Tories plan a cull of poorly performing teachers

The Labour party conference closed with many warnings about what will happen under a Tory government, many of them to do with threats to public sector workers… but they missed out this one.

There is a cull on the way if the Tories come to power – a purge of what they consider to be poorly performing teachers.

Conservatives intend to put the bottom-performing 100 or so schools (as measured by GCSE tables) under the control of outside providers.

In time, they want to put something like the bottom-performing 20 per cent of schools in similar measures whenever the market capacity expands sufficiently and enough providers turn up.

Those schools under new management would get academy-style freedoms to rid themselves of teaching staff they judge are not up to the job. The Tories’ analysis of experience in academies, when they have gone in and taken over failing schools, is that a quarter to one third of the school staff is shunted off.

We visited a Harris Academy in Norwood (watch the full report on tonight’s show at 6.35pm) where they’ve parted company with half the staff. A third of the secondary school staff in 100 schools would represent 2,130 teachers, but the real ambition, 20 per cent of schools (across England) would give you a figure of 12,700 if a third of those teachers went.

Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove insists he’s not got targets, headteachers would decide whether to retrain and nurture certain staff or give up on them.

But watching him gazing admiringly at an academy that’s gone down the more brutal route, there’s no mistaking what he expects to happen.

The law that prevents headteachers monitoring any individual teacher in the classroom for more than three hours in any one year would be abolished.

All this and the current national teachers’ pay award, which expires in 2011, will probably be the last.

After that there would be a minimum wage for teachers – it’s currently just over £20,000pa – but beyond that individual headteachers would be free to distribute their budget in salary and bonuses however they liked.

There’s been a lot of attention on the self-assembly Swedish schools Michael Gove wants to introduce but no one can know how quickly they evolve.

The assault on teacher standards could become an early defining battle of an incoming Tory government and you can expect to hear a lot more about it in the coming days in Manchester.

Related: Teachers’ leader gives Balls 0 out of 10 for ‘savings’ plans