Could she or he be attending a course on how to deal with underperforming staff? Warwick Mansell reports on a trend that is worrying teachers
Nigel Middleton jokes that the headteachers gathered in front of him might be uneasy if their staff knew where they were. "I have had several phone calls with heads saying, 'I cannot speak loudly'," says Middleton, himself a former school leader and now a professional trainer who advises leadership teams on employment issues.
"That's not surprising, is it? You are hardly going to put on the school bulletin board: 'I won't be in school this afternoon because I am going on a course on how to deal with underperforming teachers'."
In a hotel on the outskirts of Hull, Middleton is attempting to take these heads through the process they must follow in performing one of the hardest tasks they will face in their professional lives: either dramatically improving the teaching of an underperforming staff member, or sacking them if they fail to rise to the challenge.
Although it has frequently been alleged that it is too difficult to ease out professionals whose classroom skills are not up to scratch, in fact Middleton is enthusiastic about rules introduced recently which, he believes, will make this job easier.
He is even able to give his audience a "timeline", plotting the stages they could go through on the way to terminating the contract of a weak teacher who fails to improve within 18 months.
He says: "The mindset should be that if there are people ... whose performance is manifestly below the level that you would expect, you should say to yourself that by 2011 they will be working at a level of performance or they will no longer be working in my school."
Middleton's course, which his company, Head Support, is likely to take to 1,000 school leaders this academic year, comes with the Conservatives having garnered headlines in January for promising to make it easier to ease out underperforming staff. In particular, Michael Gove, the schools secretary, has pledged to scrap "arbitrary" limits on the amount of time heads can spend observing qualified teachers in the classroom to put pressure on them to improve – currently set at three hours a year.
The moves also come against a wider backdrop of frequent, though highly contested, claims that there are too many poor teachers in front of children.
So, how easy is it to sack a teacher, or at least to improve their performance before this becomes necessary? And what do heads think?
Middleton is convinced that a new set of regulations, introduced last September without fanfare, stands to make the process – though likely always to be challenging and stressful for both parties – potentially smoother.
While previously it was possible for heads to take action where there was strong evidence that a teacher was "incompetent", this course suggests that any experienced or "upper pay scale" staff member deemed not to be meeting a set of "professional standards", as defined in teachers' contracts, could ultimately face the sack if they do not improve.
Middleton's course (cost: £175 per person plus VAT) takes heads through the procedures for "dealing with" underperforming experienced teachers in about three hours. He begins by asking his audience whether they have any concerns.
"I've got one teacher who struggles to meet deadlines; assessment deadlines and that sort of thing," says one head. "Boring lessons," says another. Others talk of "poor behaviour management", or that a teacher "doesn't mark books and give feedback" and even "doesn't like children".
So, what to do? The key, says Middleton, is changes to the rules on how experienced teachers qualify for pay rises.
In 2000, the first version of a performance pay system was introduced for teaching, in which professionals with six years' experience had to demonstrate that they were teaching sufficiently well that they merited a £2,000 pay rise. Having crossed this "threshold", they were then entitled to progress further up the "upper pay scale", gaining further pay increases.
However, it quickly became clear that almost all of those applying to cross the threshold were gaining the increments. Meanwhile, in a move that Middleton points out could have unforeseen repercussions for their members, the teacher unions pressed a case with the government that the application process was itself onerous for staff in terms of workload.
So it has been revised, with rules that came into force last September meaning that teachers no longer have to provide written evidence to their head to cross the threshold and progress up the pay scale. Instead, salary decisions are simply based on heads using the existing performance management system for teachers, in which their abilities are assessed against 51 different standards.
It is this, Middleton tells his audience, that allows heads to begin the process by which staff about whom they have concerns can either be put under pressure to perform, or be eased out.
Under the new system, he says, heads should first conduct an "audit", whereby the performance of staff against each of the standards is recorded. Most staff would meet all of them. However, those who do not could have the standards they fail to meet turned into objectives for the coming year. The "timeline" produced by Middleton then suggests that a teacher might be given two terms to meet these objectives, with support provided under performance management. If they had not done so, after further evidence had been collected to check they were still not performing, they could be placed in "capability" procedures.
After a further two terms, if the teacher was still not meeting his or her targets, they could be suspended and the case referred to the school's governors to decide on dismissal. Before the start of the 2011-12 academic year, the teacher's contract could be terminated.
The courses include a talk from a local authority human resources expert, who advises the heads on how to keep the procedures going towards a potential dismissal when a teacher goes off sick.
It is unclear how many schools, even among those whose heads attended the courses, will embark on such a procedure. But Middleton says the audit system now makes the whole process much more robust and therefore palatable to a school leader.
But is it all not potentially a tad brutal? Middleton says that most teachers – maybe 95% – should have no worries.
However, he adds: "I would bet my pension that, in schools where someone is underperforming, the rest of the staff are as frustrated as the head is about it. Now there is a chance to do something about it, and heads on our courses like that."
Those on the course seem appreciative, even though most say that there are very few teachers for whom capability procedures are a consideration.
A head from a Yorkshire primary school says: "In September, we are going to start this exact process [of doing the audits] and it will be a watershed. I am confident now we will be doing the right thing."
She adds of the possibility of sacking a teacher: "Unless you are prepared to go all the way, the unions are so powerful and on your back with this that taking this decision [to sack someone] means you have to be very sure of yourself."
Another head says: "I firmly believe that these things must be addressed because, at the end of the day, it's children's education, is it not?"
Malcolm Trobe, policy director at the Association of School and College Leaders, says that the idea of putting not just incompetent, but weak or "underperforming", teachers through capability procedures potentially leading to a sacking is new and should be treated tentatively. He says: "We would urge an element of caution because a school is going to have to have cast-iron procedures if this is to work. If a person is meeting 49 of the 51 standards, say, it is going to be pretty iffy to do this. There is going to be a significant backlash from the teacher unions over the evidence base."
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, says: "Courses like this are dangerous and unnecessary. A competent head would already know the strengths and weaknesses of staff, and therefore the promotion of an audit is another example of unnecessary punitive bureaucracy.
"Underperformance is presented as incompetence and this is a gross misrepresentation. Teachers may underperform for a variety of reasons, for example: poor deployment by the headteacher into areas for which they are not trained or qualified, lack of access to appropriate training, ill health, serious family problems such as bereavement, and excessive workload and stress. None of these are to do with competence.
"It is staggering that so many heads feel the need to attend a course like this since state schools have been required by law to have a capability procedure and performance management since 1995."
Middleton responds that capability procedures and sacking should only be a last resort. "We are certainly not suggesting that competency procedures should be adopted with 'underperforming' teachers unless and until they have been shown not to meet national professional standards through a fair and transparent procedure."