news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7436432.stm

I’m not that bothered about a few teachers not being able to find a job. After all they’re all graduates who did a year of teacher training hoping to get a very well paid job with very long holidays so if they can’t find a post in a school they should use their talents elsewhere in the real world. However the way councils organise teachers’ employment is a disgrace. An acquaintance of mine was Head of Department in a large secondary school and he was allowed to take early retirement. After the summer break he was back teaching nearly full time as a supply teacher so why did they let him go in the first place? The way supply teachers are employed is an expensive farce. In large councils they should employ a float of teachers on normal contracts who can be directed to work where required when staff shortages occur. If they aren’t required to fill absences they could be easily employed in the endless curriculum development and lesson planning that all teachers moan about.

Levenax wrote:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7436432.stm

I’m not that bothered about a few teachers not being able to find a job. After all they’re all graduates who did a year of teacher training hoping to get a very well paid job with very long holidays so if they can’t find a post in a school they should use their talents elsewhere in the real world. However the way councils organise teachers’ employment is a disgrace. An acquaintance of mine was Head of Department in a large secondary school and he was allowed to take early retirement. After the summer break he was back teaching nearly full time as a supply teacher so why did they let him go in the first place? The way supply teachers are employed is an expensive farce. In large councils they should employ a float of teachers on normal contracts who can be directed to work where required when staff shortages occur. If they aren’t required to fill absences they could be easily employed in the endless curriculum development and lesson planning that all teachers moan about.


I agree with this post, many organisations such as nurses do their training at the cost of the tax payer and then work as bank nurses. The pay from the private sector is much higher. They go into departments such as A+E and do not understand the system they are working but get paid more do less work and patient care is put at risk.

It worries me that our money is being spent providing top quality training, which produces highly skilled probationers, and then that money is effectively flushed down the drain because there are no jobs for half of them at the end of their training.

I agree with Levenax when he suggests that there must be some kind of cockup going on, in that there is a failure of effective manpower planning to cope with changes in the demand for the supply of teachers.

The problem seems to be that each council does its own thing, and there is no national pooling or planning in operation that can enable resources to be matched with requirements across the whole country.

Apart from the waste of public money, the impact on morale and future recruitment surely calls for urgent action.

Coming from Industry, (the world of work),I was, some time ago, involved in improvements, and modernising our Secondary education provision here in Scotland.
My involvement was an extremely frustrating experience, in that any change had to be negotiated, with a multitude of obstructions that varied from blunt refusal to move on, or some other delaying tactic.
Coming from Industry, where our customers, and our very existence, required us to respond to deadlines that mattered. Contrast this to the inertia of our Secondary teaching profession that took over a decade to implement a moderate program upgrading of the educational provision to meet changes in the Information Society and employment.
No one seems to be in overall charge of this profession, and sadly I have no great hopes in the future.

Robin T Cox wrote:
It worries me that our money is being spent providing top quality training, which produces highly skilled probationers, and then that money is effectively flushed down the drain because there are no jobs for half of them at the end of their training.

I agree with Levenax when he suggests that there must be some kind of cockup going on, in that there is a failure of effective manpower planning to cope with changes in the demand for the supply of teachers.

The problem seems to be that each council does its own thing, and there is no national pooling or planning in operation that can enable resources to be matched with requirements across the whole country.

Apart from the waste of public money, the impact on morale and future recruitment surely calls for urgent action.

The same seems to apply in medicine. Doctors finishing their set period in hospitals, having graduated two summers ago, are scrambling around and there aren't enough jobs for all of them. It just doesn't make sense.

Robin T Cox wrote:
It worries me that our money is being spent providing top quality training, which produces highly skilled probationers, and then that money is effectively flushed down the drain because there are no jobs for half of them at the end of their training.

You could say the same of any higher education course. Lots of kids take soft options like media studies and then can’t find a job in the field. Even science graduates who generally have to work quite hard for a degree don’t seem to look at the potential job market before they start their studies so when I ran a department I had folk with degrees in toxicology applying for jobs that needed a degree in microbiology. Now I’m sure toxicology is a very worthy and interesting subject but there are not a lot of opportunities to practice the craft.

