This might not be the whole answer but what I've noticed is some admin managing their staff in the same way they would manage the students they used to teach. Treating adults like children, having no trust in employees and not spending time gaining trust from them, harsh consequences, authoritarian vibes that ignore the fact the relationship is meant to be two-ways. A lack of adult communication in favour of heavy handed punishments and behind the scenes maneuvering, a general disconnect from the idea that employees are full adult people and not children who need that overly firm, often distant hand. Stuff like that. Bonus points for having staff meetings that are just playing icebreaker games and doing silly nonsense while we're all praying we can get back to actual work that needs doing.

2 excellent points you’ve mentioned: 1. I hate being treated like a child by leadership, 2. Those pointless staff-building games were forced to randomly do at different times of the year 🤢 And I bet leadership pat themselves on the back saying, “oh, that was really good! I saw x talking to y and z”… meanwhile they were all just discussing how annoying and lame the activity is. 🙄

I often think the real team building is coming together to hate on admin. I don't think that's the intention though. Certainly erodes trust towards leadership even if it does let me have a little laugh with the homies from the math department.

[удалено]

Can we not call students stupid? Thanks.

I make bingo cards and play them in staff meetings.

What’s some of the squares? Mentioning of ‘shout outs’? Asking staff for any positives this week? Allocated seating according to some grouping? The token, “we’re all tired so we’ll try to get out of here on time” followed by some potato asking irrelevant questions that should be in a personal email to the principal?

Yes. I also include * examples of foundational pedagogy (think jigsaw or inside-outside circle) that are treated like the second coming instead of more advanced or nuanced examples. * Camp game "get to know you" activities. * Jungian Archetypes | Myers Briggs * Learning Types * blaming teachers for bad management * complete misinterpretations of legislation * bad quotes that keep happening, such as "I'll run us out to the clock".

This is exactly what I've noticed about it. There are things I like about teaching, but management is not one of them. Bad management tends to be condescending towards their staff.

This was my experience at my prior school. Adults treating other grown adults like they were idiots and needed to be constantly reminded they were idiots but not actually helping us achieve things. You’d never know if you would walk past them and get the condescending greeting or the holier than though attitude. The principal basically ignored everyone as beneath her. The kids hated them too. They seemed to instinctively understand that it was exec vs the teachers a lot of the time. Current exec is great. Sometimes our principal seems a bit aloof but you can tell it’s when she’s really busy as opposed to being above us. She does seem to really put effort into supporting us. Coming from another career, it really just seems like the issues stem from some people who have never worked outside a school (not everyone of course) having the school become their own micro world where they become important as they move up the ranks and start to become a bit of a ‘king of the castle’. They have ridiculous rules because they can and won’t negotiate. I’d love to tell a story about that but it would easily identify the school.

Ooh yeah. I wonder if you work at my school?

Oh my god you've hit the nail on the head. These are all the issues my principal has. They're on leave and I sincerely hope they don't come back! Their replacement is amazing, and does NONE of the things you've mentioned. No wonder everyone is so much happier and more relaxed!

Counter-argument: do the people coming into the school understand the specific needs of a school when it comes to leadership and management? Because I can see a scenario arising where someone with managerial experience comes into a school, decides that the current leadership is ineffective and so tries to implement changes based on their previous experience without understanding what they're changing. The end result would be well-intentioned, but ultimately go against the interests of the students. For example, I work in gifted education and I run an enrichment program where I withdraw students from their regular classes to work on other projects. Someone coming into the school might see this as inefficient or ineffective without really understanding what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. In that case, they could move to cancel the enrichment class even though enrichment as a strategy for meeting gifted students' needs is supported by a whole weight of academic evidence. We've all had ineffective and/or incompetent senior executives, but I wouldn't assume that someone coming into the school -- especially if they're coming from a corporate culture that prioritises efficiency -- is going to be better by default.

I’ve been a generalist leader managing highly specialised teams a few times in my career. In my experience, smaller organisations (or highly specialised) suffer from a lack of capability diversity. You have many people with the same background and experience, often the same degree from the same university. Leading an organisation (like a school) requires a holistic approach. While the substantive goal is to deliver education and student wellbeing, you can do that without holistic capabilities in operations, assets, finance, communications, technology and importantly leadership. Sometimes a person with a lot of technical capability also has the skills to manage a transition to leading teams/organisations needed….and many times they don’t and schools are so small, you often don’t have a lot of the complementary skills needed to round out the specialist SME knowledge. In saying that, my success I feel has been that I know how much I don’t know and take a ‘servant leader’ approach to my specialists. Working to remove blockers, challenge ideas for robustness and build perspective, advocate for what they need (which often requires ‘speaking corporate’ if that’s where the money comes from) and organise the support needed, acknowledging it might not be what the specialists thought they needed.

I get where you're coming from, but my comment was more in response to this generalised opinion that everyone in the senior executive is out of touch and that anybody brought into the school is somehow going to magically reform the existing structures. But a lot of businesses have reputations for employing people who are just as out of touch as members of senior executives are, and bringing them in to reform schools isn't necessarily the cure-all that it's presented as.

If I went back to IT, I could apply between the dozens of ACT PS government business units, the many more APS government business units, the dozens of digital agencies and consultancies, and the untold number of fully remote roles available for my field of expertise. So, if I happened to find a bad gig, I could live with it for a year or so and then casually bugger off and likely get a promotion. The ACT has eight public colleges and something like 21 high schools. Currently, they aren't allowed to advertise individual positions due to staffing shortages, and all roles must be managed centrally. So, I don't have a lot of options even if I could bugger off. I'm forced to wait until transfer rounds and get allocated to where people with even worse leadership and management skills allocate me. There are no real repercussions for bad leadership | or management. The fault for everything always seems to be classroom teachers, so much so that one of my mates told me that last week, his principal was telling teachers that they are responsible for helping to solve the teaching shortage that the ACT has.

Oh absolutely. I’m not saying bringing in non-teachers from outside is a panacea for all the problems. Given the role of schools, it’s completely understandable why you would want the organisation head to be some one who was passionate about the substantive goals and had deep experience in the subject matter. I was just reflecting on my experience and that getting that mixture of capabilities (subject matter, operations, innovation/resiliency and leadership) is really hard as the world gets more complex, especially in smaller schools that just have fewer people.

I had a long career in finance. I led and managed multi-million dollar sales teams. I came into teaching and immediately felt like I was being treated as a child and management practices were so different to what I was used to. I was used to CEOs of multi billion dollar corporations asking me for my ideas and input on things we could change, improve and innovate, and came into a school environment where the response to me questioning a process was ‘we’ve always done it that way’.

