Well, there's more of a story to tell !! She's at the top of her payscale, has been for a few years, and her school is pleading poverty in all aspects, so she and others like her are constantly being targeted on grounds of "incompetency" and a sudden inability to teach. All they are trying to do, it seems, is to get to them psychologically so they wilt under pressure and either quit in floods of tears or be shown the door as a result of not being capable any more. All they want is to get rid of the higher earners and replace them with cheap student teachers. She absolutely hates her job, or should I say hates the system that is called education. It's not about teaching any more, it's about ticking the right boxes and complying with the system which, quite honestly, has nothing to do with teaching children any more. She gets more criticism about whether she is marking the books with the correct colour pen or whether the kids took off their coats in class, not about whether she is a good teacher. You probably saw lots of similar ********.
Oh definitely! I wasn’t targeted as I had only just reached the top of the scale the year I left but 3 over 50s, who were fantastic teachers, were treated exactly as you describe and ended up leaving and believing themselves failures. Education has nothing to do with educating at the minute, as you say, it is all about coloured pens and other ********.
How many people do jobs they love and do well at, but are ground down by all the other crap? Judging from family members and friends (Good morning GFT!) this certainly seems true of teaching. The politics of the job look horrendous to me and it seems the rewards for those who climb the greasy pole to head level are designed to get them on board to ply the government's managerialist mantras. The civil service ethos is responsible for much of this, in my opinion.
I was told when I went for mine about a month ago, that we'd sold more than at that time last year. Which I find incredible and a little hard to believe. But then again, we were pretty down this time last year too, still suffering from the January hangover.
That could just be with the removal of the "may" pricing band forced a lot to renew earlier. Overall I can't see the final figure being higher.