Are we right to be concerned about the impact of 'Rarely Cover' on theatre visits and INSET? Will SMTs of schools adhere to the NUT guidance or will 'Rarely Cover' be viewed as just another way of putting management control before stimulation and education both for the children and their teachers? The NUT guidance states that:
'The WAMG [Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group] guidance refers to cover being undertaken in circumstances which were not foreseeable. The ‘Rarely Cover Implementation Process Guidance’ (the WAMG guidance) refers to the need for robust systems to deliver the contractual entitlement to cover for absent colleagues only rarely. Each school’s ‘robust system’ would be expected to “deal with all foreseeable events, but would not be expected to deal with unforeseeable events.'
'This definition is helpful. It is the Union’s view that most events which prompt a need for cover will be foreseeable. For example, it will be foreseeable that a number of staff are likely to take sick leave or maternity leave. In many areas of England and Wales it will be foreseeable that there may be adverse weather or traffic conditions which will affect teachers’ attendance, although it may be that any particular occurrence is itself unforeseen. It will certainly be foreseeable that there will be a need for cover to be arranged when teachers are absent from school due to other work commitments such as school trips, external meetings, or INSET. This definition of what should be included within school policies on cover allows NUT representatives to argue that all such events which take teachers out of school should be provided for within the school cover policy.'
(Arrangements for Teacher Cover: Guidance for Divisions, Associations and NUT Representatives, May 2009)
But what do you think? What is your experience? Should we be concerned about this? Some of you have already responded - please click the title of this blog to access comments so far.
Some Drama departments have informally arranged cover between the members so as to accommodate things like theatre trips, with one covering for another in exchange for another lesson being released.
ReplyDeleteSadly most of us are one person departments and arranging a similar swap with a department like, say, English might essentially have to go through the Head of that Department and it is already becoming a cumbersome process and less likely to work.
There are always theatre companies who will come into school- however I think we all agree that if we are to encourage theatre-goers of tomorrow this is less likely to happen unless young people feel 'at home' there. Finding seats, ordering drinks for the interval, wearing the 'right clothes' knowing what to read from the programme are all the 'hidden' curriculum of the theatre and we are failing to ensure audiences of the future, as well as to teach social skills which access social mobility, if we do not provide regular experiences of this kind.
One could argue that on a political level theatre attendance is an essential part of being an active part of a democracy.
The common man faced and fought the mighty church over their rights to perform their simple plays on their carts. This was the basis of the common man's freedom of speech and right to challenge the status quo. If young people do not receive a thorough grounding of theatre going they are politically short-changed both as an audience who should be thinking about what is being challenged, and a dramatist who should be considering their world as a playwrite- even if the play never gets written for an audience of hundreds, the mental process underpinning this is surely the very essence of what education should be about (an effects things like the kind of parent you are going to be.)
As we grieve over young women who 'never vote' recalling the efforts of the Suffragettes ('The suffra-who?')similarly I recall the common man and his rickety cart - their fore-runner - who is similarly forgotten in our current society who seems a bit too happy to lie back at home and engage in TV shopping as entertainment.
It is, sadly, rare to find even a graduate of Theatre who has any notion of the political importance of who they are and what they represent ('We didn't do medieval at college'.)
Drama, although officially unscathed by the National Curriculum's introduction has in places become the teaching of unrooted skills - ('We are doing mime, because it is the next scheme of work - we got it from a book - it's really good.') The flawed philosophy of the other subjects which had their raison d'etre destroyed has over time worn its way into Drama to varying degrees.
If we do not pick up and run with the deeper levels of our subject which used to be drilled in during initial teacher training - we are now the only ones left in the staffroom who are able to do this apart from Sociology (now rarely found apart from at KS5), and Dance (often 'part of PE')we are failing to deliver an essential part of the democratic education as well as a core part of Drama education.
There must be ways of getting our youngsters to the theatre - and we must find them.
Today's Guardian, 3rd August, has an article on page 11. The headline is "New rules on cover for teachers threaten outings, say heads.
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