Wednesday 4 March 2009

Teachers In The Dock

From BBC File on 4 - 03 March 2009 (Teachers in the Dock) :

Barry Sheerman, MP
(Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families)

Andrew Kidd Duke Street Primary School Chorley Jane Watts Anne Callander“It is the most damaging, damaging thing that can happen to a human being. Especially when this feeling of injustice, you actually haven’t done anything wrong. Many teachers are being very shabbily treated and I want to get to the bottom of it.”

“I think what the Government is doing is full of good intentions, but it isn’t being felt down there at the grass roots in the schools themselves, and I think that there’s got to be a much more significant announcement, that we’ve got to be much more fairly treating teachers. If I raise it and take evidence, and I can expose the misery this is unfortunately causing to a lot of teachers unfairly, unjustly, then I can, I think, bring pressure on the Government to move much more quickly to put it right.”


Barry Sheerman told File on 4 his Commons committee now plans to hold an inquiry into allegations against teachers following the Parliamentary Easter recess.



“I was brought up to believe in honour, honesty and that ‘truth will out’ but it does not ! It all fails because nobody has the strength and moral integrity or conviction to speak out. This was not justice this was the act of cowards who chose to hide behind bureaucratic policies and procedures that were never followed correctly nor were implemented in good faith. They did what they did not because it was right, they did it because they could !

So I will continue to fight – what choice do I have ? I was once a proud person, a professional teacher who was devoted to her vocation, fostered a sense of value in a humble Chorley primary school and who had a love of children. I remain a proud person for I know that I alone in this utter travesty have behaved with dignity and that I am innocent. I have survived the worst that they could do to me and I promise them that I will not ‘put it behind me’ for to do so would be to accept the situation, something that I can never do.”

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