Government changes to teachers’ jobs will damage campaign on bad behaviour

13 September 2005

Teachers’ responsibility for the pastoral care of their pupils, including truancy and bad behaviour, are being undermined by Government changes, Britian’s biggest teachers’ organisation, the National Union of Teachers, warned today.

In future, teachers will no longer be rewarded for taking on responsibility for pastoral care, for example as heads of year. In addition, the Government is even attempting to have such work deleted from the list of teachers’ duties.

A fundamental change is taking place in the way schools are managed, with payments for additional responsibilities being replaced by Teaching and Learning Responsibility Payments.

Excluded from these additional payments is responsibility for the personal and social education of children. The Government does not believe that pastoral work should fall to teachers. It says pastoral work will not be rewarded as the new system focuses on teaching and learning.

The government’s approach could be a disaster for schools’ efforts to tackle unacceptable behaviour, truancy, bullying and other serious problems affecting young people’s development.

It will impact on the ability of schools to meet the needs of vulnerable children: to spot at an early stage the child who is being abused or who is dabbling in drugs and other damaging substances.

The move is part of a Government scheme reorganizing the management structure in schools. Throughout this term, headteachers will be drawing up proposals for consultation with staff on distribution of the Teaching and Learning Responsibility Payment which must be completed by January. Guidance on how the Union believes the scheme should be operated has been sent to NUT representatives throughout England and Wales and is on the NUT’s website at www.teachers.org.uk

But pastoral work does not fit with the Government scheme. Indeed, in primary schools, the plan is inadequately funded to ensure that all those additional responsibilities currently undertaken by teachers can be rewarded in the future.

Commenting, Steve Sinnott, NUT General Secretary, said:

“The Government has highlighted its desire to improve young people’s behaviour. It is keen to reduce truanting and prevent young people dropping out of education and becoming vulnerable to the temptations of the street, and possibly a life of criminality. It wants to see an end to bullying, to abuse of children, to underage drinking or drug taking and it wants to see the incidence of teenage pregnancy reduced.

Yet this new scheme will set back those aims. Teachers who want a career in pastoral education now face a dead end. Pastoral care itself will be downgraded in the eyes of pupils, and particularly those for whom the need is greatest.

“The Government really needs to think this one over again. It has failed to recognize not just the effort and commitment of teachers involved in pastoral work but, more significantly, the importance of the link being made between learning and an underlying personal or social problem.  It is that link which helps teachers spot the problem and get help to the child from the staff team within the school and agencies beyond the school which can prevent the problem deepening and having a long term incalculable impact on a young person’s future.

“No decision needs to be written in stone. And this is a very clear example of a decision which should never have been made.”