Unruly Head Teachers
Normally when you hear about someone being suspended from a school you can probably safely predicate that it is one of the pupil or a teacher. You don’t expect to hear of a head teacher being suspended. And you don’t expect the press release from the council announcing such a fact to have spelling mistakes.
However a head teacher has been suspended. From Darwen Vale High School in Blackburn. You might have heard of the school. It’s the one where the staff went on strike because of the lack of discipline at the school.
This is again a very unusual situation. Most of the time when teachers go on strike it’s because their union has told them and it’s about pay or conditions. But to go on strike because the management of the school aren’t doing their jobs just does not happen. So it must be bad.
The stories about the lack of disciple which led to the teachers going on strike included cases where a teacher would confiscate a mobile phone only for the phone to be handed back to the kid later in the day. There was no support for teachers who were physically and verbally assaulted either. Teachers who had ludicrous and false accusations made against them by pupils who knew how to game the system were also not helped and had to endure unnecessary disciplinary procedures.
Now there have been accusations that the teachers were the ones doing the bullying, bullying the head teacher and ganging up on someone doing a difficult job and making it impossible for her to do her work. The head teacher has support from the governers and the local LibDem MP Simon Huggill, though sometimes it doesn’t sound like they know what’s happening when they blame the problems on the fact that the school is in temporary accommodation as it’s being rebuilt (under the schools for future project) and that it’s cold when they walk between classrooms. She was even invited to Number 10 to meet Gordon Brown by MP Rosie Cooper who thought she was doing a good job.
But when you look into Hilary Torpey’s past it seems that the teachers have a point. Mrs Torpey previously worked at Glenburn Sports College in Skelmersdale where one commentator in a newspaper report presciently wrote in July last year “I feel sorry for anyone with children at Darwen Vale High School, she came to be Headteacher at Glenburn and ruined the school for many. If you like someone who rewards bad behaviour instead of facing it full on then she’s the one for you. Good luck – the only good thing in her favous [sic] is she’s a scouser!”.
Another commentator wrote “The OFSTED report regarding Mrs Torpey does not tally with how the staff from Glenburn College felt. Also, if you back to her previous school, Bootle High School, there were staff there that wanted to give her a vote of no confidence. Torpey was a Deputy Head at that school both she and the Head Teacher sat back and did nothing to stop that school being closed, quite the opposite. Both she and the head went on to other jobs.“
Now you do have to take comments in newspaper with a pinch of salt. You just have to read the comments in CIF in the Guardian to see why. So the comments could have been written by someone with a grudge against Hilary Torpey, but when you read it in context of the latest events it seems to have a ring of truth to it in my opinion.
All this don’t mean that the whole school is overrun with unruly pupils. It is always a tiny minority who spoil the education of the rest of the school. You can never get rid of every single one of these trouble makers and they do deserve to be educated too but it’s how you handle the difficult situations which shows if the teachers are in control or not.
The school now has a new head the teachers and union have given him till the end of the month to sort out the problems.
My advice to the new head? Expel every single one of the trouble makers straight away. Let the rest of the kids start to enjoy school rather than hating. And then slowly bring the expelled children back in. And if there is any further trouble – always believe the teacher and back the teacher up. In just about any case where a pupil claims assault or similar it’s because the pupil did the bad thing. And allow the teachers to have authority in the classroom and not have to second guess what the education authority would do.
I must admit to a slight personal connection to the case. I have a friend who applied for a job there but after having met the head teacher involved decided against taking up a position as a teacher at the school.
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May 13, 2011 at 08:58 -
“If you like someone who rewards bad behaviour instead of facing it full on then she’s the one for you.”
This is quite a common problem actually. My social group includes a number of teachers at a local primary.
They are all unhappy (and one has even quit) over the issue of problem pupils being rewarded and going unpunished.
The teachers have no back-up and have to suffer scuzzy kids shoving them around – or their scuzzy parents doing it instead if they dare complain about the issue.
My boys left there a couple of years ago – dismayed as to why “Ellesse gets to play computer games for being bad. Why can’t we do that ?”
They now go to grammar. The teachers there aren’t any better. But the parents are.
The selection tests are not an estimation of the kids but an estimation of parental back-up.
