Originally posted on May 15, 2020 @ 11:32 am
“I’m talking about quality assurance not quality control, they are two different things”
Yes, perhaps. But your insistence on checking every teachers work down to the exams they are setting for the end of the year is not only a MASSIVE waste of valuable time with a syzygetic opportunity cost but will only serve to undermine quality, long term, in the educational programs you are trying to assure.
Teachers are generally a hard working lot, who care about what they do. Yes, I have encountered one or two who genuinely were out for what they could get but that is not the modus operandi of most of the professionals I have met.
And I refuse to base management decision based on a few bad apples.
Subjecting colleagues to a work scrutiny is patronising at best and at worst sends the message that we don’t trust you. If I am a hard working colleague trying to balance a quizillion other work tasks alongside regular teaching this scrutiny is going to demotivate me, not inspire me to deliver my best.
Yes, I can think of reasons why you say we should do it too, but they are baloney compared to the long term impact it has on morale and therefore the quality of our educational product.
Of course, staff need to be held accountable but we need to allow them the space to make mistakes so that they can formatively develop. There is a difference between supporting someones development as a professional and operating on the assumption they can’t be trusted to get it right.
To my mind this way of thinking goes in the bin alongside, making personalised exam timetables for students for their mock exams: A massive waste of leadership time and a massive learning opportunity cost for the kids.