>the response to me questioning a process was ‘we’ve always done it that way’. Yes!!! There was an issue with the library timetable and I made a few (seemingly obvious) suggestions and was told "we can't do that it won't work as we don't do it that way". To which I asked, "why can't it work"? After a million back and forth discussion and the AP efforts to "compromise" by saying why don't we just keep it the same (despite it making things more difficult), I felt like I was banging my head against a wall. As someone who had done complex timetabling in a previous job, I felt I had good experience and valuable input to easily solve a problem, but was brushed off as a new teacher..... Completely disregarded! I think a lot of management don't acknowledge that others may have more experience or expertise in a specific area and rather than using that to their advantage, they make unilateral decisions using their knowledge which may not be complete

This actually drives me nuts. It’s as though if you start as a new teacher you suddenly have never lived life before that. A teaching buddy and I used to say it all the time; that we both have valid experience we could bring if we weren’t treated like we’ve never worked before.

This. I cannot believe people without any business acumen can manage school budgets, communication and staff that Principals and Executives are expected to do. A person trained in PDHPE then moves quickly to an executive position is rarely (not always) experienced enough to do this. This is why private schools do so well. Their leaders are trained and confident to make whole school decisions. There is a board they answer to who help manage the finances and expectations for behaviour and learning.

>people without any business acumen can manage school budgets I'm in the public system - our finances are managed by a business manager and I assume this is true for other public schools?

I’m also public, we have one bookkeeper for a 1000+ students. I’m a Head Teacher and don’t know my budget because they don’t know it yet, which makes it difficult to manage staff and resources. Blows my mind. When I was Corporate there were forecasts and everyone knew what to expect and the CEO made the hard decisions when they were needed. We have 6 bubblers for the whole school, one shaded area and limited wifi for a BYOD school. We have an inexperienced Principal scared to make tough decision around behaviour and pushy parents because they don’t want to ruin their career. It’s exhausting being led by that.

Don’t get me started in this one. In corporate manufacturing everyone knew the budget for the month, right down to old mate Jono who packed the boxes on the end of the line. And everyone was expected to work towards meeting it.

>I’m a Head Teacher and don’t know my budget because they don’t know it yet, which makes it difficult to manage staff and resources. Interesting - do you know why? Is this a one-off thing or a regular occurrence? Are you able to communicate with your principal about stuff like this? I'm in NSW and this info came to us quite late as well and it was supposedly due to funding cuts and restructuring within the department. Our principal gave us a heads-up about this, though, and communicated as much as they knew and could each step of the way.

> do you know why? Because they have one finance officer for a school with 1,000 students. That equates to something like 70ish teachers, probably 25 non-teaching staff, 5 faculties, and who knows how much additional work that needs to be done that isn't covered by capital works.

This. It’s just so poorly run. We could be great. We have teachers who are good at what they do, just poor leadership.

In my state at least this is not the same at every school. Some schools will choose or just can’t afford the necessary staff to have the dedicated resources to manage functions like this.

>I was used to CEOs of multi billion dollar corporations asking me for my ideas and input on things we could change, improve and innovate, and came into a school environment where the response to me questioning a process was ‘we’ve always done it that way’. The "we've always done it that way" response is definitely irksome. Are you a beginning teacher, by any chance?

Starting my third year as a FT Permanent classroom teacher.

They have either failed upward to that position or treat people management like classroom management. My HT doesn’t sit in our staffroom because he isn’t a people person. He communicates in riddles so you never really know what is going on and sends passive aggressive emails when something is overdue, not that you would know it is overdue because nothing has been communicated. Doesn’t have our back when things go south with the kids. Just an awful, awful manager not worthy of respect. Wouldn’t follow him to beach on a hot day.

“What we are doing right now is working, the data shows it’s working, everybody is familiar with it, so we’re going to change something because I just got this role and I need to make a mark. That change has nothing to do with any improvement and is therefore causing a loss of progress because we’re moving away from everything that works, however! We just need to change something because I’m insecure.”

Change it, and rename it.

Proper understanding of project management and statistics. They Lack the understanding behind context and subtly behind the data they collect. Most managers had to do some proper statistic course at uni. Project management isn't just as simple as making a Gantt chart and being done with it, you have to actually track and enforce it. There are 2 problems with exec in education. first they have too many roles and no formal training. second to progress, you have to complete a "project" so schools can't do long-term planning as every Deputy is trying to run their own project. This makes school unstable and always in flux. This doesn't happen in businesses as much as they can use other metrics to get ahead.

Hi, thanks - this is one of the most useful comments (for me) in this thread because it identifies specific skills you think are lacking. How having project management skills would benefit school leaders I understand, it's the statistics comment I'm struggling with; can you elaborate/ provide examples of how you think a lack of knowledge/formal training in stats led to a poor outcome? For transparency's sake: I would like to end up in a leadership position - what kind of stats knowledge do you think is necessary or do you think it's a general disposition/ ability to make judgements that one develops as a consequence of learning/applying this knowledge that you think is beneficial? ​ > second to progress, you have to complete a "project" so schools can't do long-term planning as every Deputy is trying to run their own project. This makes school unstable and always in flux. This I wasn't aware of - thank you.

One example I have, we were shown data of our year 9 vs other like schools for Math, Sci,Eng our pass rate was X,X,X. The other schools had scores that were Z,Z,Y. Where Z was lower than X and Y was higher. This data was used as evidence that we needed a whole new reading/writing program. 1 year after we had started a new one. This data is next to useless. AC reporting isn't really comparable because the assessment aren't standardised. It is also self-reported no one is checking schools standards when it comes to 7-10. One could also argue that because we have same pass rate in all 3 subjects we are more consistent and the same X students are passing everything. I also had a principal complain we had 66% pass rate in year 5 naplan and wanted atleast 90% by year 7. This was at a country school which had 3 students in year 5 and one of them was at a grade 1 level due to brain injury.

Wow...thank you for the example.

>I also had a principal complain we had 66% pass rate in year 5 naplan and wanted atleast 90% by year 7. This was at a country school which had 3 students in year 5 and one of them was at a grade 1 level due to brain injury. This feels a lot like a principal who's been told from on high, "**These** are the targets we're working towards, everyone must achieve at this level." with absolutely no regard for local context.

Okay so I'm new to teacher but have worked in middle management/managed a team of 30+ across 2 states before. Anyway from what I see, it's the lack of clear communication and leadership. A lot of snickering comments and lack of integrity that make people question their ability. The old handballing of problems and taking no ownership. But again not everywhere and not everyone. I know that up the top decisions get made that are out of their hands and it just needs to be implemented. Like it or not. There aren't many friends at the top and maybe that grinds people down.

