Accountability regime creating climate of fear in schools
The high-stakes inspection and accountability regime has created a climate of fear in too many schools and is driving up stress levels and ill health among teachers, the Annual Conference of the NASUWT, the largest teachers union in the UK, has heard today.
Representatives at the Conference in Cardiff debated a motion condemning employers who use the fear of inspections and accountability to justify punitive and often poor management practices which subject teachers to bullying and strip them of their professionalism.
Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said:
“Teachers understand the need for schools to be accountable.
“However, they need to be held accountable for the right things and no fit-for-purpose accountability system should be capable of being abused in such a way that it creates a climate of fear in the workplace.
“Too many schools use the threat of inspection to justify poor management practices.
“Bad ideas become magically transformed into good ones if introduced on the basis of claims that it is what inspectors require.
“Teachers now say that they believe they are working to meet the needs of inspection rather than the needs of the children and young people they teach.
“Not only are children and young people being disadvantaged by this, but teachers’ health and wellbeing is also being compromised.
“Teachers and their pupils deserve better.”