I blame the Tories. For their total lack of support of people who get things right rather than being nice to people who get things wrong.
I blame the Tories. For being totally out flanked and out manouvered by the minority of left wingers who seem able to control this country.
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May 13, 2011 at 09:23 -
+1. Quit right. The tories have got away for years with blaming the left, but they are equally at fault as they’ve done nothing to stop it, even when they have the power to do so.
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May 13, 2011 at 09:23 -
“Quite”, not quit.
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May 13, 2011 at 11:09 -
Yes, I have never understood why the Tories are so bloody timid at fixing the things Labour gleefully wreck.
Why for example did we not have a grand repeal bill on day one of the new government?
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May 13, 2011 at 09:47 -
Rewarding the feckless and wrong-doers while persecuting the law abiding majority has become a feature of society in general not just schools. It spreads from a benefits system that rewards the workshy through to the special treatment of feral kids with holidays and ends with fixed penalties that sting ordinary people for minor unintended lapses while ignoring serious anti-social crime.
There is a whole new attitude needed to reward the good and stop excusing the bad, and encourage socially responsible behaviour. -
May 13, 2011 at 11:03 -
electro-kevin said…”“Ellesse gets to play computer games for being bad. ”
…
Breeders are now naming their litter after a brand of *trainers* ?? TRAINERS ? ???????/bangs head off desk
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May 13, 2011 at 12:19 -
Must make calling the register (do they still do that?) the sort of activity that needs a lot of effort to keep a straight face…
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May 13, 2011 at 13:20 -
I recall the day when my ex came back from work – the DWP in Bristol – to say – “You won’t believe this – there’s a claim gone in today for a woman who has a kid called Shardonnay”. Clear breach of all DWP rules, of course, but it had gone round the Bristol offices in no time at all.
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May 13, 2011 at 11:06 -
“always believe the teacher and back the teacher up” <– THIS!
I remember being unfairly blamed for things I didn't do at school. It teaches that life is sometimes unfair, not a bad concept to learn IMO. Too many overly-concerned bleeding hearts in the education system.
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May 13, 2011 at 11:50 -
You mocked the council for their spelling mistakes and then wrote “lack of disciple” a few sentences later. The first rule of being pedantic about other people’s spelling and grammar is to double check your own when you do, because you’re almost guaranteed to slip up.
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May 13, 2011 at 12:17 -
“I must admit to a slight personal connection to the case. I have a friend who applied for a job there but after having met the head teacher involved decided against taking up a position as a teacher at the school.”
Bullet dodged there, methinks!
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May 13, 2011 at 17:39 -
Not an isolated case, ( and some will say I am paranoid) have you ever considered that her visit to Gordon Brown was to report progress in bringing about a larger aim? Dear Gordon nearly achieved one of the communist manifesto aims-one centralized state bank-heaven knows he tried his best to destroy individual wealth.
Think “long march through the institutions”-Google it.
If it makes you feel better, you are not alone in your current condition. I came upon this yesterday evening- a robust(not suitable for those who dislike swearing)description of conditions in Los Angeles city government and schools.
http://www.adamcarolla.com/ACPBlog/2011/05/11/andrew-breitbart-and-james-blunt/
It’s long and very unBBC.
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May 13, 2011 at 18:37 -
Discipline in virtually extinct in all state schools now. Comment threads on American blogs I contribute to tell me the situation is much the same there.
The politically correct thinking of the lefties who are drawn to teaching and educational administration must take a lot of the blame but there is another culprit we must not forget too. Psychology – the science of turning self pity into a virtue – has done a lot to undermine the values on which western civilisation was built.
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May 13, 2011 at 20:19 -
Doesn’t surprise me in the least that Ofsted didn’t spot problems. They dismissed out of hand the uniform concerns of the parents at our local primary with regards to the head’s capability. She puts on a great display of competence, quite the inverse of the reality, I’m sorry to say.
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May 13, 2011 at 20:27 -
I must agree with the need for a return to sanity. Bad behaviour must be punished and good behaviour must be rewarded. This type of common sense of course runs completely contrary to left-wing ” thinking” . It is high time that Cameron showed that he has a backbone and take on both the chav underclass and the poilitically correct marxist scum who keepm on excusing their appalling behaviour.
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