The Green Party has blamed the shortage of maths teachers in Brighton and Hove on the government’s education policies.
The party described the situation as a crisis and said that the government was jeopardising the wellbeing of teachers and children.
It made the claims as Brighton and Hove City Council published a report stating that head teachers were finding it “more difficult” to recruit maths teachers.
The report said that “more teachers were leaving the profession because of workload and pressure”.
Greens councillors blamed the teacher shortages on the government’s failure to listen to teachers, parents and young people about the impact of endless testing on their wellbeing.
The Greens also claimed that the “ideological obsession” of the Conservative Party with academy schools has “blinded” them to the impact of their schools policy on teachers and students.
Councillor Alex Phillips, who speaks for the Greens on children and young people on the council, said: “The current recruitment crisis affecting schools is the symptom of a national government which is blinded by an ideological zeal to privatise our education system.
“The government refuses to listen to the nation’s teachers, parents and young people, cutting funding and pushing schools to become academies while children and teachers suffer.
“Teachers are increasingly placed under excessive strain by a government that seeks to micro-manage their performance, continually adding new administrative burdens as assessment standards chop and change.
“A recent 2014 NUT survey showed that two thirds of teachers (63 per cent) said that more than a fifth of their workload does not directly benefit children’s learning.
“Meanwhile, children are facing stress and emotional problems from being subjected to endless tests and are being deprived of a well-rounded education as our schools are turned into little more than exam factories.
“The Green Party believes in a child-centred approach to learning which builds on the skills, interests and needs of each individual child.
“We need to put our faith in teachers to use their skills to inspire and encourage genuine learning and self-improvement.”
Considering the shortage of mathematics teachers, could it be that the subject is considered too hard by many children with not enough quick wins?
Purely considering the education standards, rather than ideologies, I have to say I don’t understand the current fascination with Academies by the right wing, but then I also don’t understand why Grammar schools are so abhored by the left wing – too elitist some would say, but in my years at a Grammar school there were children from council estates, private homes, immigrants, wherever, so long as they had attained the educational standard to pass the 11-plus and were ready to study hard. It had little to do with elitism, that was left to the Public schools.
The current state system, to my mind, just brings every child down to the same level rather than streaming widely different abilities into different education types. What was wrong with the old Technical High, it readied children for apprenticeships and built on practical skills? What was wrong with the High school, it covered a wide range of abilities for the reasonably academic leaving Grammar schools to be more academic? The Secondary Modern prepared children mainly for blue collar jobs and did it well. Why are parents so keen to get their children into Grammar schools if they’re no use? Why do we have to rely on immigrant workers; because they’ve been trained to do real jobs rather than just “knowing things”.
Children are not at school to be coddled, or they shouldn’t be. It’s nice to offer every subject under the sun, but if the basics are not taught properly then children are not prepared for life.
The fashion for degree courses in everything doesn’t seem to be preparing children for work very well, but there is a sense of being “entitled” to a degree with little thought for afterwards except that there should be loads of money for having got the degree. Maybe this is another reason why we have need of immigrant workers who will do the jobs our entitled graduates won’t touch – including teaching mathematics.
Don’t suppose you fancy becoming the education minister do you Chris? ?
That was a quick reply, Me.
I think I would get more job satisfaction by knocking a few heads together, to try to get our politicians of every hue to actually work for the country instead of sniping at each other to score Brownie points among their own followers.
Where can I study for a degree in knocking some sense into politicians and will I get paid a huge amount of money for doing it? If not I’ll go back to mathematics.