SMT
in schools are masters of manipulation, more so than any chief executive or
managing director in any cut throat business you can think of. In order to
succeed as a senior manager in schools, you have to be able to make yourself
look like a reasonable, competent person satisfying their duty of care
responsibilities in full when in fact you are a zero tolerance, teacher bashing
bully who would sooner ruin someone’s career and life than admit they’d made a
mistake.
Here’s
how SMT justify their positions whilst simultaneously keeping the workload down
and the pressure on staff up.
Observations
The
first point of call for every struggling teacher is just what you always wanted
– increased observations. It’s time and effort on the part of SMT, or the
minion they’ve appointed to the task, and so it makes them look like they’ve
been addressing the issue. But repeatedly measuring performance does not
increase that performance automatically. Nor does using the extra observations
to develop extra and increased criticisms. If anything, the extra observations
are used as extra evidence in the case against you.
Setting
Targets
Setting
specific targets to help you as a poor misguided incapable teacher improve
makes managers look like they are helping you. They are specifically telling
you what needs to be done, which gets rid of any claims from you that they are
being too vague and moving the goalposts all the time. Be aware that even if
you achieve these targets, unless you can prove it beyond all reasonable
argument, you’re still toast. “Yes, but I haven’t seen you doing this.” SMT are also within their right to either
invent new problems after you’ve solved the old ones as requested, or to say,
“You have achieved everything we set out, but you’re still not good enough.”
Expensive
Consultants
Sometimes,
although less likely these days, managers will buy in a consultant who will
work with a teacher one on one to improve their standards. It makes SMT look
good because they have invested in you and thrown some money at the problem. It
doesn’t work because, well, have you ever met a consultant?
Allowing
Union Rep In
Telling
you to bring a union rep to a meeting makes managers look super confident that
they’re not doing anything wrong and have got nothing to hide. In fact, union
reps do little but ensure that all laws have been followed (despite their lack
of any legal training) and that all internal procedures have been followed
(despite them having been set by the manipulative manager to begin with). They
are not going to say anything about bullying, manipulation or scapegoating, and
so the SMT is 100% safe.
Employee
Support Line
Some
larger schools and colleges have employee support lines in place. It makes the
manager look like they care about their teacher’s mental health, and probably
ticks a box somewhere as well. I don’t know about you, but I would not phone a
part of my own workplace to have a cry about said workplace in a million years.
I’ve never heard of any struggling teacher ever using these. I’d be hyper wary
that they were not confidential. If you need a helpline or someone to talk to,
go third party.
Agreed
References
You
might think you’re getting a good deal when you get offered an agreed
reference. It’s better than the bad reference SMT would give after all, but
only marginally. SMT are making it look like they are binding their own tongues
by not allowing them to say what they’d like about you, but in reality an
agreed reference screams to a new employer that something went wrong. So they
will phone your old manager. Who isn’t bound to not say anything verbally, only
to not put it in writing.
Reasonable
Adjustments
Actually
I’d say that this wasn’t a common one, or a very obvious one, but I have heard
of it happening every so often. SMT will mess about with reasonable
adjustments, either as part of you becoming disabled with a mental illness, or
as part of just helping you get your performance sorted. Firstly, they might
invent their own reasonable adjustments rather than wait for a health
professional to advise them, and of course, these might not be very reasonable
at all. Also, I’ve heard of retrospective reasonable adjustments being put in
place, so that they might suddenly remove something you’ve been working hard on
all this time, which doesn’t actually reduce your workload as you’ve already done
all the work for it and already suffered the stress caused by that workload.
Are
there any other methods you’ve noticed your SMT using to make themselves look
good whilst bringing you down behind the scenes? I’d love to hear about them,
please email me.
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