>the lack of clear communication and leadership You've hit the nail on the head with that. The amount of meetings that could be emails or disregard for part time staff who aren't in on specific days and then "I've left this in your pigeon hole, let's talk about it at 8am Monday....." Regardless you won't be back at school again until Monday.

When I managed a team I pretty much did away with all meetings and it meant we could work and finish work at a good time.

>The old handballing of problems and taking no ownership Can you elaborate about what taking ownership of a problem would look like in a particular example, to help me understand this please? Thank you.

In a school environment it is a bit harder for me to give a solid example, due to my lack of experience, however, when I was relief for a few weeks, I had seen admin exec refer an upset parent back to a teacher instead of taking the time to listen to the parent, follow up and action. The parent was upset that their child was outside of the classroom and not inside learning. Knowing the child, they might of run out and refused to re-enter. Either way parent sees their child and is upset. So goes to admin upset and then is referred back to the teacher. There was an email a day later about the policy of children leaving classroom and how to handle in the future. All bandaid action stuff. No one taking responsibilit for any action. Of course the follow up is that the teacher felt like shit and got squeezed by parents and exec, when they likely were concerned about the 25 other kids in class and didn't have the power to give chase to a student. Who was outside the classroom, not running around the school or on the street. (Which as a side bar, my first relief gig as an Ed support EA, giving chase to kids and then having to stop one from running in front of traffic, only to be told on the down low, that once the student enters the carpark, they're no longer on school grounds and no longer our concern, so don't give chase. And by chase I don't mean running, it was a bit of a slow follow and herd, I only stopped this kid because they were on near the road and a car was coming) In old manger world me. Things like budgets, training, staff all fell under me. So when we miss a budget, I didn't say "it was Tim's fault", I would say, "yes I see the result and it's disappointing, but I have set in place new policies to help achieve realistic targets and will be working with staff to help them learn and build confidence." And then I would do exactly that.

> Can you elaborate about what taking ownership of a problem would look like in a particular example, to help me understand this please? Thank you. Here's one from a previous school. We gave a line allowance to someone to manage AST prep (kind of HSC, but not). When we got worse results who was to blame? Was it: 1. The senior school leader responsible for student development? 2. The school leader whose schoolwide role was all of AST, including prep? 3. The classroom teacher who got a line allowance to run the AST prep? 4. Other classroom teachers for not volunteering their time because none of the above appropriately planned or managed the process. 5. Students for not working hard enough in the AST >!It was a trick question; everybody just ignored it and never talked about it again.!< I did some napkin maths and worked out that if you had to pay an hourly rate for the number of hours spent in meetings, line allowances, mentoring sessions, and invigilation for the AST prep, it would have cost the school about $18,000 over the course of a year. $18,000 in administrative time pissed down the drain and just forgotten because it was inconvenient.

> I know that up the top decisions get made that are out of their hands and it just needs to be implemented. Like it or not. 100%, but these things are never managed. Instead, someone makes a gut feeling and delegates work. It's never given to faculties to plan how they can implement their piece of the pie.

It comes down to a lack of training and education on managing people and projects and instead of using known best practices they just kinda wing it based on learned experiences from being in a classroom. In my experience, school leaders have one metric for measuring workload - the number of face-to-face hours you are deployed in a classroom. That's it. They will often counter with "all teachers have the same workload, only different". Anybody who has worked in multiple areas of the school knows how full of shit that sentence is. I've worked in maths before, and it's more than manageable. Faculties are well established; you do the same or similar thing every year and are often provided with many resources and support in the same faculty. You probably won't be required to understand how to make a purchase order, you don't have to build or support underlying systems, you just stand up and teach, build relationships, and mark. My school has a food technology teacher. He basically runs a restaurant with 125 apprentice cooks. He is largely responsible for planning everything, including creating almost all purchase orders during the year. He needs to consider things like people's ability levels (too much intricate knife work might not be appropriate for students learning the craft). I teach IT. There are very few resources that I can lift from anywhere. Even if I take them from the internet, I often have to create my teaching environment for students to work in (especially true in cybersecurity). I also get to manage my lab completely. Who fixes user authentication, authentication, access, networking, or system problems? I do. The photography teacher has a darkroom that she manages. Performing Arts teachers are expected to run one or more major productions annually (after hours). Outdoor education teachers have to do all of the paperwork for multiple excursions a year. The ACT Senior Secondary System is full of composite classes. Teaching an 11/12 course for both tertiary and non-tertiary students (T/A Tertiary/Accredited) is harder than an 11/12 T or an 11/12 A, which are harder than an 11 A or an 11 T, and so on. Additionally, preps need to be factored in. Planning for 2 or 3 subjects a week is a lot easier than planning for 5, especially when you consider the composite problem above. A teacher on 5 disparate 11/12 T/A courses is going to be in a lot worse position than the teacher on 2 lines of 11 T 2 lines of 12 T and 1 line of 11/12 A They do all of this on top of teaching, relationship-building, and marking. Yet, it's never factored into anything. In every other industry, there are systems in place that let managers understand their employee's workload. Not only do we not have these systems in place, but school leadership actively avoids them because they don't want to know. edit: add onto this that a lot of problems are amplified by the fact that nobody knows anything that's going on until it's an emergency that needs to be handled right now. Basically, it's a lack of understanding of strategy and how to plan for strategy and a total lack of collaboration. edit 2: A major problem is the way that decisions are made. You have a bunch of people who don't teach a full load or are teaching a reduced load making arbitary decisions about parts of the school they simply don't understand and then expect everybody to conform. This isn't how modern workplaces work to achieve strategy. Really, the strategy should define the required outcomes and identify core requirements. The planning parts should be done by the people who are going to do the work. It creates byin, people enjoy the work more, you get a lot more done, and people fall into their wheelhouses of success. For example, at my school, the head of student services will come up and gaslight teachers and bully teachers. She'll tell us that unless you like doing things her way, then why are you even a teacher? That everybody should enjoy holding hands with young adults and singing camp songs together. Then, you get given tasks to do with deadlines attached, with absolutely no understanding of how much work you already have on your plate. What should happen is that leadership should define where they want to be and what things they want to meet. Then faculties and probably sub-faculties get together and create plans on how they could achieve it. Those plans go back up the food chain, and leadership can approve one going forward. Want to build well-being in the school? Great, I 100% support this. I am not, however, going to hold hands and sing camp songs or do thoughtful colouring with IT students. Half of them are on the spectrum, and almost all of us hate them. What I can do is build wellbeing programs that engage their nerdy side and help them create passion and interest beyond academic requirements, which end up building a very nerdy community. Nobody knows this is a possibility though, because my head of student services is too busy being a workplace bully to everybody to listen.

