Schools will face even more of a funding squeeze after the next general election. Savings will need to be made. The biggest cost year on year that most schools face is staffing. Cheaper staff costs means savings can be made. The Schools’ Minister Lord Nash has said that: “Savings could come through … a more efficient use of teachers and teaching assistants and a better use of IT… We all know that teachers spend a lot of time preparing lesson plans rather than focusing on how well they deliver those lessons. This is a complete waste of time.” What does this mean for the future of our schools? I have a dystopian view of where this might lead, as it makes absolute sense I offer these ideas to Lord Nash with my regards, for his due consideration:
The teaching force should be shorn of all its older, expensive, workers. A few of the best ones should be retained to write lesson plans. Young teachers should be given bigger classes and smaller classes should be taken by teaching assistants. Each classroom should be monitored by CCTV to allow a ‘Low Level Disruption and Discipline Enforcement SWAT’ team to intervene at the first sight of trouble. Rather than waste time out of the classroom the teachers and TAs who are good at delivery should be in the classroom all the time and read the prepared lessons out from an autocue which is either positioned at the back of the class or transmitted to the Google Glasses that all teachers will be required to wear. The pupils should give in their work at the end of lessons and this work should be sent off to be marked by other elderly teachers maybe even the same ones who write the plans, or by computer software that can read essays. Maybe the work could be marked immediately if written directly onto a tablet computer.
Instead of PE all pupils will play Rollerball.
Mindfullness training will be provided by a sleep inducing gas that is pumped into classrooms at the end of the day, this will enable staff and students to sleep to cue and enable them to wake up next day already in position for a day of learning… This will save on travel costs and also free our roads up from that bloody awful school run traffic that is a blight in many of our cities.
Companion post: 51 Year Lesson Plan
Trivium 21c 
LOL
I thought this was a well constructed strategy which has a good deal of face validity. I feel however that I need to reflect upon the efficacy of your business case.
I can see the need for experienced (old) teachers to plan lessons. I can see that the expertise for planning of lessons should be passed down into eternity via the educational culture.
The difficulty I have is your suggestion that there should be teachers in the classroom. The opportunity cost of all of that “google glasses” nonsense would make it difficult to defend, no matter how enticing and efficient it might be.
I believe we should simply create a life size model of one of the few educational blggers who are experts in all subjects in all contexts. The ones who doubt the motives and competence of all other teachers and academics alike.
These “teachertalk bloggers” would simply record their voices which would be transmitted at learners at the appropriate (efficient) volume and the appropriate (efficient) pace. To facilitate any time any place learning we could place speakers on every lamppost in the land. In this way learners would be forced to be engaged. (note: there may be an issue of supervision here, as it is possible that if left to their own devices the learners may start to enjoy their earning and this would have to addressed without delay if efficiency isn’t to be lost).
The old planners would simply have to adjust the ratio of “blogger teacher talk” to “practice”. The expertise of the teacherblogger would be invuluable here in “ratio” decisions. Maybe for maths it would be 90% TT/10% P.
For English maybe the ratio would be 89% TT / 11% P. We could make up equations…. Time = 0.89TT + 0.11P.
Planners could go home and repeat these equations endlessly to the point where they become fluent in their recall. QTS could be awarded on the basis of a standardised test…how long it takes to recall the appropriate equation give a subject.
The teacher bloggers could lock the videotapes (or perhaps those new fangled DVD things) into a cupboard, lest any of those progressive types tried to get in there and change the tapes while noone was looking. That way the lessons would be the unchanged in perpetuity. The old planners are also now redundant.
Job done and no classroom teachers at all, just a few popular bloggers tweaking the ratios. As it should be. We would abolish Ofsted and simply judge the system on the basis of the number of followers, tweets and retweets gained by the edubloggerati.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One might also hook up Gatling cannons to cameras situated at strategic exit points, triggered by facial recognition software linked to a database of known truants. … this comment ended up as a small post actually “Teaching by Auto-Cue and automatics: The final (budget) cut” (http://wp.me/p3xk5V-td). Could not help it…
LikeLike
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
LikeLike