions in Scotland look likely after being backed by the country's biggest teaching


union. Sam Phipps reports on the row that has divided the unions


sCotlanD’s BIGGEst


teaching union may have backed a contentious package of changes to pay and conditions but unrest among the workforce is growing steadily as the implications of the overhaul become clear. the Educational Institute of


scotland (EIs) was the only union to support proposals by council organisation Cosla and the scottish government that include a two-year pay freeze, big pay cuts for supply staff, and lower maternity pay. not only have the two other


main unions, the scottish secondary teachers’ association (ssta) and the nasUWt, started a campaign of opposition to the national agreement but the EIs itself is divided, amid claims that it has “sold members down the river”. although the EIs has some


50,000 members, only 56 per cent of those who voted were in favour of the council package. turn out was just 43 per cent. It means that in effect less than


a quarter of EIs members have officially backed the changes, which include £45 million of cuts, revised down from an original £60 million that the union overwhelmingly rejected. But Ronnie smith, EIs


general secretary, said: “Unlike the nasUWt, the EIs actually balloted its members on both sets of proposals in order to seek teachers’ views in a democratic fashion. the decision taken, by the members and for the members, was to accept the revised proposals.” at the time, the EIs said it was


in favour of the package on the grounds it was the “the best that could be achieved in the current financial climate”, even though it amounted to a cut in overall funding for education.


however, acrimony has risen


markedly since BBC scotland leaked a submission by Cosla to the review of teachers’ terms and conditions that is being carried out by Professor Gerry McCormac, principal of stirling University. the McCormac Review


is intended to bring the 2001 McCrone deal up to date. that was widely credited with bringing in an era of relative industrial harmony among scottish teachers. however, Cosla says the earlier review did not demand enough in terms of pupil attainment. But the submission goes much


further than Cosla’s publicly stated goals, calling for cuts to holidays, an end to the 35-hour week, and changes to job security. Mr smith has called the leaked


proposals “madness” but Jane Peckham, scotland organiser of the nasUWt, questioned why the Cosla/government package had to be determined before McCormac had even reported. his recommendations are not due until september. she told SecEd: “I don’t know


how the EIs can take that stance (of condemning the leaked submission) when they sold their members down the river.” the nasUWt is also seeking


legal advice on how to challenge the “flawed machinery” of the scottishnegotiating Committee for teachers, which approved the deal on the strength of less than a quarter of scottish teachers’ backing. “our view is that just because


it was the best deal on the table doesn’t make it an acceptable deal,” Ms Peckham said. like many unions, including the


EIs, the nasUWt is campaigning for a “Robinhood” tax on financial transactions. this would avoid


IN RESPONSE…


An awarding body faced huge backlash last week after maths students were given an impossible question in an exam. OCR has apologised for the


question in an AS level maths paper taken by 6,790 students and has promised that they will not be disadvantaged. It has also launched a review of its quality control procedures. Angry students, some


fearing the mistake will cost them a place at university, have since flooded online forums calling for a chance to re-sit the paper. The question asked students


SecEd


to find the shortest route to walk along a series of tracks, starting and ending at the same point. The length was supposed to be equal to an equation set out in the paper, but OCR failed to calculate the length properly.


The candidates: “Even if you remove the question, most people will still not achieve the grade they deserve. I spent 20 minutes on that question (as it was worth the most marks) and had to rush everything else. I really need to get ana and now I am scared I won’t even get a B.”


“I looked at that question for at least 15 to 20 minutes, trying to figure out why it wasn’t working for me. If I had known what the problems were with that question, I would have ignored it immediately, but like most people out there, I attempted it and got nowhere.”


“Manya level students may be relying on the result of this exam to secure a place at university this year, which is obviously crucial (because of the) £9,000 tuition fees that will be introduced next year. I find it appalling that


examination boards do not have stricter procedures in place to prevent these kinds of situations from taking place. Many claim thata levels are getting easier, well they are certainly not if we are now given impossible questions.”


“I believe that there is no other fair solution, except for offering an immediate re-sit to those who are worried about how well they’ve done.”


“this has caused distress, confusion and frustration to many students who took this exam. Many people wasted time trying to achieve the ‘impossible’ answer which could have been better spent attempting other questions, while others may have crossed out correct answers as they did not match the given answers.”


The exam board: “We very much regret that there was a mistake and that our quality assurance procedures failed to identify this error. We would like to assure teachers, parents and students that we have several measures in place to ensure that candidates are not unfairly disadvantaged. Because we have been alerted to this so early, we are able to take this error into account when marking the paper. We will also take it into


account when setting the grade boundaries. We have sent a letter to all schools and colleges explaining in more detail what we shall do. to help us understand how this occurred and to minimise the chance of such an error happening again, we will be undertaking a thorough review of our quality assurance procedures.”


the need for swingeing cuts to the public sector, it argues. “to deliberately target these


specific changes to conditions when we’ve already got a review of the whole terms and conditions under McCormac just seems ludicrous,” Ms Peckham added. More than 200 members have


flocked to the nasUWt in the last few weeks as a direct result of the EIs vote, she said, but added that a collegiate approach between the unions would continue to serve their interests best. ssta president Peter Wright


has also condemned the Cosla deal, in particular the pay cut for supply teachers and proposed scrapping of the chartered teachers scheme. Cosla also wants to end


protected time for marking and preparation and to introduce fixed- term contracts for promoted staff such as principal teachers and headteachers, instead of permanent contracts. the Cosla document says:


“there is a sense ... the (McCrone) teachers’ agreement ... perhaps failed to more clearly set out the returns expected for pupils, employers and wider society. therefore, while we have gained 10 years of relative harmonious industrial relations, the impact of the agreement on children’s achievement and attainment is less clear-cut. “We strongly believe there is too much emphasis on counting hours.


Demarking time into modules of marking and preparation, assessment and reporting, professional meetings, parents meetings and so forth is unhelpful and restrictive.” ann Ballinger, general secretary


of the ssta, pointed to the bizarre suggestion in the Cosla submission that the primary role of teachers “should no longer be to teach”. “large parts of this are complete


nonsense and will make teachers very angry,” she said. David Kennedy, Cosla head of


communications, said: “all they are is proposals. We need to look at everything in the current situation. It’s not anti-teacher or anything, it’s just that we are asking everyone to take a share (of the financial pain).” however, more conflict looks


likely in the coming months. “It is clear that scotland’s


teachers are reaching the limit of their tolerance towards constant political attacks on scotland’s education system and its teacher workforce,” said Mr smith. “their employers must recognise


that a line needs to be drawn, that teachers and lecturers have taken their share of the pain for the country’s financial woes, and that any further attacks on education or teaching professionals will be strongly resisted.”


SecEd


• Sam Phipps is a freelance education journalist.


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SecEd • June 9 2011


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