RTE frontline show: Teachers good ,bad ,indifferent?
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I didn't see the programme but as this is my first year to have a child going to school I am surprised at the amount of holidays they receive. This is not an anti-teacher rant. I just think in this day and age when both partners in a couple work, the amount of time the kids are off doesn't help.
In our school, they have two mid terms (one week each) and two weeks off at christmas and easter. That's 6 weeks off not including the sumer holidays. I would like to see 2 or 3 weeks knocked off that.
In our school, they have two mid terms (one week each) and two weeks off at christmas and easter. That's 6 weeks off not including the sumer holidays. I would like to see 2 or 3 weeks knocked off that.
In fairness, teachers aren't there to babysit the kids for working parents. If you feel the school year is too short for the children then that's a fair point, but not the fact that school holidays are inconvenient for childminding arrangements
R
RoyRover
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According to Wikipedia:
"The academic term [in Ireland] usually lasts for a minimum of 183 days in primary schools and about 168 days in secondary schools."
This puts our school year well behind many emerging economies.
What amazes me is the number of half-days my kids get, completely unannounced, and the school expects hardworking parents to pick up the slack from them.
As for accountability, I think what Pat (sort of) showed was that teachers are virtually unaccountable.
A great teacher should be paid very well indeed, but the unions constantly kick and scream against any form of open performance related pay.
Sad for both the good teachers, and for the students of poor teachers. And, as so often in Ireland, it is the hard pressed private sector worker and the small businessman who is left to foot the bill.
Any one remember Sen Joe O'Toole and his sneering attitude towards taxpayers?
"The academic term [in Ireland] usually lasts for a minimum of 183 days in primary schools and about 168 days in secondary schools."
This puts our school year well behind many emerging economies.
What amazes me is the number of half-days my kids get, completely unannounced, and the school expects hardworking parents to pick up the slack from them.
As for accountability, I think what Pat (sort of) showed was that teachers are virtually unaccountable.
A great teacher should be paid very well indeed, but the unions constantly kick and scream against any form of open performance related pay.
Sad for both the good teachers, and for the students of poor teachers. And, as so often in Ireland, it is the hard pressed private sector worker and the small businessman who is left to foot the bill.
Any one remember Sen Joe O'Toole and his sneering attitude towards taxpayers?
Technically no. The taxes that publicly employed people pay come from the tax pool in the first place. This means that from an accounting point of view they do not increase the tax pool.
I had this discussion with a teacher a while back, who said it would be impossible to make fair judgments because classes can be so different. Where I agree is that you cannot base teachers performance simply on average class performance. But this does not mean that a school principle cannot grade a teachers performance taking into account the difficulty of the class.
The company I work for reviews my performance every quarter. This review takes into account the complexity of the project, the experience of colleagues and how cooperative other project teams are. It is largely subjective, and I have to make my case at review time, but this does not mean that outside influenced beyond my control necessarily have an impact on my review. I simply do not see why this would not be possible for teachers, resulting in performance based pay.
But in reality, Yes, we pay taxes.
What I was talking about here was situations where unions (for teachers or others) come in and protect a worker who is quite clearly not fit for the job and is as much a source of annoyance to their colleagues as to management. It undermines everyone and the whole concept of unions.
I haven't the link but it was reported recently that we have fallen behind in education, particularly maths and reading so having children in school and extra couple of weeks a year can only be a good thing IMO. Certainly 4 one week breaks on top of the 9 weeks summer holidays is plenty for primary schools.
The fact remains, there are many families that have both parents working compared to 20 or 30 years ago. I don't see what's wrong with reforming the school year if it benefits both children and parents.
No problem with it being reformed for the benefit of children and I would definitely think our secondary school summer holidays are way way too long.
I would have a problem with children being kept in school longer than necessary simply to save parents the cost and hassle of childminders. That is not the school's problem.
I would have a problem with children being kept in school longer than necessary simply to save parents the cost and hassle of childminders. That is not the school's problem.
Thats true but you rarely see the point made the other way i.e. that increases in taxes also reduces the net cost of the public sector wage bill.
This is one of the big failures by the public sector unions IMO. At the start of this crisis everyone was talking about a wage bill of 20 billion. The pension levy, pay cut, income levy, increase in tax and universal social charges must have saved the net cost of the PS wage bill by billions.
The unions should be able to find out what the net cost of the PS wage bill is to the exchequer after all taxes and prsi are taken out. I suspect it would be significantly less than the social welfare bill yet it receives most of the focus.
