teachers - how do you cope with management???

[slayerette]

Our school sends parents progress grades each half term to update them on how their child is doing in each subject. New boy joined my class a week and a half ago; have just been 'reprimanded' by management for not giving him a grade when I did that group's grades yesterday. How am I meant to assess his level of attainment and effort in any meaningful way after that amount of time? Management just replied 'Oh everyone else has put B2'. It makes me so angry that I have to make up a random grade for a child I barely know just to satisfy some pen-pusher. Does anyone else have management which seems to love the bureaucracy more than the education - bullshit all you like as long as we fill in the right pieces of paper?

Rant over - thank you!

[chocolateshoes]

Seems ridiculous. If the boy is new to the school I suppose you could give an effort grade based on the weeek (!) but if he has just moved classes you could ask his previous teacher for a grade. Don't get me started on SMT!!

[HenriettaHippo]

That's crazy. Surely his parents will say "how can they possibly know?", and then doubt the reliability of the grade every single time he gets one in future? I know I would. I think this is ridiculous, and actually undermines what is trying to be achieved.

I used to be a secondary teacher, and this is precisely the kind of shit that made me quit and retrain.

[Moomin]

IT's just stupid and management are just wating their boxes ticked with no thought about the ridiculousness of the situation.

Don't even START me on school management at the moment - I soooooooo sympathise!

(What did you retrain as, Henrietta?)

[HenriettaHippo]

Retrained as a lawyer Moomin. Much more lucrative, although the "clients" can be just as irritating!!!

[slayerette]

Thank you for the support! I hoped I was being professional but SMT always manage to leave me feeling like I'm just being difficult...I asked a colleague who has a son at the school what she would think as a parent and she just said that she would wonder what the hell they were actually grading him on! Hope he doesn't reveal during his exams (week after next) that he's actually more of a C4 because then won't we all look stupid? Why can't schools be managed by people who can manage (but then I always wonder how cabinet ministers can just take over Sec of State for education with no qualifications visible to the naked eye...)? Going to go and read the bit in Animal Farm again about the pigs filling in huge sheets of paper all day and then burning them in the incinerator each evening - seems such a great summing up of the importance of what management actually do...

[Blandmum]

We are allowed to use X if we cannot post a meaningful grade.

I think that you are totaly correct not to want to assess a child after such a short time. It would be meaningless.

[fizzbuzz]

TBH, doubt if I would know child's name after a week, never mind grade........(old, senile)

However we would not be expected to do this at our place, and if we were, feel union would be in PDQ.