Tackling Under-performance in Teachers

Jill Earnshaw, Lorrie Marchington, Eve Ritchie, Derek Torrington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415304283
• eBook ISBN: 9781134408764
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

All headteachers will be faced with a member of staff who is under performing at some stage in their career, but knowing how to deal with the problem to everyone's benefit is not always easy.

Through the use of case studies the expert authors examine ways under-performance can be handled in a range of circumstances. Clear guidance is given on procedures that should be followed to ensure actions are within a legal framework and within current directives on performance management.

Key sections include:

* how to handle capability issues
* ill health and capability
* procedures and the legal framework
* performance management.

Tackling Under-performance in Teachers will be a valuable resource for headteachers, school governors and LEA officers involved in school management.

Chapter 1
The problem of under-performance by teachers

In 2000 an advertising campaign to recruit trainee teachers used the method of film clips showing well-known people recalling the name of their most memorable teacher. All the celebrities responded with a warm smile of fond recollection, which was followed by the voice-over, ‘Everyone remembers a good teacher.’ Most of us can remember really bad teachers as well, although there are very few. Between those extremes are those who are competent but not spectacular and those who need to improve. This book uses recent research on capability procedures as a way to review how poor teacher performance can be improved.

The current context of teacher effectiveness

Through most of the twentieth century teaching was growing into a profession. The level of required qualification to practise steadily rose and a school teacher in the last quarter of the century had a significant degree of independence and self-government, as well as great security of employment. The stereotype was of the teacher who went into the classroom, put a poster over the glass panel in the door to ensure privacy and was then totally in command of everything that happened inside the classroom. There was no outside interference, nor much outside support. The authority of the head teacher was acknowledged, but would rarely be exercised inside the teacher’s room. How widespread this stereotype was is hard to tell, although teachers with long experience speak warmly of this golden age. What is certain is that things have changed radically and the changes have implications for teacher capability.

The 1988 Education Reform Act was the watershed, although things had started changing before that. The Act brought together a number of changes and acts as a marker of when change accelerated, leading to what many teachers regard as continuing innovation overload, with the old certainties destroyed.

One hallmark of the differences that 1988 ushered in is accountability. Local Management of Schools (LMS) began a process of shifting ownership, responsibility and control of the purse strings away from local authorities to individual schools. Soon heads found that governors were given real power in the school instead of being just benign old buffers who smiled and fell asleep on the platform at speech day. League tables were introduced, showing where your school stood in contrast to the one down the road, those on the other side of the county and those in all other parts of the country. There were Standardised Attainment Tests and publication of examination results, so that parents did not simply complain, they were given information with which to complain. OFSTED came to inspect and then produced a report that might have drastic implications for the school and especially for the head. If the head was coming under scrutiny, then Mrs Smith and Mr Jones could no longer enjoy the freedom to do as they thought best within the sanctuary of their classrooms. OFSTED inspectors had the temerity to come into their classrooms and observe teachers in action. A longstanding culture of independent, professional self-monitoring was remorselessly stripped away as teachers and head teachers and schools and school governors all had to be accountable. There has been more emphasis on measuring teachers’ capabilities, and the accountability systems fuel the intensification of teachers’ work and are a major source of stress (Jeffrey and Woods 1998).

A second feature of the difference between now and before 1988 is the pace and nature of change. To some extent this is a cliché that applies to every one at work, but the particular features of change which have an impact on the capability of teachers are to do with the curriculum, teaching methods and pupil behaviour. The primary school curriculum has been altered to give greater prominence to literacy and numeracy, with pupil progress being regularly monitored by testing. Some teaching methods that were prominent in teacher training until the 1980s have been discredited and all teachers report greater problems with basic classroom discipline, to say nothing of problems stemming from substance abuse and changes in traditional values. A common complaint is the need to adapt to a new DfEE initiative, only to find that it has been superseded by another one before you have got to grips with the first.

Third, there is the intensification of teachers’ work. This is not just jargon for being busy. Change and increased accountability generate more things for teachers to do in order to respond to external demands, so that teaching is not simply dealing with children, it is also dealing with a surrounding system of bureaucratic controls that constantly require evidence of what has been achieved. Troman (2001) argues that intensification leads to less time for relaxation and reskilling, causes persistent work overload and reduces the quality of service. Work overload is a particular problem because of the nature of the emotional demands that teaching makes. There is growing evidence to suggest that emotions are a central aspect of teaching (Nias 1996; Hargreaves 1998). Troman (2001) argues, ‘There is little appreciation of the emotional labour engaged in by teachers . . . which also makes them vulnerable when the demands of their work make it hard for them to do their “emotion work” properly’. One consequence of this is the tendency for teachers to suffer from stress, and to be absent from work as a result to a greater extent than those in other but comparable professions.

