Poor teachers are too hard to sack

The BBC reports that the chief inspector of schools has warned that weak teachers can put children off learning and are too hard to sack.

Christine Gilbert, head of the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), told the Sunday Telegraph pupils were being let down by inadequate teachers. She said "parents should not have to put up with it". However, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) said: "The vast majority of our teachers are doing an excellent job."

Ms Gilbert said teaching rated as "satisfactory" was not good enough, especially in deprived areas.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families In the newspaper interview, Ms Gilbert called for schools to be able to fire underperforming staff more easily and criticised a "revolving door syndrome" which enabled poor to teachers move from school to school. She said: "As I go round the country heads tell me how difficult it is to get rid of weak teachers. They say they start the procedure and they might be 18 months down the line and the teacher will move... we need to be thinking of ways of preventing that. That isn't Ofsted's role but I sympathise with head teachers about that."