25th March 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
I’ve been forced to check Facebook more often recently because friends were getting annoyed at my absence from events they had organised. I’ve finally come to accept that the problem is mine, and I have to change with the times. Anyway, to get to the point, on Facebook I saw that a teacher friend of mine had posted a link from the NUT in opposition to Michael Gove’s education reforms for teachers. It laid out the proposed changes, and followed each with a criticism, postulating a bad outcome. I’ve said before that I’m generally in favour of what Gove has been trying to do for education, although I’m by no means a Tory, and, after reading the list of reforms, it all seems very sensible to me.
The essence of the reforms is to introduce performance related pay. One point is that teachers shouldn’t be guaranteed to improve their pay scale based on experience; the reforms state that young teachers who are doing well should be rewarded for that, even if an older, more experienced colleague isn’t. As far as I’m concerned that’s absolutely brilliant. It’s an easy thing for me to say as a tutor who can negotiate my pay, and I’m in a situation where tutoring a student well can lead to a recommendation and a higher rate of pay. However, lots of the schoolteachers I know feel exactly the same way; most of them would love the opportunity to be paid more and promoted more quickly without their head teacher first having to check the number in the age column.
I find it disappointing that the NUT again seem more concerned with preserving the education system than supporting something which could improve it. I understand that any union has to represent its members, but if I were a member of the NUT, I would be trying to improve the standard of teaching, and not desperately trying to maintain an existing system which doesn’t seem to be working.