AP1 and AP2 posts

What? I’m not sure what Q E D means but something to do with me proving the previous argument?

Just because staff are older and have more years experience does not mean they’re competent. I have worked with older teachers who are terrible in an organisational sense.

The old system based on seniority was a complete joke. Teachers in AP1 and AP2 posts who couldn’t give a toss about them and just managed to pick them up along the way in their career. Seniority was done away with for a reason and rightly so. That’s not a blanket statement for all older teachers, some of them are fantastic. Just so happens some younger teachers are too (not talking about myself).

I’m not denying that people have been wronged, and I’m not denying that the system can’t be rigged. What I’m saying is there are plenty of young teachers who are indeed more capable than those with years and years of experience. This is a fact.

I know teachers with 20 years experience that wouldnt organise a piss-up in a brewery, is it fair then that they should get a head start in an interview? We all know the answer.

People will be wronged in interviews, young or old. The current system is the fairest.

That’s a fair point actually. Ap1’s in my school are all filled by people who have no interest in senior management so when we have vacancies at that level it is outsiders or people with no experience who get them.

i don’t understand what you mean by the panel. My school advertise when their is a vacancy and the vacancy is filled. There is never a panel. I think there used to be a panel when there were temporary posts cropping up for maternity leaves or sick leaves, but now, there are new interviews whenever there are vacancies.

Now, I'm confused. I was told in effect to be more assertive/confident/cocky. I went for my first AP1 interview recently, more for the experience and to signal to the principal that I was, eh, "hungry" and to bear me in mind for positions. I didn't get it and when I spoke to one of the external principals on the panel for feedback, he gave out to me for not selling myself.

I explained that I didn't want to be blowing my trumpet because I assumed the principal, who was on the panel, would tell the rest of them. But this, he made very, very clear, was a wrong assumption because unless you say it in the interview itself they can't mark you as 100% of the marks go for what you say in the interview. He said if the principal did say anything in defence of a candidate the other interviewers would bring him up on his partiality. Every day's a school day!

It was well-worth doing the interview and getting that feedback even if I had to wear a suit. I applied for an AP2 the following week and got that and to be honest that suits my situation at the moment better.

The principal decides ,end of...Which really makes those visiting principals on interview boards taking generous 'expenses' complicit ...just like the whole 'call in a few schmucks-preferably from the far end of the country- for interview' scenario despite having the candidate decided sham/scam ...Openness and transparency indeed.

When are we going to have full,open and frank investigation into the way our school Management Bodies treat their staff when it comes to interviewing for posts etc.?

Why is there so much money ring fenced for the Golden Circle who sit on the (sham) Interview Boards?

Education Management is badly over due a full external audit and its past time to get away from' I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine' that has corrupted the system for far too long.........remember the students are the most important in all of this and those in Ivory Towers seem to forget this and prefer to be a parasite creaming off the system.

I think your assuming a lot about funding shortfalls here. Any teacher in a DEIS school would struggle to agree with this statement.

We will have an acute teaching crisis, worse than the one already on the ground, over the next few years due to not paying at the going rate for the level of education required to perform the job in an economy like ours.

Calculation errors are mentioned too.......

The scoping of these jobs is all over the place too, one person painting murals another running SEN.

The seventh one on the list is the only realistic way of appealing. I've done it successfully. All the rest of them are basic procedural ones, and while it's possible a mistake could be made on one of them like a calculation error, the panel would have to be awfully stupid not to check their arithmetic or to have at least one woman and one man on the interview panel.

All candidates have to be asked the same leading questions, and the questions have to be related to the four domains. I did an interview which was rigged a few years ago and it was an absolute shitshow in what I was asked, and we were all asked different questions.

Incidentally I went for an AP1 a couple of weeks ago, and again didn't get it. Have sent in my appeal.

Posts filled in our school this week. Out of 4, I would have agreed with 3.

There is such bad feeling on the staff in general though. Older staff feel shafted when overlooked for younger teachers, younger teachers looking at the older teachers who got a post thinking they are more au fait with laos and more deserving. Nobody is happy. I don’t know what the solution is.

If people are genuinely collaborating on work and the interview panel wants I not We, it’s very possible that neither of them are lying. That’s another issue with the current system. Nobody wants to work together and then have someone else take credit. All the while we are expected to collaborate.

Teachers elect teachers onto the BOM, so not sure how that was as a result of whatever initiative she did.