Clare wrote:
Doctors finishing their set period in hospitals, having graduated two summers ago, are scrambling around and there aren't enough jobs for all of them. It just doesn't make sense.

No it doesn't, but then it makes one wonder why we’ve got so many foreigners who can’t speak proper English working in hospitals in junior medical grades if our universities turn out an excess of graduates. These people are a menace because they can’t communicate properly with patients or other staff.

Levenax wrote:
Robin T Cox wrote:
It worries me that our money is being spent providing top quality training, which produces highly skilled probationers, and then that money is effectively flushed down the drain because there are no jobs for half of them at the end of their training.

You could say the same of any higher education course. Lots of kids take soft options like media studies and then can’t find a job in the field. Even science graduates who generally have to work quite hard for a degree don’t seem to look at the potential job market before they start their studies so when I ran a department I had folk with degrees in toxicology applying for jobs that needed a degree in microbiology. Now I’m sure toxicology is a very worthy and interesting subject but there are not a lot of opportunities to practice the craft.

Clare wrote:
Doctors finishing their set period in hospitals, having graduated two summers ago, are scrambling around and there aren't enough jobs for all of them. It just doesn't make sense.

No it doesn't, but then it makes one wonder why we’ve got so many foreigners who can’t speak proper English working in hospitals in junior medical grades if our universities turn out an excess of graduates. These people are a menace because they can’t communicate properly with patients or other staff.

Lev, a few points from what you have said. You have to be patient because I fainted twice when I realised I agreed with you on a number of things

You were talking about the type of courses people were taking right? For me there is a bigger issue which goes right back to Maggie's time when there was this massive push to get everyone leaving school into further education. I was thinking at the time, why does everyone need to go to Uni, why are they inventing all these degrees so that people can say, "I have been to Uni." when there are no jobs to match the (alleged) skills being taught on those courses? To me it seemed like pushing kids towards FE was simply a way to keep unemployment figures down. I also think it devalued Universities and all they (should) stand for. I think that trend has continued. But I also believe it is possible to have a career and do an excellent job without having to go to Uni and I think it was a dreadful mistake to establish this ridiculous notion that it is a requirement for everyone.

You have written before on another thread about kids not even knowing the basics in English and Maths and that was a concern I shared because I don't understand what the problem is with that. What is so difficult about it?

I agree completely about the number of foreigners in positions where good communication skills are vital. Medicine is the obvious one of course. But you will know more about this area than I do, is it not the case that Uni's are actually trawling abroad for candidates to come here to our Uni's and isn't that an agreed procedure internationally? I'm not sure. Could it be we are signed up to accept so many per annum or is there a connection with funding for Uni's depending on how many foreigners they bring in? I'm sure there is some sort of agreement about it. I agree however that for certain professions it is no use, particularly when our own people are completing University in a subject like medicine as my nephew has two summers ago and now wonders if he is actually going to be able to get a job.

Clare wrote:

For me there is a bigger issue which goes right back to Maggie's time when there was this massive push to get everyone leaving school into further education.I was thinking at the time, why does everyone need to go to Uni, why are they inventing all these degrees so that people can say, "I have been to Uni." when there are no jobs to match the (alleged) skills being taught on those courses? To me it seemed like pushing kids towards FE was simply a way to keep unemployment figures down. I also think it devalued Universities and all they (should) stand for. I think that trend has continued. But I also believe it is possible to have a career and do an excellent job without having to go to Uni and I think it was a dreadful mistake to establish this ridiculous notion that it is a requirement for everyone.

