When Will the Headteacher Unions Wake Up?

Experienced teachers know that if you turn a blind eye to bad behaviour in the classroom, that bad behaviour generally gets worse. In effect, turning a blind eye condones the behaviour. This is how young people learn. They will push at the edges until someone stops them. If no-one stops them they push even harder. Weak teachers find that other students copy the bad behaviour and chaos ensues.

Nicky Morgan is like a naughty student who is copying the bad behaviour of Michael Gove. The Headteacher organisations turned a blind eye to the frankly outrageous behaviour of Mr Gove. By not challenging him they gave the message that it is fine to denigrate teachers and headteachers, to build straw men of under-performance statistics, to push reform so quickly that no-one could keep up with it or have any idea where it was going. Ms Morgan is only copying her mentor.

To anyone outside the classroom, the deafening silence of headteacher organisations must seem as though headteachers are in agreement with all these loony ideas.

For goodness sake, when is someone going to get a grip and say “enough is enough”! Or are the headteacher organisations going to tell us in 5 years time that they knew it was all going to end in tears. (Rather like the current Labour leadership candidates all knew that the strategy they had been selling for 5 years was pathetic all along, but they had kept quiet at the time.)

ASCL and NAHT.
Wake up and start leading, before you have no-one left to lead.