You could say the same about all employees of private sector companies who rely on state contracts/funding so its an irrelevent argument.
I do agree that teachers can be performance reviewed. And there are some instances whereby the performance is clearly below par - such as those teachers who are frequently late for work, absent for work for frivilous reasons etc. Most schools have a couple of teachers who seem to be always out or late.
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It's very hard to take lecturing about value for money or extended holidays from Pat Kenny or Marian Finucane or any of the other RTE heads. Pots and black kettles spring to mind.
Whilst I wouln't condone the use of sites like ratemyteacher for official teacher performance reviews, I had a look at my own school recently. Interesting to note that the good teachers we had then were rated highly still and the poor ones rated poorly. It is circa 17 years since I attended the school so the teachers don't have appeared to have changed much. Perhaps the real customers here (the pupils) should have some say in the performance review?
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I read something about this happening as part of the Dept's inspections now - not sure if it was a pilot or for all inspections.
Sounds good. There would be obvious difficulties with some pupils having favourite teachers and others they can't stand, but if the sample was large enough and the questions very clear it could be good.
I have tried twice to watch the show on the RTE website but it cuts out after 15 minutes.
Both ex-students they spoke to said they felt their education was excellent but one did point out there needed to be some kind of teacher assessment and unfortunately the headteachers do not seem to have that kind of authority.
It was interesting when they were talking about teaching of Maths. My son has always loved maths and it was his strongest subject until he got into 3rd year when his grades dived and he said he hated it. After meeting his teacher we understood why. She was a nightmare. Our first encounter with her was when we were at the school on a separate matter and she started screeching at us in the reception area, that our son was not working hard enough, was going to be a failure etc. We later found out that this was a common practice for her, to humiliate students and parents publicly, there were numerous complaints about her attitude and teaching standards, yet there seemed to be no way of sanctioning her. She is still there, still hearing the same complaints about her.
It's a huge shame, that as my son approaches the end of his state education she is the only example of a truly bad teacher I have seen yet it seems she will be there until she retires. We know a couple of teachers at the school socially and they too despair of her.
Despite this my son is doing well in HC Maths and was able to put it behind him.
Both ex-students they spoke to said they felt their education was excellent but one did point out there needed to be some kind of teacher assessment and unfortunately the headteachers do not seem to have that kind of authority.
It was interesting when they were talking about teaching of Maths. My son has always loved maths and it was his strongest subject until he got into 3rd year when his grades dived and he said he hated it. After meeting his teacher we understood why. She was a nightmare. Our first encounter with her was when we were at the school on a separate matter and she started screeching at us in the reception area, that our son was not working hard enough, was going to be a failure etc. We later found out that this was a common practice for her, to humiliate students and parents publicly, there were numerous complaints about her attitude and teaching standards, yet there seemed to be no way of sanctioning her. She is still there, still hearing the same complaints about her.
It's a huge shame, that as my son approaches the end of his state education she is the only example of a truly bad teacher I have seen yet it seems she will be there until she retires. We know a couple of teachers at the school socially and they too despair of her.
Despite this my son is doing well in HC Maths and was able to put it behind him.
Lex Foutish
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What amazes me, Roy, is that nobody picked you up on the bold print in your quote above. It's absolutely daft to suggest that any school can, at the drop of a hat, grant kids a half day without informing parents in advance. Wouldn't the school have a duty of care and have to supervise the children who weren't collected by their parents? Couldn't they be sued if anything happened to the kids on their way home before official school closing time, if parents hadn't been informed? I couldn't see any school leaving themselves open to that.
How many un-announced half days have your kids had so far this year? Sonds like they've had quite a few! I certainly wouldn't accept such carry on from my children's schools. If it did happen, I'd go straight to the board of management or the Dept. of Education. And I think I'd move them to another school.
And can you remind us about what Sen. Joe O' Toole did or said. I can't recall. I do remember the ATM machine comment and Morning Ireland having to abandon an interview with him after the interviewer couldn't stop laughing when Sen. O' Toole said that some cost saving exercise, that the Dept. of Education was engaged in, was like a car owner selling the spare wheel to buy petrol.
Yes, [broken link removed] came out a few weeks ago. Apparently the Department of Education are looking at curriculum overload and thinking about a change of emphasis, in favour of maths, literacy and science.
Thankfully, The Depths was never a place for sweeping statements!
I reckon that an awful lot of teachers will be doing 3 or 4 hours of P.E. every day, Firefly, to the detriment of theorems, Peig, Shakespeare and the conjugation of Latin verbs......... not to mention cutting back drastically on the old homework!
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