I have to agree Clare that it is definitely a way of keeping the unemployment figures down. Not only were people not listed as unemployed but they were also paying for their education through student loans so no unemployment money was being paid out either. A double whammy.
Also on the devaluing of degrees, I agree too and I think employers are finding it more difficult to know what to think too. To explain, my daughter graduated from uni in 2006. To get into her course at uni, she had to get AAABB in one sitting but the entrance requirements varied between unis and some would accept BCCC at one sitting. However, what she found when she applied for her job (and this was the same for all the firms to which she applied), was that although there were requirements as to her degree, there were also requirements as to her level of highers. If you had not achieved a certain level at higher, then you would not be considered even if you had a first in your degree. So some people would have spent four years at uni being told that they had a potential career in front of them that was never open to them no matter how hard they worked at uni.

Clare wrote:
You were talking about the type of courses people were taking right? For me there is a bigger issue which goes right back to Maggie's time when there was this massive push to get everyone leaving school into further education. I was thinking at the time, why does everyone need to go to Uni, why are they inventing all these degrees so that people can say, "I have been to Uni." when there are no jobs to match the (alleged) skills being taught on those courses? To me it seemed like pushing kids towards FE was simply a way to keep unemployment figures down. I also think it devalued Universities and all they (should) stand for. I think that trend has continued. But I also believe it is possible to have a career and do an excellent job without having to go to Uni and I think it was a dreadful mistake to establish this ridiculous notion that it is a requirement for everyone.

You have written before on another thread about kids not even knowing the basics in English and Maths and that was a concern I shared because I don't understand what the problem is with that. What is so difficult about it?

I agree completely about the number of foreigners in positions where good communication skills are vital. Medicine is the obvious one of course. But you will know more about this area than I do, is it not the case that Uni's are actually trawling abroad for candidates to come here to our Uni's and isn't that an agreed procedure internationally? I'm not sure. Could it be we are signed up to accept so many per annum or is there a connection with funding for Uni's depending on how many foreigners they bring in? I'm sure there is some sort of agreement about it. I agree however that for certain professions it is no use, particularly when our own people are completing University in a subject like medicine as my nephew has two summers ago and now wonders if he is actually going to be able to get a job.

You're right about the effects of the expansion of FE that started in the eighties. IMO the value of degrees in general was reduced by the proliferation of courses that should have been taught as vocational subjects on day release from employment. We've not suffered too badly in Scotland but in England a lot of low rent new universities were created that weren't really up to the job as a result they got packed out with the less able students doing crappy degrees that had no intrinsic merit. In addition their drop out rate was much higher than normal and that's very wasteful.
Now medical degrees - they're interesting. Only the very best students get into medical courses because the job has a high social standing and it's exceptionally well paid. Medical faculties can be very choosy and they usually interview candidates and it's a HUGE help if one of the applicants parents is a medic in addition the're under pressure to be politically correct so they tend to admit a relatively high proportion of ethnic minority candidates. This effect can be seen by anybody who has worked in a big hospital where there is an intake of dozens of new medical graduates twice every year. Lots of their mummies and daddies were medics and there's more with a tan than one might expect. On top of that we get lots of part qualified medics who graduated from foreign universities who come here to do the Royal College exams or take high level training courses. These are the ones who often have very bad English.

Kids who can't count or read? Well that's improving a little bit now that councils have realised that the fashionable "look and say" teaching method is a pile of crap. Phonics is the "new" thing although it was the method used when I learned to read fifty odd years ago. It's a difficult problem because hundreds of thousands parents can't read properly and as a result their kids are brought up in households where nobody reads anything at all and that's a disaster.

So is the attitude of some parents. Let's face it, not all of them want the best for their kids.

Not so long ago I overheard a mother saying to one of her kids: 'You don't want that book, dear: you've already got the video!'

Robin T Cox wrote:
So is the attitude of some parents. Let's face it, not all of them want the best for their kids.

Not so long ago I overheard a mother saying to one of her kids: 'You don't want that book, dear: you've already got the video!'

Robin I overhead a comment lately from a young mother speaking to another young mother. "I canny wait till she goes tae school an learns some discipline."

It explains why teachers often face classloads of out of control children all over the country.