Jayne Dowle: There’s plenty to learn about poor teaching

I am not sure where she gets this from, but as a parent, I would beg to differ. If a teacher is losing control of the kids, failing to get them through important tests, or taking so much time off ill that the parade of supply teachers is beginning to blur, parents will have something to say.

Now, I know that parents will always find something to complain about. And it is important to differentiate between school gate tittle tattle and serious endemic issues about particular individuals in a school.

What I do know is that when I have come across a problem with a teacher, I don’t think I have ever seen one case where the parents are happy with the way the matter is being handled. And it is always to do with the process. It can take years to tackle the matter, and even then, progress is likely to be protracted with stalling tactics; vital papers will be misplaced, meetings with union reps will be postponed and then the teacher will go off on long-term sick.

Meanwhile, it is the children who suffer – doubly. Not only have they had to put with an inadequate teacher, they will end up being shoved from pillar to post while the matter is resolved. Put simply, we cannot allow any child to lose a year of their academic life like this.

What parents always want is swift action. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that a teacher is letting your child down, and being powerless to do anything about it.

Under the current procedure, it seems that the system is stacked heavily in favour of protecting the errant member of staff. And this is why I support Michael Gove’s new proposals to make it possible to remove failing teachers after just one term.

I know that the unions are calling it a bullies’ charter. And, because I have lots of friends who are teachers, I am sensitive to their point of view. You wouldn’t wish such close scrutiny of your professional capabilities on anyone.

But I teach too, at a university, so I have some understanding of the situation from both sides. And what astounds me about the unions’ attitude is that anybody who teaches knows how soul-destroying it is to work alongside someone blatantly not up to the job. You end up doing their work for them, covering their classes when they don’t turn up and having to make excuses which the kids know are lies, which doesn’t do your own credibility much good.

And let’s not pretend otherwise, when a member of staff is on the rack, the gossip in the staff room has to be witnessed to be believed. So don’t be fooled. This holier-than-thou attitude from union leaders needs some serious challenging.

But then again, you can understand where it comes from. Sorry to be blunt, but too many teachers think that theirs is a sainted profession. Clearly, they work harder than anybody else, endure more pressure and put up with more hassle. You think parents moan. You have never heard a bunch of teachers on a roll.

Soldiers? Firefighters? Frontline hospital staff? Their jobs are easy compared to dealing with Year 9 on a Tuesday afternoon. Certain teachers believe therefore that their rights are unassailable, and that no-one has a right to question their moral authority. Never mind if their primary school is in special measures, or less than half the students in their comprehensive fail to achieve five passes at GCSE – it is never their fault.

Well, it is about time that some of them accepted that it is their fault. Official figures suggest that only 17 teachers in England have been sacked for incompetence and prevented from taking another teaching post in the past decade. You are not telling me that there have only been 17 incompetent teachers across all our schools.

Any union official who believes this to be the case is dangerously deluded. And rather than defend those who drag down the rest of the profession, they should be rooting them out and advising them to accept their limits and seek another career.

So I applaud Michael Gove’s tough stance on this one, and I particularly applaud his determination to tackle the culture which allows a teacher who has made a hash of things in one school to be taken on by another, few questions asked. If the unions think that parents aren’t wise to this kind of recycling, well, we are.

I also applaud the Education Secretary’s determination to give head-teachers more responsibility to tackle what is happening in their own establishments. I can only hope now that headteachers embrace this opportunity and don’t retreat into the typical fall-back position of refusing to take a controversial decision because, “it looks bad on the school”.

Believe me, nothing reflects more poorly on a school than a load of parents moaning at the gate about a bad teacher.