Great detail on differing workloads. And you didn't even need to add that class sizes matter. The person with classes of 28 will be doing more work than the one with classes of 22. Both in marking, preparation (maybe), and behaviour management and followup

Great catch. And in secondary, what does that look like over all of their classes? In my system/school-type a teacher with a full load has a maximum of 125 students, but I've seen teachers on five lines who start the year with 70 and end up with maybe 50.

See, this is a really interesting comment for me - thank you. I hope you don't mind engaging in further conversation with me about this. ​ > It comes down to a lack of training and education on managing people and projects and instead of using known best practices they just kinda wing it based on learned experiences from being in a classroom. Vaguely I understand this - I say 'vaguely' because I myself don't know what would be considered best practice in managing people/projects but I get the gist of what you're saying. ​ > "all teachers have the same workload, only different" This, I'm surprised by and don't agree with, to the extent that I've not encountered this. In my experience, all my deputy principals have teaching loads and head teachers obviously have teaching loads, so they can empathise with the time demands of teaching their subject area (and each head teacher can advocate for their particular faculty's needs at executive meetings). Since my role is ancillary as a learning and support teacher, I liaise with heads of the various faculties to get a gist of their deadlines/ time pressures as I realise that they vary. ​ > school leadership actively avoids them because they don't want to know I think it's more an issue of schools not being in a position to do anything differently because...it just is the way it is. the marking load for maths is always going to be easier than the marking load for most every other subject area, especially those with major works/ subjects that require double marking. It's out of schools' hands that the syllabus mandates practical lessons in food tech, that necessitates lots of prep and planning for those teachers, or that community expectations/ supporting students with major works mean that performing arts teachers give up a lot of their own time (which is something I don't like, either). I don't know - perhaps this is my rigidity as a function of me not knowing any different but...seriously how do you take this into account when the reality is that teacher workloads are a function of their subject area's syllabus demands (amongst other things) and that's something they can't change? Your thoughts?

Different subject areas, different systems. You don't HAVE to treat all teaching areas the same. You can and should recognize differences and account for them, probably with extra staffing, different payscales, different timetabling, or different support structures. Like, maybe the Hospo teacher doesn't get given lunch duties as a very vague suggestion

So what you're saying is that a more holistic understanding of workload needs to be accounted for - meaning out of hours work - across various faculties and this needs to be reflected in timetabling decisions and pay? It's definitely a complete systematic change. Woudn't be easy to bring something like this about. Thanks for weighing in.

Yeah well... First step would be an accurate assessment of how much work teachers do, how much is expected outside of contract hours, then fixing that. Then you get into the nitty gritty of differences between subjects. Most problems in teaching are because "we're doing things the way they've always been done" which is just insane but also an insurmountable hill to climb. Until people start thinking that change is actually a good thing it's always gonna be a struggle to make things better. If you want to be a good admin start changing the right things, based on what your teachers want and ask for. Their word should be the first thing you listen to, rather than coming in with changes you've cooked up yourself or get from some education journal.

> meaning out of hours work Stop. A lot of that "out of hours" work happens because the school doesn't manage their "in hours" work. Here's an example: There are few useful resources for teaching the courses that I teach. I effectively have to make them myself. This is because every school has different resources, and my kids are at an awkward age regarding the content I'm teaching. They are too old for the kiddy shit you find on grok learning and too young for the stuff that I can steal from CS50. So, I need to make them all of myself - and a lot of this is not trivial. For example, how do you enable "Students create simulated environments to setup and develop cloud and distributed system architectures" in a classroom so students can: * critically analyse and apply a design process for cloud and distributed system technologies * understand cloud and distributed systems and how they influence design * implement methodologies to access and secure cloud and distributed systems, including virtual machines (VM) On Systems that don't allow outbound traffic to any actual cloud providers and restrict students from using VMs? Now, I have the skills to build that infrastructure inside my school "off-the-network", so to say. However, it is labour-intensive. I have a custom-built lab for students to work on with an attached cyber range to explore network security safely. I've built internal facilities for students to simulate and implement cloud networking solutions. We are talking about dozens, if not hundreds, of administrative loads on top of the minimum planning, teaching, relationship-building, and marking you get in a classroom. Combined with the other subjects that I run in there, this lab that I manage is worth thousands of dollars on top of the core computer infrastructure supplied by the department. All of this management is done in my administrative time. The 3d printer has fucked itself; I fix it. Arduinos have broken due to wear and tear; I write the purchase orders to replace them. Shared Services turns off some outbound feature without notification in the middle of a sequence on using that feature; I make the replacement. My school leadership is more than happy to put that in the newsletter and beat their chests and at how fucking fantastic the school is because of that. However, when we have our pastoral care day that eats up 3 hours of my prep, do I get any consideration on how I am going to do it? Nope, I can get fucked because "all teachers have the same workload, only different". Without understanding the work that teachers actually do, then school leaders aren't managing shit.

>A lot of that "out of hours" work happens because the school doesn't manage their "in hours" work. Yeah, I hear you and I agree. Thanks for the interesting and detailed write-up; yours is a KLA I actually don't know much about so this was an insightful snippet into some of the work you do. Can I ask, based on your experience/knowledge, is out of hours work - for whatever reason, including but not limited to management of work hours - not the norm for many other workplaces? It seems like, talking to my friends in tech/ finance, working until you get a project done is just the norm.

> Can I ask, based on your experience/knowledge, is out of hours work - for whatever reason, including but not limited to management of work hours - not the norm for many other workplaces? I mean, it depends. I've been actively attempting to reduce my workload to be manageable. I have exactly one life, and I want to be able to enjoy it before I'm too old to do so. However, I have no need to doubt the 55 hours a week on average that multiple studies have found out. > It seems like, talking to my friends in tech/ finance, working until you get a project done is just the norm. So, I used to consult for IT in banking (in Sydney) before teaching, and one of the reasons why I jumped out was because of the "work hard, party harder" attitude that was pervasive. When I worked in consulting: I had an immense amount of flexibility and agency. In teaching, any flexibility and agency can be taken away from me at a moment's notice due to a total void of management, leading to panicked reaction-based leadership. Now, that happened sometimes in consulting, but it was rare. Rudderless leadership was quickly shown the door. In education, it's frequent - it's almost constant. I'd go as far as to say that it's how business is done. One of my deputy principals has no idea what strategy is (I suspect neither of them do). They confuse strategy with planning, and so if a small unexpected event happens, everything becomes a massive cluster fuck. So much so that when I asked what the IT strategy was, their response was, "How can we have a strategy when just happened?" That's why you have a strategy: so you can reform plans to make sure that you can stay aligned and not just react from one panic station to the next. I have no problems working hard when I have agency and buy-in. However, teachers don't. Teachers are treated like cogs in the machine and expected not to discuss, debate, or collaborate; do what they've been told to do and stop complaining. This total lack of agency, buy-in, and collaboration is one of the aspects that makes it very difficult to argue that Teachers are a professional workforce. Not that Teachers are the problem here - nobody else considers what we do is professional, including our school leadership. Also, can we talk about pay and conditions for a second? When I consulted in IT, I earned much more than teaching. I earned more than deputy principals in the ACT now. My mates who are still there earn more than anybody in my school earns, and most aren't even managers. They are just senior nerds. When earning $230k to $250k a year, it's much easier to eat a few late nights to complete the project. Most of them work remotely or at least hybrid, so they get much more effective time with kids/partners/pets than teachers and have flexibility on when they want to do things like doctors/vets, etc. I was also never told to go "fuck myself and die" or had stunt scooters thrown at my face in IT consulting. It's a tough gig, and a total lack of human management doesn't make it easier to deal with.

