For those of us clinging to life tenure as teacher for dear life, Nisar Ahmed is like a nightmare from a parallel universe: he has been banned for life from teaching. General Teaching Council for England decided that it could not risk Ahmed, 46, from ever teaching again so it issued the only known lifetime suspension after a 13-year teaching career.
The school motto is “personal caring for today, educating for tomorrow” (and apparently banning forever).
What is astonishing Ahmed had been promoted to head of business studies at the John O’Gaunt Community Technology College in Hungerford, Berkshire from September 2007 to January 2009.
However, the disciplinary panel found his management to be subpar and his organization of class material “persistently poor.” He was also accused of poor management of student folders. After working with him to improve such things for a year, they decided to ban him for life.
GTC committee chair Rosalind Burford informed him that “[w]e could not be satisfied that you have an appropriate level of insight into your shortcomings.” British tact and a flair for understatement may be confusing to some on this side of the pond since that does not seem the type of problem that results in a lifetime ban. However, the panel made clear that they viewed the problems to be chronic and unaddressed.
The article below suggests that this may be an effort to assure the public that the school system has stopped “recycling” poor teachers. GTC chief executive Keith Bartley said two years ago and the system was still maintaining as many as 17,000 “substandard” members of staff. They appear to be saying that they have got that number down to 16,999.
Source: Daily Mail
just for life,better life thomas sabo
Folders? This is about folders? Are they kidding?
What poppycock. And for life! How insane that they have to power to do that. What criminals!
That’s public education for you!
What were the student’s grades like? THAT is the proof of incompetence.
If the Brits paid their teachers a little more, maybe they would get teachers they like, instead of ones they don’t like.
This goes for the USA, too.
“[w]e could not be satisfied that you have an appropriate level of insight into your shortcomings.”
I sure assume then that the committee chair has ample insight into his own shortcomings and is fully aware that he is the douche in this story.
The saying goes “those who can’t, teach” for a reason, Rosalind. Those that can have no interest in teaching! And I’m sure we don’t have the saying for just this one bad apple.
Say,… haven’t you been a teacher too? Maybe it was you then.
Here’s another one for the books (pun intented):
Court rules that teachers have no First Amendment protection
October 23, 2010 at 3:49 pm
by David Wilson
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled that teachers in primary and secondary schools do not have First Amendment protection regarding what they teach in the classroom.
The dispute arose over Ohio teacher Shelley Evans-Marshall’s distributing a list of banned books to her ninth grade class. She had the class form groups and select a book from the banned list in order to hold debates over the subject matter.
Needless to say, some parents were not happy about this.
Ms. Evans-Marshall’s contract was not renewed over the controversy, and she sued the School Board. The Appeals Court ruled that,
“The Constitution does not prohibit a State from creating elected school boards and from placing responsibility for the curriculum of each school district in the hands of each board.”
http://www.constitutioncampaign.org/blog/?p=1171
There is finally public support for challenging what is being taught. It is a delicate balance between restricting free thought and discourse and demanding someone to actually teach their students. I applaud the administration for having the courage to buck the system.
Incompetence rises to its own level…then again…even slag rises to the top…so…who, what, where, when and why were these decisions really made….