MOT test for teachers

Read this on the Guardian website yesterday. Here's my response:

God this is so depressing.

I left teaching a couple of years ago, worn down by the needless, soul-destroying red tape, the ham-fisted attempts by robotic LEA advisors to make us teach in a New Labour way, the monitoring and constant lesson observations, the over-planning, the target culture, the language of 'value-added' as if children were tins of beans on a factory production line........I could go on and on and on.............

I was thinking of going back. After all, I used to love the job once- it was fun and I loved the challenge of using my imagination and thinking of creative ways to stimulate the children and help them learn. I ran after school sports clubs and lunch-time guitar clubs and wrote plays and musicals which the children and parents loved. I think......(hesitation here because my self-esteem is still a bit wobbly after several years of attempts by the system to turn me into a mindless automaton and reader of scripted QCA lesson-plans) .....I think.......I was a good teacher.

I was thinking of going back. After reading this.........not a chance. Never was any good at pretending to be something I'm not. Unlike the really crap teachers- the 1% or so before anyone gets too upset. They're experts at passing this sort of test- they thrive on it, come out with flying colours and as soon as no-one's looking, go back to being lazy plodders again.

Too depressed to carry on.