David Cornwall, below, St Matthew’s school, Westnewton, Cumbria: “I am head of a small school - just three classes. We work as a team. We can’t have maths co-ordinators, or literacy co-ordinators. There are only three of us. We do everything. It is going to be very difficult to operate a system where the head - me - has to appraise my two colleagues. Perhaps one will go through the threshold, and the other not. It is very divisive.
“Estelle Morris said there had been 30,000 responses to the Green Paper. If they say no to some of the things that the Government says it won’t be moved on, then there are going to be real problems for the profession. It will be the end of it, as we know it.”
Lesley Whiston, Wood Lane special school, Hammersmith, London: “The whole idea of linking pupil performance to teachers’ pay is crazed. You can link performance to input but not output when so many factors can affect what a child is going to achieve. In a small school one child being off with a cold could make all the difference, as could a divorce in the family. Having a vision is of no value unless you can render it practically.”
Kathy Wallis, Bodmin Community College, Cornwall: “There are 84 staff at my school. It is going to take two full-time members of staff a year to appraise us all properly. It is totally unworkable. Newly-qualified teachers who came to us from industry are already talking about going back. I am a special needs co-ordinator and if you talk about giving us targets, we haven’t got a hope of getting a pay rise because of the pupils we work with.”
Nick Howard, Nunnery Wood High, Worcester, left: “It’s all a question of recruitment, retention and motivation. The Green Paper is not going to solve those problems. All the time the head is appraising staff, he or she is not running the school. The Government needs to set up meetings to thrash out the details of what should be happening.”
