'Can I Sack Teacher?'

This is the question being asked by tomorrow night's Panorama program on the BBC which, if reports in today's newspapers prove correct, will make disturbing viewing for parents.

It appears that over the past 40 years only 18 incompetent teachers have been sacked, while 15,000 others also considered incompetent to do the job, are being passed around schools within the education system to avoid the bad publicity that a sacking may bring.

The ex-Chief Inspector of schools and hate figure of the Left, Chris Woodhead, has said: "By incompetent, we mean somebody who can't keep order and doesn't understand enough about the subject to teach it. No one will admit there is something wrong."

I find it despairing that there is anyone teaching today "... [who] doesn't understand enough about the subject to teach it". Are there really such people being allowed to 'teach' our children - and in such numbers? Where and how were such people themselves taught, and by whom? Were those who taught them equally at fault?

There are 500,000 teachers (including the 15,000 incompetent ones) being given charge of our children every day in order to educate them; first of all to a civilised standard of numeracy and literacy; but also (hopefully) to advance them on to university.

The body created for improving teaching, the General Teaching Council (GTC) has, according to today's News of the World, estimated 17,000 classes to be "sub standard". While the GTC was given the power to strike off incompetent teachers, under current rules such teachers have to be referred by the head teacher to the local authority. The teacher then has his or her classroom competence reviewed (The Competence Review), and are advised upon ways they can improve their teaching -and in serious cases the teacher can be struck off by the GTC

Panorama's investigation also found that of 500,000 teachers, only 300 have been put through this first stage (0.07 per cent) of the process. Something is very wrong when incompetent teachers are being protected by the system at the expense of our children's education. By continuing to allow these 15,000 incompetent teachers to be continuously circulated amongst our children, from city to city and town to town puts a stain, not only upon the teaching profession, but the quality of education our children, in an advanced Western civilisation, should receive.

Michael Gove, the new Minister of Education, has dismantled the General Teaching Council, but this, in itself will not be enough. The truth is, is that if anybody from the headmaster upwards wishes to sack a teacher, they know that they are in for a confrontation with the teaching unions. It is bodies such as the NUT that stand in the way of filtering out bad teachers. The moment a school acts to either discipline or sack a teacher, the union steps in.

I believe that for many reasons unrelated to the subject of this blog, that the standards in education teaching as well as A level exams have been diminished, particularly by the egalitarian principles of the last government. But this is another argument. For whatever the system of education, the teachers must be qualified to teach their given subject. If not children will suffer the consequences, and it is not in the interest of anybody, whether the teachers or their unions, as well as the politicians, to accede to such failure as the Panorama program promises to expose tomorrow night