Reblogged from Miss Smith’s Splogs blog (@HeyMissSmith)
I must be one of the very few people in the known universe (tweacherverse) who is not leaping up and down right now at the thought of The Royal College of Teaching.
To be perfectly honest over the last few weeks I’ve been hoping it would go away. However, it has become abundantly clear that, like PRP, this little scheme is going nowhere. So today I researched a bit. The sources I went to, answered my questions of course, but me, being me, didn’t believe a word of it.
I am left with these questions:
What is it for? I mean really for?
Who will get funded to waltz off to its hallowed grounds?
Who is going to be running the thing?
What actually is it for? (Yes I know I wrote that twice).
Now, amongst all the spiel was some information, and amongst that, a hint of the truth.There is an all too familiar recent war cry resounding through this initiative; It is this:
“Teachers! Carpe diem! A golden moment of opportunity is before you!”
I yawned a little; It was a tired, irritated, little yawn.
This is what the Royal College of Distraction is really saying: The union addled teaching profession has lost its way; it has no idea about what methods work; no one takes teachers seriously; It’s time to sit up and show everyone how professional, how scientific how logicaland evidenced based it is.
Except we teachers haven’t lost our way. Most teachers just want to get on with their jobs without constantly being told they are failing children. The public do still take us seriously, despite the government’s best efforts to undermine and humiliate us. Experienced teachers don’t desperately need retraining. However lots of us would love to go back ten years and receive the kind of quality, local, relevant CPD, that our LEAs used to provide.
The RCoT is merely a milk bottle top glimmering in the sun, distracting us from the very REAL fight teachers have to retain any semblance of our hard fought for pay and conditions document. It is trying to make us forget the free market privateers who are seizing hold of our schools. It may stop us shouting so loudly that children should have a right to taught by qualified teachers.
The problems that propounders of the RCoT cite, like the solutions, have been made up, and made up by the same mythologising, twisting, propaganda machine, which is intent on actually deprofessionalising teachers.
And although there is lots of talk about it not being an arm of the government…
Let’s see who ends up being in charge.
Let’s wait and see who gets funded for sabbaticals out of school.
Let’s wait and see what the research it funds is used to prove.
Let’s wait…
I’m with you, it’s all smoke and mirrors.