IT is disappointing to read that teachers, in what should be their professional prime at aged 45 plus, are now often seen to be finally hanging up their gowns (“Workload, stress and pay blamed for exodus of teachers”, The Herald , January 13).
The agreement, published exactly 17 years ago this month, titled A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century, following recommendations of the McCrone Report seems to already suffer from obsolescence in several original features it created. The review of the agreement published in 2011 by Prof Gerry McCormac, Advancing Professionalism in Teaching, has seemingly done little in the circumstances to enhance the attractiveness of teaching. I consider that at the very least, teaching will remain viewed by many as weak on articulated management structures for incremental succession planning at school level.
The highly controversial move from secondary school principal teachers, across individual subjects, to that of being responsible for clusters or faculties of subjects meant that in many areas of the curriculum, opportunities for advancement to middle management posts contracted very significantly in scale.
I suspect that many good classroom teachers who were gaining subject experience and confidence at the time of the McCrone agreement, to merit promotion, had their ambitions left to wither on the vine. I imagine the current “exodus” includes many of these staff members who have decided that the vine has proven unworthy of their loyalty.
It is difficult to envisage how the plans of John Swinney, the Scottish Education Secretary, to devolve more power to headteachers will alleviate the situation. What is undoubtedly required before recruitment and retention in the profession becomes critical is a more convincingly independent assessment of the sustainability and relevance in 2018 of the key operational features of school management in Scotland. It may find that in the battle to deliver a Curriculum for Excellence, we have too many generals and not enough sergeants.
Bill Brown,
46 Breadie Drive, Milngavie.
WITH regard to Andrew Denholm’s article (“Quality fears after trainee teachers fail to make grade”, The Herald, January 15), I wonder if another reason for this could be down to some trainee teachers actually filling vacant teaching positions and receiving mentoring from “facility heads” rather than a “departmental head” from their own specialised subject.
Ian Craig,
101 Lethame Road, Strathaven
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