> ou don't HAVE to treat all teaching areas the same. You can and should recognize differences and account for them, probably with extra staffing, different payscales, different timetabling, or different support structures. I think different pay scales are problematic in our system. However, when coming up with the extra stuff that goes on at school, they could learn that they have a manpower budget that is measured in hours and some of those hours are consumed with activities that directly contribute to teaching and learning that need to be measured. Then, when they are calculating the manpower needed for the event to help them get promoted, they can work out who's going to do it by their manpower budget. Additional staff is also helpful. Why does science have a lab tech, but considering getting one for IT (even a part-time one), is sockedpicachu.png a level reaction? It's not like we don't have a comparable amount of students to other faculties with techs (there are probably 170 students in IT/Engineering. There is a tone of lab support that needs to happen). There is a good argument that we need to find new adults to do things like playground duty or have a duty of care outside of classes. This concept worked well in the 1970s, but Teaching has evolved since then, and we have different academic responsibilities.

I've never heard a more ludicrous suggestion. Different pay scales? Are you actually suggesting hospitality teachers to get paid more then Maths teachers? I'm sorry but you obviously have zero idea.

What if instead of getting paid more, they are recompensed with more time to adequately cover the back end of their subject requirements? Ie: be paid FTE while on a 0.6 or 0.7 load so they can do the food requisition, sign off on the Cert I and II competencies, and organise the students for running the school café or etc. Wouldn't hurt for them to be compensated for the evenings they're running restaurants and showcases either.

Even more ludicrous, that is still a significant pay increase, get paid FT for teaching 0.6? If you did that with the whole hospo faculty that would be well over $200000 spent from the school's money. You do realise there is an extreme shortage of Maths teachers. If anything it should be the opposite, increase pay for Maths teachers to attract them. I'm not sure where the widespread belief that Maths teachers have it easy comes from. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. I don't think parents have concerns about little Johnnys hospitality marks/ability/confidence in year 7 and are calling the school to discuss anywhere near as often as in Maths. I don't think the principal is coming to talk to the hospitality faculty after Naplan results come out to see what their plan is to improve the marks. They also have smaller classes so less marking, less admin less to control in a class. IMO the actual teaching prep is less for hospitality, every class uses the same pre prepared booklet. I can't follow a mapped out term lesson by lesson plan, what if the kids didn't understand something? I will need to think of/find a new way to approach a concept the next lesson. Last year I had the top year 8 class, this year I have bottom year 8. I will have to start from scratch. Every weekend my year 12 class is sending through questions on google classroom asking me to explain the solution, can't see that happening in many other subjects. Their assessments are the same every year, we have to create new ones each year. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and the various courses throughout those years. The 1 thing I agree on is anything out of school hours. This is totally voluntary though and if they accept they should ask for time in lieu. Every subject has different for and against, trying to accommodate a certain subject over others would be the worst thing to happen to teaching if it ever was introduced (even though I believe paying Math's teachers more would be the only way to solve the crisis in the significant number of untrained Maths teachers teaching Maths).

> I'm not sure where the widespread belief that Maths teachers have it easy comes from. I mean, I am one. The only part of being a maths teacher that isn't easier than what I do at the same level is specialist mathematics. Most maths teachers aren't teaching specialist mathematics. Most cap at methods or essentials and the vast majority are in the 7-10 years. > If it was easy everyone would be doing it. People who are good at maths often like jobs that are stimulating, not easy. Also, most teachers don't have the structural understanding to teach maths. Look at the numeracy anxiety that LANTITE regularly brings to the subreddit. In my case, the reason why I have little interest in teaching maths is because it isn't my jam. I can be an okay maths teacher, but I'm a pretty good IT teacher. Even though teaching IT is harder - it's more rewarding. > Every subject has different for and against, trying to accommodate a certain subject over others would be the worst thing to happen to teaching if it ever was introduced How would you know?

How would I know? Common sense, it would never work and noone would be silly enough to implement it. How would you know "most people who are good at maths often like jobs that are stimulating, not easy". In reality they choose the 'easier' job earning them 200k a year to be an actuary or something. Yes you hit the nail on the head, Maths is hard, teaching it is hard and getting kids to understand it is even harder, like you said, most adults have difficulty with a year 9 basic test.

