Spare a thought for the Teachers.

Further to my blog post "are Tomlinscote teachers voting with their feet" and comments in my video blog about staff morale I want to focus a little bit on the staff.

The Anonymous post at the bottom of the Questions for the Meeting blog post reads:

Anonymous said...

As a (hopefully) highly regarded member of staff by colleagues and students, if this goes ahead, I wont be staying. I signed up to teach in an educational institution that had yrs 7 through to 6th form. I love the school community feel and a split site would lose all of that. Schools are not exam factories, but places where children of all ages interact. Shame as I love Tomlinscote

Disturbing reading indeed!

I've had a variety of discussions with a number of members of staff.

A large number of the staffs concerns cover travel, and speculate about how staff will manage transit between two sites. One member discussed transport in terms of use of personal cars, how would they be remunerated and insured etc. Another member discussing the car route was concerned about traffic and the inevitable pressure to make it from one campus to another to be in time for lessons - would this prove an HSE risk? One worried about how those who do not arrive at school in cars would transfer between the sites. Another aspect of the staff site transfers focussed on the time it would take out of their day. With the financial pressures on schools today "free periods" are often taken with cover work and they even worried protected PPA lunch and break times might end up being used to transfer buildings. "When am I going to get time to mark and plan lessons". Another worry expressed about transfers was timing - effective teaching sees a teacher in the class before the children and prepared, perhaps a starter on the board, and for some subjects requiring practical work (e.g. Science, Art, PE and Tech) significant setup may be required.

Staff seemed equally unconvinced about the offer from Mr Ryles to have the opportunity of just teaching key stage 3. One pointed out that Mr Ryles had sold the 6th form as being a method to recruit the best teachers and saw this move as a rather large U turn. Another wondered how this would affect pay structures as some staff would not have the pressures of teaching exam classes, how would this affect promotion prospects and access to higher pay bands? "CPD will be a joke". One member brought up the game played between junior and senior schools with targets and value add scores and wondered if a separate lower and upper school would end up with a blame culture between sites.

"How can we offer children stability if staff are moving around? How can we offer continuity if teachers stay at one site?"

asked one staff member. The bonding to one school on one site is seen as important by staff. Tomlinscote spends significant effort in year 7 laying down the rules and building a platform for the following years, while the school will have the same name at both sites it is possible that year 10 will involve a need for this process to be repeated. One staff member worried that a change of sites would be a big upheaval at just the wrong time prior to the 2 most important years of the students school life. For some students doing "fast track" courses there simply isn't the time for upheaval, it was pointed out that in the case of some "fast track courses" they were only possible due to the continuity from year 9 something that may be affected by a split site.

One of the themes that really concerned me about some of these communications was that the staff contacting me were not those who just "took a salary" they were speaking out because of their passion for the childrens education. They were involved in a wide variety of school activities that they saw brought the children together as an institution - they loved their school which is why they risked speaking out. They voiced worries about splitting the sites and the damage not having older children to look up to for the lower school would do. One was concerned the two sites would have a very different focus and was concerned that the upper school would become an academic exam factory.

"My other main concern is that I feel Tony Ryles and the SLT are viewing Tomlinscote as an exam factory."

This comment will be of little comfort to those Kings parents who value their institution for its capabilities in SEN and EAL provision. More than one of the teachers I communicated with worried that the SLT and Governors were running schools as businesses chasing funding tied to academic results and bemoaned the demise of "educationalists". One quip during a verbal communication was ..

"Every child matters? More like every pound matters!"

And I've only had contact with staff from Tomlinscote. Heaven knows how the morale is at Kings - copies of TES must be well thumbed over there! A recent verbal communication with one member of Tomlinscotes staff (the only one I have spoken to who was in favour of the merger) did not bode well for Kings staff and their integration into Tomlinscote - I only have to hope that their views are not typical.

"It is not a merger - Kings will be closed" was one quote, "The Kings teachers will be made redundant and we will hire the best ones into Tomlinscote" I must admit it brought back a queasy feeling in my stomach I'd not experienced since a particularly traumatic company takeover I'd been involved in... one I lasted a mere 10 odd months before managing to "jump ship".

Please spare a thought for the Teachers at both Tomlinscote and particularly Kings they are one of the few players in this entire sorry saga who would like to talk, but can't.

tomlinscote.kings@gmail.com
http://anonymouse.org/anonemail.html