Remove bad teachers?

"Sub-standard teachers should be removed from schools to make way for better colleagues, a key government education adviser has suggested.

"Sir Cyril Taylor said there were about 17,000 "poor" teachers in England. "(BBC)

On the other hand...

"Teacher Frances Gilbert said problems they had to deal with included parents unwilling to accept the disciplining of their child, government paperwork, and head teachers who would not back them up."(BBC)

However while there is unlikely to be agreement about who is to blame, there are some areas against which a teacher's ability may be more easily assessed:

"'Obvious' weaknesses, such as not knowing enough about their subject or being unable to keep control of a class..."(BBC)

So what is this discussion all about? We know the UK has some of the worse qualification stats for adults, we know many students leave the school system with few or no qualifications. But this does seem to be one attempt at placing a large part of the blame on poor teachers.

Sure there are good teachers and bad teachers, but this suggestion from the "key education adviser" misses some other important points - such as the number of teachers leaving the profession because they are "burned out" - such as broken homes - such as poor parenting - such as expulsion/exclusion targets.

It's easy to go teacher bashing, but this is becoming a worrying trend. In fact the problem is not that simple. Yes lets look at the impact of poor teachers, but lets also look at the impact of increasing discipline, of holding parents responsible for their children's behaviour, of holding students themselves responsible for their own learning. This will take a whole society approach, and is much more complex than removing poor teachers.

HAVE YOUR SAY - read what teachers and the public have to say on the issue >