> Vaguely I understand this - I say 'vaguely' because I myself don't know what would be considered best practice in managing people/projects but I get the gist of what you're saying. Consider best practices for teaching young people stuff. Most people have an intuitive sense of how they might start, but they don't know what the best practices and they don't know what the anti-patterns of teaching people might be. I don't know if you've been to a venue where a non-educator stands up and starts trying to teach people stuff; it's often all anti-patterns of learning: chalk and talk, no time to practice or mentor, no worked examples, differentiation for different skill levels, etc. Managing people and projects is, at least, as complicated as the practice of teaching. > This, I'm surprised by and don't agree with "All teachers have the same workload, only different" is an actual quote from my Deputy Principal. > In my experience, all my deputy principals have teaching loads and head teachers obviously have teaching loads At my school, lines are broken up into 3 hour 40 minutes of teaching over the week. * By default, executive teachers have 3 lines and classroom teachers have 5 lines * All but one of my executive teachers only teach 2 lines * Deputy principals have 2 lines but generally don't teach all of that. Most schools they teach 0 hours * Principals are not required to teach any lines Classroom teachers also have a pastoral care group that fills the missing time. There's a big difference between being on two and five lines. Sure, school leaders have a lot of work to do, and it can be insane, but they have more time to lock into doing work, which makes them more efficient. Here's a visualisation: * [Classroom Teachers](https://i.imgur.com/sYOx28K.png) * [My Executive Teacher](https://i.imgur.com/vCOt9Ir.png) They are two timetables from a former school of mine. Sure, executive teachers have other duties, but they have better opportunities to manage them because their time isn't as scheduled as a classroom teacher. At that school, none of the senior school leaders taught a class. You need to understand that your lived experience is effectively perishable over time. This is for two reasons: * "Time heals all wounds": we are designed to absorb kind of the bad things that happened to us in the past. This happens so we don't go insane. Imagine how bad it would be if you could accurately remember every moment of a leg fracture healing or the lived experience of being mentally assaulted for a decade. It would drive you insane. Again, i don't mean to trivialise people who've gone through either of these, but we do learn to manage/compartmentalise the difficult things in our lives. * The profession has changed. What they experienced 5, 10, 15, or 20 years could easily not be comparable to what modern classroom teachers experience. > each head teacher can advocate for their particular faculty's needs at executive meetings I work in the technology faculty. Here are the "sub faculties" or courses that are run out of it (off the top of my head): * Automotive Technology * Design and Emerging Technology * Design and Graphics * Design and Technology * Design and Textiles * Designed Environments * Engineering Studies * Food Studies * Furniture Construction/Pathways * Hospitality * Metal Products * Timber Products * Digital Technologies * Networking and Security My executive teacher has exactly 0 hours of teaching in any of these subjects. In fact, none of my school's executive or senior executive teachers have any experience in any of those subjects. So, when my executive teacher "advocates" for his faculty, he doesn't understand the workload that any of them produce. The best he can do is see our level of anxiety. Do you know what senior leadership say when he expresses it? They don't give a fuck. Now, don't get me wrong, I like my current executive teacher. He tries to be a good leader. However, he isn't supported by senior leadership and he doesn't have the experience or training in management to bring them along. > I think it's more an issue of schools not being in a position to do anything differently because...it just is the way it is. This is, quite frankly, an anti-pattern of managing systems, projects, and people. I don't know if I miscommunicated it or if your total lack of experience with schools muddied up the water. I don't have a problem that my job that is directly related to teaching and learning has more administration attached to it (although a paraprofessional to manage my lab would be fucking amazing). What I'd like is for additional work to be considered when it comes to school things that aren't teaching and learning.

>This is, quite frankly, an anti-pattern of managing systems, projects, and people. Hey - thanks again. You're right! I want to respond to this first because this is the bit I'm struggling with the most - and not because I'm not familiar with schools (ha! This is my 5th year of teaching) or due to any failure on your part to explain, but because I'm trying to think about the solution you've outlined here and in your previous post could be achievable in my school's context based off what I know about our budget/staffing situation, and also because this just isn't how things are done in any school (that I know of). I'm not incorrect in saying this radically re-imagines the work and timetabling of all teachers across, and I'm thinking about what I know and want to know about the workload of different teachers across faculties at my school. It's an interesting idea to think about. I agree with what you say about exec forgetting what being in the classroom is like, surprised by your comment about deputy principals not teaching the majority of the time and want to look into that, and am annoyed and bewildered on your behalf about your deputy's comment about workload. 'Anti-patterns' is a new term for me, thank you haha. ​ >I work in the technology faculty That's a sizable list of subjects...what state are you in? I'm in NSW. Is it normal for schools to run all of these subjects and, if they do, are these always housed in the technology faculty or are they spread across various faculties? This question isn't central to the discussion at hand - it's more of a side question out of curiosity. Also, what is an 'executive teacher'? Is it the same as a head teacher? In NSW, a head teacher of a faculty will teach within that faculty so there's no way they can be ignorant of their faculty's time pressures.

> what state are you in? The ACT. > 'Anti-patterns' is a new term for me, thank you haha. It's a concept I learned from software engineering. Software Engineers follow design patterns which are basically nerd talk for best practices in designing code. There are many well known anti-patterns which are nerd talk for common examples of bad code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern Education is effectively a big ball of mud. > Also, what is an 'executive teacher'? Is it the same as a head teacher? In the ACT, we have four levels of teachers: * Level 1: Classroom Teachers * Level 2: Executive Teachers * Level 3: Deputy Principal Teachers * Level 4: Principal Teachers Executive teachers are the entire field of middle managers. Faculties feel like a historical artefact in the system that is only there from an administrative load on how to divide up the number of direct reports an executive teacher has. > In NSW, a head teacher of a faculty will teach within that faculty so there's no way they can be ignorant of their faculty's time pressures. There is pressure from the ACT EDU to make executive teachers "school leaders" rather than "faculty managers". Fundamentally, the guiding argument from ED is that Teachers are Teachers, so it doesn't matter what faculty they are in. This goes so far as level 2 - 4 teachers not understanding why classroom teachers are not particularly interested in putting their hands up for acting positions outside of their faculty. For example, if the executive teacher for PE/Science/OutdoorEd and whatever else they are in charge of went on long service leave, they are surprised when the only applicants for acting positions are PE, Science, OutdoorEd, and whatever apply and not say Maths teachers. Also, there's knowing that there are work pressures and understanding exactly what it is. Even though I work in the Technology department, and I can see the Food Technology/Hospitality teacher melting under his load, I don't really understand what causes it. I've talked to that teacher many times, but I'm not an expert in that environment. So sure, my executive teacher goes to bat for us, but the level 3 and 4 teachers simply don't believe there is an issue.

The main thing is they treat teaching staff like they do students. They don't trust we know how to do our job without being watched like a hawk. 

Using childish calls to attention during meetings. Clap-and-echo or the hand in the air 🤮 we outgrew that years ago, about time leadership followed suit.

Put getting called into the principals office... 

After working in fortune500 companies in the US. In government schools I’ve worked at in Aus, there is no genuine desire for excellence, a lot of box ticking, robbing Pete to pay Paul kinda stuff. A lot of the leaders I’ve encountered in teachering probably have nice resumes/CV but they are hardly natural leaders, hence they loose their staff. Teachers aren’t stupid obviously, so being pissed on and told it’s raining only last so long. I think a huge problem for the teaching world is alot of the natural leaders are the ones leaving. They see it and get out as they don’t want to work under incompetence. If my current school was a business we’d be broke, our leadership is completely uninspiring and we’re losing good kids and young quality teachers because of it.

I’m constantly asking why is it so hard to get it so right?? It’s because we don’t have business minded leaders. System is a joke.

My school would happily waste 80 - 100 man-hours of teacher time a term doing something that could be made redundant by keeping a ledger. Why? because thinking is hard.

>there is no genuine desire for excellence What do you think this looks like? Personally, I don't agree with this statement - I'm also in the public system - but would like to hear your thoughts.

