50 signatures reached
To: DAVID CAMERON, ED MILIBAND, NICK CLEGG
ACKNOWLEDGE AND ADDRESS THE CRISIS IN THE TEACHING PROFESSION
Please carry out an urgent enquiry to find practical, meaningful and long term ways to change the current crisis situation in the teaching profession. The enquiry should invite all teachers in England and Wales, whether or not they are in a union, to complete a questionnaire in which they can honestly state their views, thereby feeling, additionally, that their opinions are really being heard. This will provide an accurate picture of the current crisis, on which the enquiry team can then report, in order to initiate positive changes.
Why is this important?
All main party leaders should acknowledge the reasons for, and make urgent plans to adequately address, the current crisis in the teaching profession so that teachers are allowed more time and freedom to teach our future generations, rather than spending endless hours on pointless paperwork, worry and illness. I have been a primary school teacher for 13 years but now work as a supply teacher only, having left contracted teaching some five years ago due to stress and illness. The education of young people today is being jeopardised by the unmanageable workload now placed on teachers, much of which consists of pointless paper exercises that seem to serve little or no purpose. There is also a genuine fear of the inspection process which stifles the creativity needed for the best teaching and learning to take place. How can a teacher give of their best and inspire young people when they have no life outside of schoolwork? They have nothing new to bring to the classroom and no energy to excite young minds. It is no wonder that so many newly trained teachers leave the profession so soon, nor that so many retire early. Teachers should be allowed autonomy, without having to constantly provide proof of their expertise. Under such circumstances, recruitment and retention of very good teachers should improve dramatically.
Surely, the following article in the Independent would have been signed by far more than 1200 teachers, had the opportunity been available. I know that I would have signed it:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/teaching-profession-headed-for-crisis-as-numbers-continue-to-drop-and-working-lives-become-unbearable-10203085.html
Sign this petition if you are a teacher and you agree with the contents of the article in the Independent.
How it will be delivered
This will depend on the amount of support and number of signatures. I am quite happy to deliver them in person if I feel that this would highlight the situation more.
