Challenging modernization: remodelling the education workforce

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Notes

More specifically these are the 25 tasks that classroom teachers should not routinely do. They were first listed in a DfES Circular in 1998 and then ratified by the School Teacher Review Body. They include: collecting money, chasing absences, bulk photocopying, copy typing, producing standard letters, class lists, record keeping and filing, classroom display, analysing attendance figures, processing exam results, collating student reports, administering work experience; administering examinations, invigilating examinations, administering teacher cover, ICT trouble shooting, commissioning new ICT equipment, ordering supplies and equipment, stocktaking, cataloguing, preparing, issuing and maintaining equipment and materials, minuting meetings, co‐ordinating and submitting bids, seeking and giving personnel advice, managing and inputting pupil data. See DfES (2002).

The WAMG is composed of representatives from ATL, DfES, GMB, NAHT, NASUWT, NEOST, PAT, SHA, T&G, UNISON, and the Welsh Assembly Government who are all signatories to the Agreement (DfES, 2004). The WAMG provide a strategic overview of the implementation of the National Agreement. The IRU was launched in April 2003 and is composed of ‘12 front line practitioners from across England—serving heads, senior teachers and a school bursar’ (IRU, 2003, p. 2) with the remit to report to ministers on reducing bureaucracy in schools and to ‘scrutinise new policy and ensure that it reflects the way schools work’ (IRU, 2003, p. 2). The remit of the NRT is to deliver remodelling with the aim that ‘in the first year the NRT will engage up to 1,300 schools in the remodelling process, around 50 per cent of schools will have taken part by mid‐2005 and by 2006 every school in England will be taking part in remodelling’ and they go on to say that ‘it is an ambitious target, but one which, working together, we are confident we can achieve’ (NRT, 2003, p. 7).

The team at the London Leadership Centre was headed by Dame Pat Collarbone, who now leads the NRT at the National College for School Leadership.

In reporting data from the interview the teaching staff have been categorized into senior managers (Headteacher, Deputies, and Assistant Headteachers); middle managers (Heads of Subject, Faculty, and Year/House); and teachers. Support staff have been categorized into three groups: (1) Teaching assistants; (2) Technical staff; (3) Bursar and administrative staff.

Four of the case study schools have pseudonyms. The secondary schools are: Beacon School, and Lakeside; the large primary school is: Meadow Hall; the special school is: Park Vale. The four small primaries are referred to as the small school's cluster. All other interview data from the project is not attributed to a particular school. A full account of each case study is contained in Thomas et al. (2004).

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Notes on contributors

Graham Butt