Good on this bloke. He pays his taxes and his daughter can't even have a qualified teacher. It is nothing out of the ordinary and I should know; having taught subjects for weeks on end that I didn't even have an O Level in.
There are thousands and thousands of parents in a similar position to Mr Tierney. It will be interesting to see how his case turns out.
ps I have now managed to fix the link above.
8 comments:
404 error from that link, it seems to have been truncated. Try http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2200022/Father-in-Scotland-sues-school-over-%27missing%27-English-teacher.html
I see his point but I'm not entirely sure suing the council is going to be productive. If he wins then that will set the precedent and therefore all parents would be able to claim expenses for a lack qualified teachers. Can we really afford to start dishing out money because we have a shortage of skilled professionals?
I'm glad to see Mr Tierney takes education seriously but the parents and employers need to realise that if they want a decent education system they need to willing to pay more for it. They also need to take an active interest in their students/future employees and accept some responsibility for their education. They need to give teachers far more respect and support especially when dealing with disruptive students. Finally they should actually have so faith that those in the educational sector actually know what they’re doing (well most of us).
It really needs to be the responsibility of the school to only hire qualified staff. My school has the unfortunate habit of hiring teachers towards the end of the summer, when most of the great ones have already been snapped up by other schools so we end up with the freaks no one else wanted or else really nice people who simply aren't qualified in the area they're asked to teach. They "emergency certify" them and then hope they get their qualifications in the mean time. That pisses me off when they hire another special ed teacher and let him do the same job I do, for the same pay, and he's not even finished college. Makes me feel like college was even more of a waste of time than it already was! (Is that bitterness? Nah.)
But yeah, I wouldn't want people suing left, right, and centre... The school just needs to set their standards higher for their staff as well as their kids.
Standards are SO LOW in our building that no one is even required to record their lesson plans anywhere. I can't believe that. Anyway, I'll shut up now.
I DO want to see schools sued right left and centre. A teaching job I used to do is now being done by the woamn who used to be dept technician. In fairness, the job was advertised in good time and they even rang me to see if I'd like to return to teaching (again). They couldn[t get anyone.
This woman is competent, intelligent and has the respect of the kids. She is only teaching Key Stage 3. She'll be a lot better than a rubbish casual suply teacher, or even a good one if his/her subject happens to be Geography.
If the HT hadn't made the school such a crap place for teachers to work (although the Evening Paper displayed the grinning mugshot that accompanied the proud boast that "he'd" improved the GCSE results), they wouldnpt be in the position of having to use completely unqualified staff to teach for a whole year.
But he can't be held to account. Complaints about staff turnover in what is by no means a challenging school pupil-wise to the LA resulted in the square root of sod all. Until HTs are made to account for situations like this, they'll just keep doing it.
The problem is that the result of a school being sued over here is that the students would ultimately suffer the most. Administrators never take on the responsiblity of their own f-ups and it falls on the teachers and ultimately, the kids. Example, we hire as many green teachers as possible to save on money, supposedly, and they've cut our entire tech. department such that their pay will come through the local trade school and yet they're continuing to pay our retired principal $90,000 a year to "advise" our new principal who didn't even meet the miniumum requirements for the job. So we've got sh*t teachers AND sh*t principals who are ultimately being advised by some old bugger who should have retired YEARS ago. No doubt, the district will still cry about not having enough money and continue to punish the kids through crappy teachers and less than mediocre administrators.
I do believe somehow the administrators should be held accountable, but somehow it always manages to screw everyone else royally in the process.
Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. We never strike over here apart from the odd futile day because you've always got the "The Children! Won't anyone think of the children!" brigade refusing to join in. Well what's the worst that can happen? If there were a spate of strikes and suings, and work was missed, exams failed and trips/equipment/suppport staff cancelled, that year group could forever parade their victimhood as The Class Of 09 - let down and betrayed by the very people they should have been able to depend upon yada yada yada.
Ed would probably give them all an allowance to make up for it. But then he would change his mind and waste £1billion raking it all back.
Aaaaarrggghhh.
No doubt you have seen this story ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7481715.stm
Perhaps you could comment for us ?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article4237491.ece
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