The Chartered College of Getting It Wrong

Last week I wrote about how, after repeated promises that the new professional body for teachers would be teacher led, the upcoming election to its council would not only allow non-teachers to stand (and to vote) if they were “fellows”, but that most of the positions on the council, including that of president, were restricted to fellows. A category of membership that includes non-teachers is being advantaged over ordinary teachers.

There were a variety of responses. As ever there were plenty of people who aren’t currently teachers asking to be recognised as teachers which perhaps says something about the strange culture of education. There were people who interpreted any suggestion that non-teachers shouldn’t be fully involved in the professional body for teachers as representing personal antipathy towards non-teachers. To them, it was a personal insult that teachers could ever ask for something to themselves or to be treated as a distinct profession. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, were those who suggested that all organisations were flawed and so objecting to the flaws in this one – one that is being subsidised by government to the tune of £5 million – was unnecessary.

None of this seems to adequately explain the fact that by removing any expectation that the organisation be teacher led the College has abandoned a key commitment. As far as I can tell it seems to have done so without any consultation with its members. When I was criticising the College for allowing non-teachers to join, I was repeatedly told by enthusiasts for the College that they would only be non-voting “associates”. None of the people who told me that have apologised for misleading me, although I think some have said that they do object to the new system and have promised to vote for teachers in the elections.

The Chartered College Twitter account did start a thread on Twitter defending its position, and explicitly arguing that the powers and privileges of fellows are about “recognising their contribution to their profession”. Of course, this makes sense if the point of the Chartered College was to recognise the great and the good in the education sector, but originally the purpose was to empower ordinary teachers, not recognise those who already had power and influence.

During this thread, the account pointed out that:

The Council is going to be split with 10 Members & 8 Fellows. While the President and two Vice Presidents will be a Fellow, the Treasurer can be a Member or a Fellow

This is about the most positive spin that can be put on a system that means 13 positions for fellows, 10 positions for ordinary teachers, and 1 position that can be either. Previously I had been under the impression that the treasurer also had to be a fellow, so I asked if this was a change and was told it wasn’t.

Hi there! It hasn't changed, it's always been that and it's all on the elections website https://t.co/OeK2pRajdV. Thanks a lot

— Chartered College (@CharteredColl) July 3, 2018

It does indeed say in one place on the website that the treasurer can be a member. However, this also contradicts what was being said by the twitter account a week earlier.

Q) How many positions will be elected?

A) Council will be made up of 10 members, 4 elected officers (who must be Fellows – President, 2 Vice Presidents and Treasurer) and 8 other Fellows

And on another page on the website it said.

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter whether the split between fellows and ordinary teachers is 13:11 or 14:10. Muddling up the rules in an election where the rules are already outrageously biased against ordinary teachers, is a minor mistake. But again, and again, one of the justifications for giving non-teachers a role in running the Chartered College has been that they have “expertise” in running organisations that teachers don’t have. Yet under the control of the experts, the College seems particularly error prone. As well as messing up communication of the rules for its own elections, it has badly missed its membership targets and the peer review system for its journal turned into a farce. I would have thought these were the sort of things that outside experts would get right, even if they failed to represent the profession the College was set up for. At the moment, we seem to have the worst of both worlds. Teachers are sidelined for not having the expertise to run their own professional association, but those who do run it are making amateur mistakes anyway.

It will be interesting to see who runs for the council positions, and who wins. There seems to be an optimism among teachers in the membership that they might be able to gain control, at least for the first year. And no doubt, if plenty of the elected fellows are teachers, people will say that the organisation is teacher led after all. However, this is still a system where most teachers who are members were excluded from leadership positions and those who weren’t excluded will have been pre-approved as fellows by the College and had to stand in elections where non-teachers could stand. Even if every position is held by a teacher, this will still not be about empowering teachers; this will be teachers asking for permission to be treated as a profession.

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