What does democracy look like? How about this: a governor, swept into office on the GOP wave of 2010 with a financial assist from the billionaire Koch brothers, pivots immediately from moderate talk about job creation to radical austerity that divides his state more than any in the Union. He attacks the collective bargaining rights of public workers and teachers. When hundreds of thousands of citi...

FT survey finds schools in the capital benefit from a larger choice of good teachers

Senior Obama Advisor Valarie Jarrett celebrated MLK Day by using the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta for a rabid political speech damning Republicans and shilling for her boss: "Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress--well let me be specific--because the Republicans in Congress," Jarrett told the crowd. According to the CBS affiliate in Atlant...

On 6th January, the NUT announced that: Following a meeting of a senior committee of the NUT Executive, the Union has agreed to call for further urgent discussions with Government on the future of teachers’ pensions.   When the teacher unions met Department for Education ministers before Christmas, the NUT reserved its position on the

The Education Secretary says plans to allow head teachers to sack failing staff after just one term will be firmer and fairer.

This morning, the Education Secretary went on the Today programme to explain his plans to make it easier to sack teachers. Here’s the full transcript: James Naughtie: From the start of the next school year in England, head teachers will find it easier to remove teachers that are considered to be under-performers.  The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, thinks the process is too cumberso...

Michael Gove’s giving a robust defence of his plans to make it quicker and easier for schools to sack bad teachers. ‘You wouldn’t tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or an underperforming midwife at your child’s birth,’ he says in the Mail. ‘Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?’ And he was similarly...

Education secretary gives school heads powers to shorten time it takes to fire underperforming teachers

The school day could be extended and summer holidays slashed, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said today, as he launched new powers to get rid of bad teachers.

Education secretary Michael Gove announces tough new powers for schools to sack the worst-performing staff in just a term