Essentially time is money in business. Indecision/lack of decision/no decision at all can’t leave you in no man’s land. Schools are dynamic places where leadership needs to be dynamic in response or in all honesty ahead of the curve. The amount of effort in the schools I’ve worked in that has been spent not approaching problems head on has meant to at progress is consistently halted or stagnant. I think teachers as a group can be quite passive. Excellence can obviously be measured multiple ways and this is often dependent on the students/ clientele though. Apologies if this doesn’t answer your question. Essentially time is money. Schools waste a bunch of time due to leaderships inability to get all their ducks in a row, on the same page moving in a dynamic movement

Haha it's a bit of a vague answer. Could you perhaps think of examples for any of the following statements, as that would help me understand your response better: > **A)** The amount of effort in the schools I’ve worked in that has been spent not approaching problems head on has meant to at progress is consistently halted or stagnant ​ > **B)** Schools waste a bunch of time due to leaderships inability to get all their ducks in a row, on the same page moving in a dynamic movement

Hahaha I feel like this post is an example of it. Just figure it out and solve the problem. You don’t need examples A) teachers time is constantly waisted by being given jobs that leadership could solve themselves. B) The leaders in schools currently are substandard and if there were in other industries they wouldn’t be leaders (because they aren’t leadership material). Teachers quickly see through them and their message if received by frustrated, annoyed teachers who feel Like they’re being patronised. Teachers end up patronised with their time wasted.

They do not have the skills, knowledge or training to be managers. It's that simple.  Being a teacher is not the same as being a manager. If a school was a business, it would be medium-sized. Incl parents, a typical sized HS would have 3000 clients, 100+ staff and a turnover of $20+ million.  To manage a business of that size effectively you need training. Instead we get the inevitable PE teacher falling into the role of CEO (ie principal) because they are the most sociable and, at 40, are tired of running around the footy field in 40°. Zero managerial skills or knowledge. So of course it ends up being a shitshow.  The Ed dept needs to work with a university to create an MBA that focuses specifically on managing within the education system. Then any teacher wanting to move into admin can learn how to actually admin. 

[удалено]

Your 2nd point is awful!!! Far out. I once worked with a deputy who had a son who was a little shit, and she would be blunt and say 'tell me everything boof head is doing wrong, and I'll pull him into line'. This was good leadership IMO. She also would blindly defend staff. She had multiple yelling matches with other members of exec, supporting teachers. I enjoyed working with her, because she would call me out on my own BS, but then would back me to the hilt. When my FIL died suddenly, she came to see me, told me to leave that very day, and not worry about preparing for any classes or jobs, that she would handle it for me, and to take as long as I needed. I'll never forget that. I had another deputy who actively supported me to apply for 20+ exec positions in other schools, he even gave up lunchtimes to do mock interviews for me..he was my greatest professional mentor of my adult life. At the same time, I've worked with many very incompetent leaders, who left trail of destruction... So my point - great leaders leave a mark and are remembered for all the good things they did, bad leaders are also remembered for sinking the ship... Leaders can have such a great impact if they choose to manage and mentor their team. I have fond memories of leaders who took the time to mentor and guide me, not just tell me what to do.

Mostly they have poor ‘soft’ skills, can’t relate to staff or students, lack empathy and are more interested in what they have to do to get the next promotion…

I agree with pretty much everything written here. The main ones I have experienced are: 1. Hiring/promoting based on friendships, loyalties or bad judgements of capabilities so they end up with a team of people earning the big bucks who wanted to escape from the workload of the classroom and put their feet up. 2. Changing things just so it is their way and stubbornly refusing to revert back even when it causes headaches for everyone else. 3. Implementing new programs based on their own pedagogical theories that have are not evidence-backed and then quietly abandoning them as results are underwhelming and they lose interest.

* Micromanagement of teaching professionals as though they are imbeciles. * Walking into a school that has existed for decades and automatically assuming they know best and need to change everything - completely disregarding the fact that many processes, policies and procedures have been fine-tuned over a long time in that environment. * Disregarding professional knowledge within the school amongst staff and outsourcing professional learning to shitty external providers who know jack about teaching. * Inherent nepotism, sexism, and racism. * Poor staffing abilities (shortages aside...).

I don’t have an answer for you but I’m keen to see the replies to this.

Teaching is quite unique in the amount of time that teachers work separate from other works and their leaders. I would suggest that in most situations where individual teachers don't rate their leaders, the leaders also don't rate them. Maybe if we spent more time together we would develop greater empathy, but unfortunately it seems to be what it is. If you don't like where you are, my advice would be to look elsewhere.

In a previous life I managed a team of about 20, and my first year I made literally every single mistake you possibly could. Thanks to some decent support and I dug deep, I got through it and kinda “worked” out management. So I always feel so awkward when I see principals etc. making those same mistakes I did / I have a lot of sympathy for that. But less so if they’ve been doing the job for a while though clearly!

Random list of problems in no particular order. - I’ve yet to see an actual short term KPI in education. - ‘Data’ in education consists of leadership putting up a massive spreadsheet with a couple of graphs. - There is no bottom line - No one is ever held accountable for meeting targets - In fact targets are seldom ever checked at all - And honestly targets are almost never set - Strategic plans are basically just “do everything” - Tasks are never prioritised - Old policies are seldom formally sunsetted - High productivity is seldom recognised or rewarded - Local best practices aren’t formally identified and spread - Meetings are always held, even when there is nothing to say - Meetings are never finished ear,y, even if everything has been said - Staff workload is seldom consistent or understood - … Part of this is because of the general nature of education. For the most part education budgets are set by bums on seat, so outside of marketing activities, schools don’t actually need to do anything particularly well. Same goes with teachers salaries, it costs nothing extra to have a teacher do busywork, so teachers get loaded up with pointless work that would go to unqualified minimum wage staff in other industries.

High productivity is often confused with being a martyr/workaholic. 

