The teachers’ union, The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), has serious reservations about online publication of details arising from Fitness to Teach disciplinary hearings conducted by the profession’s regulatory body, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS).
While those reservations are understandable, similar arrangements exist for other professions. The General Medical Council (GMC) publishes details and outcomes of Fitness to Practice hearings. The Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Scottish Solicitors’ Disciplinary Panel do likewise. Teachers are not singled out for uniquely harsh treatment.
Certainly, there is a narrow line between transparency and legitimate public interest on one hand and prurient publicity and reporting on the other. However, the dialogue between the GTCS and the EIS on post-hearing publicity raises a more general issue: namely the rights of parents to be better informed about the quality of teaching that takes place in individual classrooms.
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This is the aspect of school life that is of most interest to parents. There is widespread agreement that the skill and commitment of individual teachers is the thing that makes most difference to youngsters’ enthusiasm, learning and achievements. Yet, parents often have to make do with tea-table and school-gate gossip to build up a picture, not always accurate, of what goes on in their children’s classrooms.
Parents are well aware that marked variations in teaching quality can exist within the same school. Eavesdropping on parental conversations when teachers are being allocated to classes for the following year, particularly in primaries, can be most revealing.
Schools, councils and Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Education (HMIE) are responsible for monitoring and improving the quality of learning and teaching. What is less certain is the difference they make to classroom practice and how far their undiluted findings are shared with parents. Teachers have become more skilled at evaluating their work and that of their colleagues. Yet how objective is that process? How easy is it to tell a colleague that he or she needs to up his or her game?
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Similarly, councils routinely evaluate schools’ performance but it’s doubtful if they concentrate on where it really matters: the classroom. It’s even more doubtful if the outcome of any classroom observation is shared with parents. If the process was effective and meaningful, youngsters would not be let down by the same teachers year after year. And it happens.
Formerly, HMIE post-inspection reports provided parents with detailed snapshots of their children’s schools. Today’s reports are shadows of their former selves. A parent I spoke with had just read the inspection report for his daughter’s school. To put it mildly, he was unimpressed and felt strongly it told him nothing about what he really needed to know.
Naming and shaming has no place in any walk of life. If your joiner botches the job you know straight away and you go elsewhere next time. It’s not so easy to find out if your child’s teacher is botching the job or to take your custom elsewhere. Perhaps it should be.
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