Jayne Dowle: Classroom toll of the teachers who don't make the grade

Only 18 teachers have been dismissed from the profession for

incompetence in 40 years, according to research for a BBC Panorama programme. This is despite the General Teaching Council's own admission that there could be up to 17,000 substandard teachers in our children's classrooms.

By my rough reckoning, and I had some pretty ropey maths teachers myself, that means at least 16,982 are still out there.

If this wasn't bad enough, the outgoing chair of Ofsted, Zenna Atkins, has now made the astonishing assertion that every school should have a "pretty naff" teacher, so children learn how to exercise their own authority. I don't know about you, but I'm praying for the summer holidays so I don't have to think too much about the frightening mess our education system is in.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any crazier, a woman supposedly in charge of ensuring that our schools reach the highest standards actually comes out defending the failures who teach our children. We're talking about kids here, whom we deliver trustingly at the school gates every morning in the hope that they will learn something in a safe and supportive environment. I teach too, at university level, so I know only too well that the sternest critics are those in front of you. But how can my four-year-old daughter, starting her first year of "proper school" in September, exercise her authority? She can't complain, because she won't understand what is happening, or have the words to express her dissatisfaction.

The only thing she might do is to become part of a class which doesn't co-operate, a class which might send the teacher spiralling out of control. And then, you've guessed it, that teacher can't cope and goes off work with "stress". I wonder if the GTC have done any research into the number of teachers languishing at home on sick leave while their pupils are shoved from pillar to post with a constantly-changing parade of supply teachers. Too many people enter teaching because they think it is going to be an easy ride. Long holidays, no shifts, no sales targets… on the face of it, teaching still looks like a relatively decent career. But the best teachers are in a classroom because they are driven by a genuine vocation to educate and inspire.

Not everyone is cut out for it. I have friends in high-powered jobs, happy to speak at conferences in front of hundreds of people, who shake their heads and say that never in a million years would they stand in front of a class. So why do teachers stick it out even when they know it is going wrong?

Let's be honest here. They blame the kids and know that they are protected. An underperforming teacher is propped up by the system all the way along. This makes a mockery of the serious measures which may be taken against a school deemed to be officially "failing". In extremis, schools can be closed down, but the teachers who contributed to the failure simply move on elsewhere. Even if a teacher is proven to be inept, no-one in authority is ever brave enough to sack them in case it causes a stink with the teaching unions.

Even if the head knows there is a problem, he or she is more likely to move them around the school than get rid. And, even if a parent

complains about a teacher, you can guarantee that the head will first and foremost defend their member of staff, because it is a poor reflection on the school itself. The result is all those professional and competent teachers being tarred with the same brush. No wonder morale in the profession is at rock bottom.

Apparently, Education Secretary Michael Gove is abolishing the General Teaching Council, a body which is supposed to monitor the performance of teaching staff. And to be honest, if all it has achieved in the 10 years of its existence is to prop up protection for poor teachers, then it is probably a saving worth making.

This puts the onus on us, as parents, to stand up and shout when a teacher fails our child, not to fobbed off with excuses and never, ever take no for an answer. It is true that a child never forgets a good teacher. But it is also true that all of us – children, parents, and teaching colleagues – will remember a bad one for ever.