Stress is contributing to sickness absence, as is explored in Chapter 3. There is now the irony that teachers, who enjoy somewhat longer holidays than most people, are now absent through illness for more days than the average across the working population as a whole. In 2002 there has been official recognition of the effect of workload and its concomitants on teachers in suggestions for a new grade of teaching assistant to support professional teachers.

Teacher morale is reported to be at a low ebb (Smithers 2001), especially since the regulations on early retirement have changed, making early retirement much more difficult. Many teachers in their mid and late careers are feeling ‘trapped in teaching’ (Woods et al. 1997). According to Dean (2001), 26,700 people completed training as teachers in 1998, but only 19,120 were still in teaching the following year. Smithers and Robinson (2001), reported by Baker (2001), have studied the question of whether enough teachers are being trained to replace those leaving the profession. Between 1997 and 2001 the government hit its targets for the recruitment of primary teachers but it has been down by a few thousand each year for secondary teachers.

A survey by the Guardian (Smithers 2001) based on vacancies reported by local education authorities in England showed that nearly 3,500 jobs remained unfilled for the start of the autumn term 2001. The report produced by the think-tank Demos concluded that teaching is now an unsustainable profession and that the current recruitment crisis will only be reversed if working conditions improve (Hayes 2001). Mike Tomlinson, the then HMCI, stated that the shortage was the worst he had seen for forty years, with 40 per cent of teachers quitting after three years in the classroom (reported by Smithers 2001). Importantly, the Demos report concluded that, ‘The current crisis in recruitment and retention is long-term, not cyclical’. The apparent crisis in the recruitment and retention of teachers suggests that teaching is an increasingly unattractive career.

These gloomy figures are not set out to depress, but to demonstrate the central importance of developing the performance and job satisfaction (for the two are inextricably linked) of teachers in school. There are very good reasons why some teachers may either lack capability to meet the present demands of school teaching, or lack confidence in their capability.

The rationale of this book

We were asked by the DfEE to find out how effective capability procedures had been in school teaching since they were introduced in 1997, and to identify best practice. That research project is the reason for this book and the findings are at its core, but we soon realised that the problem of poor teacher performance in the twenty-first century could only be solved by a clear understanding of the current context of school teaching together with an appreciation of enlightened management approaches. None of us are school teachers, although two of us have been. One of us is a school governor and another of us has been. The reason we were asked to do the work was the balance of our expertise in management, the law and in research methods. We also work out of one of the top management research schools in British universities.

It would be impertinent for us to tell you what to do, and it would be short-changing you if we gave you a series of easy check lists and glib answers to complex questions, but we have a number of suggestions for you to think about and we are confident that this book will help you in dealing with an issue at the heart of successful school leadership: teacher effectiveness. When capability procedures were introduced in 1997, it was with a sub-text of rooting out poor performers. We realise that the emphasis has to be on dealing with poor performance and turning it into better performance and then even better performance. When we began our work we read Ted Wragg et al.’s stimulating book Failing Teachers with the telling double entendre in the title. How often do teachers fail compared with how often they are let down in some way?

Defining competence

Wragg et al. (2000) point out that whether an individual teacher is competent or incompetent in the classroom is not clear-cut. Teaching is a multi-dimensional set of activities, and a teacher may be competent in one aspect but not in another. Also some teachers may not have been able to keep up with changes. Teachers on capability procedures are usually expected to change their behaviour in quite a short time. However, changing styles that have been shaped by hundreds or thousands of hours of practice is not easy, even when being observed and tutored. Even very skilful teachers found it difficult to adapt their teaching methods to the changes in the curriculum during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Teacher Training Agency (TTA) has set out four main areas in which new teachers must be competent:

1. Knowledge and understanding
2. Planning, teaching and class management
3. Monitoring, assessment, recording and accountability
4. Other professional requirements

