Management Gurus

• 5 teachers are expected to cover for their colleague who will be off work sick for 8 weeks. The head says he does not want it to count towards the 38 hour limit for cover set out by the teachers' contract the STPCD.
  
• A colleague applies for the threshold last year and  is succesful but because he only just scrapes through the head says he will not be backdate it from 2007 (as set out by the school's pay policy and the STPCD) but September 2008.
  
• In a one-form entry primary school there are financial troubles. The head wants to make the special needs co-ordinator redundant. The head and the deputy head account for 43% of the teachers' pay bill (no prizes for guessing which two do the least teaching)
  
• A young woman in her second year of teaching is subject to formal hearings regarding absence mangement because of three day's absence this half term - one day for a cold, two days because of cistitis.  Oddly enough the school now has more absence management problems  as she wants to hand in her notice.
  

All of these incidents just from Wednesday of this week!

Why Snuffy Is A National Treasure...

Little Nancy was doing her very best to keep calm despite the severe provocation of the  fourth year (this was 1990) boys. Nancy was from Sierra Leone. The boys had said that she lived in a mud hut and that her Mum was a witch doctor. Her brand new liberal RE teacher was clumsily trying to come to her help saying that such language was racist and had no place in his classroom but the fact that Nancy's tormentors were African-Caribbean was confusing him too much and he was trying his inadequate best to respond to the demand that he should 'Stay out of it, sir - it's a black thing.' 

Having spent thirteen years teaching in a South London comprehensive I knew that as soon as I started reading To Miss With Love, this woman knew what she was talking about so here is my list of reasons why despite her idiosyncratic views on industrial relations (see #10,11,20), and my being an officer of the NUT, Snuffy is a national treasure:

1. Her posts ooze authenticity.
   
2. She , like Maureen Stone, has high expectations of all  her pupils.
   
3. She refuses to adopt a victim mentality and scape goating in relation to race politics
   
4. She is unafraid to say it as she sees it
   
5. She has the measure of Diane bloody Abbot
   
6. Despite, having never met her, I would feel absolutely delighted if my son attended any school that she was head of. Any school no matter which London borough or position in the league table.