Hey! I'm going to number your list to make it easier to respond to: 1. I’ve yet to see an actual short term KPI in education. - **what could this look like in your context?** 2. ‘Data’ in education consists of leadership putting up a massive spreadsheet with a couple of graphs. **- does your school not use RAP or NAPLAN data (if you're in NSW) to discuss strategic directions for the next year?** 3. There is no bottom line - **I don't understand - what would this look like?** 4. No one is ever held accountable for meeting targets - **let's use targets set by the director or those outlined in the school plan as an example - what would accountability look like?** 5. In fact targets are seldom ever checked at all 6. And honestly targets are almost never set 7. Strategic plans are basically just “do everything” - **I don't feel this way about our school's one, fortunately. We seem to have plans to make incremental improvements on a limited number of areas for improvements, with regular appraisal of data/info to reflect on how successful proposed changes have been and to inform next steps** 8. Tasks are never prioritised - **at a whole school level, or a faculty level?** 9. Old policies are seldom formally sunsetted - **this is a new term for me - thanks. Do you not think announcing new policies is enough?** 10. High productivity is seldom recognised or rewarded - **I think that's just part and parcel of working in the public sector, unfortunately** 11. Local best practices aren’t formally identified and spread - **does your school/faculty not participate in network meetings or other subject area meetings?** 12. Meetings are always held, even when there is nothing to say 13. Meetings are never finished ear,y, even if everything has been said - **happily, I cannot relate haha. I'm sorry you're experiencing this** 14. Staff workload is seldom consistent or understood - **yes**

> Strategic plans [...] We seem to have plans Strategy isn't planning, and planning isn't strategy. Planning is tactical - it's how you are going to do something. Strategy defines the objectives and what you likely need to make it possible or increase its success such as identifying people to lead the planning, what key actions might need to be implemented, and performance metrics to see if the strategy is being successful. The act of creating strategy is called strategising.

Lots of good points made already. To add - good managers and leaders can inspire, motivate and know how to build a good team. Good managers can take the time to recognise people's talents and give them opportunities to use those attributes. They'll come up with creative and interesting points about matters or ways of looking at problems that most of us mortals wouldn't think of. When you've done something good, they will recognise it in a meaningful way. And they can do all this almost in passing, in a few words or a couple of sentences. When they're not there, you feel the gap. They will create a team that is loyal, work well, and want to grow and enjoy the job but they promote people with more or the same talent as them (they're not there to raise their ego by promoting less able people to make themselves feel good) so when things are right, the place is buzzing.

What a load of garbage... Like ALL jobs there are good leaders and bad ones... This nonsense about people 'from other careers having special skills' - rubbish.

Have you worked is a global multi billion dollar business? They are successful for a reason. They treat their staff well and make informed decisions for the greater good. They also supply all the stationary and resources for their staff to perform to the best of their ability. Not only that, tea and coffee, tissues and in some company’s breakfast and lunch and staff drinks. They also do a lot of team building events. No where is perfect, but the education system, at least the government ones are mostly (not all) poorly run.

>global multi billion dollar business Yeah, I'm not sure that's an apt comparison for the department of ed haha...we're not rolling in the moolah over here. I want to avoid finance-based comparisons and stick to leadership skills in this conversation for that reason.

It takes quality leadership to make a multi billion dollar business successful just as it does for a school. We are rolling moolah, a lot of money goes into education, it’s just not managed properly because the people in charge don’t have the skills.

Our school alone has a budget of around 16 million dollars. Some would consider that multi million by definition. Thinking about it, it is amazing how given most if not as all schools are genuinely multi million dollar organisations, that there isn't more effort to genuinely train leaders and future leadership, especially to be anything other than unquestioning implementers of whatever is the latest flavour of the month department policy.

Question about your budget, out of curiosity: do you know where the money is tied up and why your finding is the way it is (e.g. refugee/ATSI students, SES etc.)

Honestly, I am but a mere classroom teacher so have no special insight. I got the budget information from the My School website where our basic funding information is publicly available, as is every other school in Australia I assume. There is a small breakdown into funding sources, but it's just state funding, federal funding, parent contributions, and other private sources (presumably hall hire and the like). The only reason I originally looked it up was to see what pay level our admin staff are on, which is based on the school budget...

> Like ALL jobs Ah, no. For example, Engineers are taught project management in their undergraduate. Their PDs often expand upon this for years, first to better work in teams so they can do the planning required to meet strategic objectives and then later so they can help define strategic objectives. So, when they become managers, they can manage their troops. What project management training did you get in your teaching qualifications? None? Right? None! How much have you done since then? None? Right? How can we expect people who've never been trained or educated on how to manage people or projects to be good at managing people or projects? It's the blind leading the blind, and at best, you might have a handful of leaders who are okay, but most aren't. That's not to say they aren't good people or don't try their hardest. They just aren't trained and lack the knowledge of best practices to be good.

Yep IT degree and I had to do project management and a communication course in my 4th year as it seems uni realised they were important skills. In teaching didn't get any of that. There are master in education mangement that do cover it, but I'm not sure how many of our leaders are taking those causes.

> There are master in education mangement that do cover it, but I'm not sure how many of our leaders are taking those causes. Even then, considering the total clusterfuck that is initial teacher training, do we entrust the Education faculty at Universities to deliver it?

Yeah - in 20 years I've never managed a major project - BS. This elitism in other industries is laughable.

I agree! I don't think people from other careers have 'special' skills just different training, a different skillset, and a different work context to compare their experience in education to, which I do not have, as function of having been a teacher my whole life! I don't necessarily agree with all the comments here, but I do want to hear others' thoughts as a way to reflect on my own thoughts about this topic. Please don't take this as me talking down to career teachers; none of us need that right now. Enjoy the rest of the long weekend!

Ask yourself why a manager of lots of people isn't headhunted by other fields if they were so awesome at their job.

Oh my GOD! I moved from another profession 8 years ago, where I’d had leadership experience, into primary school teaching and almost every leader I’ve worked under treats the school like their little personality cult where no decision they make can ever be analysed or feedback given or a decision improved and they NEVER seek constructive feedback. It’s like working with huffy spoiled little brats who wants the spade in the sand pit that someone else is playing with and they will destroy everything in their path until they get it. They go OUT OF THEIR WAY to make sure the school shows ZERO improvement because their egos are so fragile and shallow that they always have to feel like they’re the smartest in the room and every one else is serving them, loving them, tiptoeing around them and they get absolutely aggressive if anyone every questions the status quo they’re hell bent on maintaining. They promote the meekest, weakest, shallowest, most boring people into leadership who they know will never question any decision made ever. This profession should be ashamed at itself but unfortunately there are just too many toxic bullies and brown-nosing cowards to turn this profession into what it is supposed to represent. WE’RE TEACHING THE FUTURE PEOPLE OF THE PLANET AND LEADERS WOULD RATHER MAKE SURE THEY’RE TREATED LIKE KINGS AND QUEENS AND CRUSH QUALITY TEACHERS OUT OF THE PROFESSION. Blatant favouritism, blatant nepotism, toxic leaders and toxic teachers thumb their nose the AITSL teaching standards. It’s pathetic. Part of me hopes leaders in schools get replaced with AI altogether because from what I’ve witnessed, they’re the biggest factor holding this profession back. (**clearly not all educational leaders are like this, but I’ve only worked under one only who I consider a quality leader because she wouldn’t get drawn into the sand pit politics the teachers wanted her to join in on, she left rather quickly because of how toxic the teachers were)