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Top Ten Frustrations As A Teacher Number 4: Constant criticism

There are way too many sticks to be beaten with in teaching, and from all sides as well. Senior management have lesson observations, targets, appraisal procedures, parents have parents evenings and complaints procedures, and students tend to just criticise to your face, although they also have the questionnaires and learner voice events.

It’s too much, and there is too much weight given to any concerns raised, whereby a case can be built against a teacher that might not actually have done anything incorrectly – it’s the fact that someone has perceived something incorrect that is the problem.

Quite often, criticisms are made and are expected to be corrected over things that the teacher has no control over. Yet it is somehow still made the teacher’s problem.

The nature of the job means that there is always something that could be improved upon, but this is also the nature of a lot of other jobs. There has to be a point, as there is in other jobs, where it is ‘good enough’, otherwise you will go on criticising forever. This never happens in teaching. Whatever is wrong, however small it is, will be picked up and will be picked at.


Have you been subjected to excessive criticism and micro-management?


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