Teaching by Auto-Cue and automatics: The final (budget) cut

Commenting on budget cuts, with usual wit and savvy, Mr Robinson offers some ideas to Lord Nash:

“The teaching force should be shorn of all its older, expensive, workers. A few of the best ones should be retained to write lesson plans. Young teachers should be given bigger classes and smaller classes should be taken by teaching assistants. Each classroom should be monitored by CCTV to allow a ‘Low Level Disruption and Discipline Enforcement SWAT’ team to intervene at the first sight of trouble…”

Adding to the many other good ideas, might I propose to hook up Gatling cannons to cameras situated at strategic exit points, triggered by facial recognition software linked to a database of known truants?

But then, as depleted uranium might pose a H&S risk, one might also save that money by giving teachers very simple classroom management tools, which could be used again and again across different subjects, materials and LPs, and yet facilitate instant, self-directed learning – and then let teachers get on with it.  As I have pretentiously quoted myself in the article on Stalham Academy “…give teachers a practical tool to effectively steer group processes in the direction they need, and everything else will follow.” 

The simple shake-n-bake nature of Cooperative Learning is precisely the reason it has been promoted widely in my home country, Denmark, since the mid-naughts and why no self-respecting provider of teaching materials would fail to tailor major sections to facilitate Cooperative Learning interaction. Almost no CPD is needed, and Cooperative Learning may be deployed the following day with equal efficiency by NQTs and highly experienced teachers alike – facilitating what they want to do in their classrooms.

Everybody could win. Something to think about.