In 1998 the TTA set out the National Standards for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Under ‘knowledge and understanding’, for example, primary teachers must ‘understand the progression . . . to KS1, the progression from KS1 to KS2, and from KS2 to KS3.’ Under ‘planning, teaching and class management’, teachers must, ‘demonstrate that they ensure effective teaching of whole classes, and of groups and individuals within the whole class setting, so that teaching objectives are met’ and ‘monitor and intervene when teaching to ensure sound learning and discipline’. They must also, ‘set high expectations for pupils’ behaviour, establishing and maintaining a good standard of discipline through well-focused teaching and through positive and productive relationships’. These national standards may go some way to explaining what a teacher is expected to be able to do to be considered competent, but they do not explain how ineffective a teacher has to be at the tasks to be considered incompetent. Nevertheless, lack of capability is one of the statutory fair reasons for dismissal within the Employment Rights Act 1996 and many companies and all schools now have a procedure for dealing with it.

Procedures

Procedures have been used throughout employment for many years, although they took on greater significance and change of purpose with the development of employment law since the 1970s.

The main benefits of procedures are that they reduce the need for some decisions in the future by providing a means of dealing with an issue that will be suitable every time that issue recurs. They produce consistency for management action, limiting the scope for bias, prejudice, impetuosity or managerial capriciousness at the same time as providing managers with the security of a systematic approach to getting things done. They provide transparency so that the framework for management action and employee reaction is apparent both to the parties and to external observers, such as trade unions and employment tribunals. The ACAS (2000) Code of Practice states that procedures enable organisations ‘to influence the conduct of workers and deal with problems of poor performance’ thus assisting organisations to operate effectively. Rules set standards of performance at work and procedures ensure that the standards are adhered to.

The main weakness of procedures is the reluctance by managers to resort to procedure for fear of costly, adversarial legal proceedings where control of the situation is given over to lawyers. Procedures may also be over-elaborate, with too many appeal stages; this results in proceedings being protracted, causing major problems for both managers and individual employees. There is a concern by some managers that procedures now represent the only way to deal with problems, rather than the more informal methods of rebuke, advice or ‘the quiet word’ (Earnshaw et al. 1998). This final point is given great weight by ACAS in their self-help guide to producing disciplinary and grievance procedures (ACAS 1997) which urges clear separation between the full range of strategies available by informal means and the much more limited focus of formal procedural steps. With all procedures there is also a risk that they inhibit change and can become a straitjacket instead of a framework for action.

Following Stephen Byers’ letter to the governing bodies of maintained schools in 1997, capability procedures were incorporated into schools’ procedures. Capability was defined as, ‘a situation in which a teacher fails consistently to perform his or her duties to a professionally acceptable standard.’ The procedure did not apply to capability due to ill health, nor to misconduct, which was defined as, ‘an act or omission by a teacher which is considered to be unacceptable professional behaviour’.

The outline applied to head teachers and deputies as well as to teachers. It recognised that it was important for professional performance problems to be identified and the nature of the problem investigated. It also recommended that information should be gathered in a structured and systematic way. This appears to equate with what was referred to in most of the LEA procedures we scrutinised as, ‘the informal stage of the procedure’, although that term was not used in the outline procedure and there was no timescale attached to it. If it was decided that formal action should be taken then it stated that there should be a recorded interview where targets and/or performance standards were set, together with appropriate support and a structured timescale. This action would constitute the date of entry into the formal procedure. The next step would be to assess the outcome. If the teacher failed to satisfy the requirements then it should be considered whether a different balance of duties or an alternative teaching post could be offered. Further formal action would then be in accordance with local procedures.

The outline recommended that the timetable adopted should be in accordance with the seriousness of the situation. It suggested that the period given for improvement should be no more than two terms after the date of entry into the formal procedure. However, in extreme cases where the education of pupi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Chapter 1: The Problem of Under-Performance By Teachers
• Chapter 2: How Capability Issues Are Handled
• Chapter 3: Ill Health and Capability
• Chapter 4: Key Players and Their Roles
• Chapter 5: Making Procedures Work
• Chapter 6: Capability Procedures and the Legal Framework
• Chapter 7: Performance Management
• Chapter 8: The Planning and Review Meetings
• Foreword to Chapters 9 and 10
• Chapter 9: Case Studies In Which Capability Procedures Were Used to Secure an Outcome
• Chapter 10: Case Studies In Which Capability Procedures Were Not Used