Monday, 13 April 2015

People In Glass Houses…

About seven teaching assistants are expected to be made redundant from Barking Abbey school but Unison branch secretary, Dave Clarke, has insisted savings should be found elsewhere to help pay for the secondary school’s £400,000 deficit.
And does he have a suggestion?
“When you take the special educational needs teachers out what happens is those children are going to feel the difference,” he told the Post.
“The school is making £400,000 savings but the headteacher doesn’t consider making a cut to his own salary.
“I understand about three or four senior staff have had a pay rise too.
“The headteacher should be offering a pay cut and leading by example."
Translation: "The head teacher isn't in MY union. Nor his senior staff."
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5 comments:

  1. proglodyte13 April 2015 at 10:11

    I wonder what proportion of SEN resources are used to help those with language difficulties.

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  2. Macheath13 April 2015 at 10:21

    An interesting conflation; 'teaching assistants' are a completely different animal from 'SEN teachers', the former requiring no formal qualifications beyond competent literacy and numeracy.

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  3. Anonymous13 April 2015 at 12:20

    In the Dark Ages, I spent a gap year working w children deemed "trainable" but ineducable" ie IQ50-75. Using oldfashioned phonics and repetition the only kids who failed to learn to read and write at a useful level were aphasic or classically autistic and mute. Times have changed, all the SENs have been included into mainstream schools, the more easily to bully them, and they merge quite well with the brighter illiterates currently being produced by the system: always good to blame lack of resources rather than methodology and motivation.

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  4. SadButMadLad15 April 2015 at 22:26

    I wonder how much could be saved if they got rid of the "Pilgrims" (union staff with salaries not paid by unions)

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  5. JuliaM3 May 2015 at 07:09

    "I wonder what proportion of SEN resources are used to help those with language difficulties."

    I'd hope 0%..!

    "...the former requiring no formal qualifications beyond competent literacy and numeracy."

    And 'competent' being open to interpretation?

    "I wonder how much could be saved if they got rid of the "Pilgrims" (union staff with salaries not paid by unions)"

    Good point!

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