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geo 4 c+ 1.85

hi am currently looking to go through PGDE to teach art. is there any advice for art teachers (sec)? will the progression be slower cause there is lesser places?

Most sensible comment that all should take note

ownself praise ownself

What progression do you want? Leadership? Are you ok with leading something outside art? Such as being a discipline master or year head? If yes, then there is room for advancement. For subjects like art, you are put together with other subjects as such D&T, music to form a department. This is the same as sciences. There can be subject head for Art but any of the members from the department can take on HOD.

So you have to ask yourself, are you ok with the prospect of teaching a subject you love as a teacher for a long long time (in case no vacancy for leadership). I think from experience, being an Art teacher, you automatically become members of committees that needs Art work - publication, commemorative events, school based celebration and even welfare events. The plate is always full although most people will be envy of your marking load.

To add on, workload is very heavy, even though marking is considerably less

Most schools don't have that many art teachers, and art being a compulsory subject for lower sec, means that there's very few people available to shoulder the load should anyone leaves. And then there are many afternoons burned to supervise coursework for national exams

Just sharing a thought here eh. The teaching profession used to have only 2 SEO positions in school. The P and VP were the only ones with that grade. The rest will be teachers with time based promotion and a fixed MI every year. Bonus was very much also shared based on ranks. Back then was GEO1A1, 1A2, 2A1 … etc. Over the years, the political leadership felt that there is a need to identify good and bad performers and EPMS came about. That’s was 2008.

Now if you think about it as a system point of view, you are simply taking the bonus from the “poorer performer” and gave it to the “better performer” There is almost no additional resources required but it makes the people in the system worked harder than they used to. It becomes a grinder of sort. It might make sense in the corporate world where costing and revenue are immediate on a year on year basis. We are talking about kids here. Can we be very sure what you do now has a big impact? What are the matrix involved in looking at success? What happen when a wayward child became someone 20 years later and attributed his or her success to the teacher 20 years ago? Will the teacher be rewarded then?

So back to the point of fairness in ranking. When there are people making judgement on others, biases are always there. There are always friendship of 20 years when the HOD are friends with the teachers since NIE, there are halo effect where officers have done something good in August and it was always amplified many times over while good things done in Dec and Jan seems to be forgotten. RO who are too tired or worried to spoil relationship, SLs who have preference for one over the other. The potential list goes on. So at the end of the day, in a school of 100, majority will always get C. Perhaps 15 will C+ and B while 1 or 2 will get A. Let’s not forget maybe 5 will get C- and D. If you see the numbers, for you to be elevated to C+ and above, you must be top 20 in your school. These include all your EOs such as KPs and SLs as well. Do you think your SEO officers are not ranked and their ranking pool is not the same as yours?

The next question is you have to ask yourself how much are you willing to give to get to top 20? I agree with one recent comment on sustainability and costing. At the end of the day, there is little control over promotion and PB grades since there is so much more subjectivity than objectivity. Your HOD could have seen 1 off event and marked you while for the whole year such event did not exist - maybe late for lesson as you were in toilet and a fight broke up. How this HOD interprets this incident depends on his perception of you, if he has selfish thoughts to push up his JHs, is he impartial, his personality etc etc.

I am in the ranking panel and have seen questions like that pop up all the time. However, I too stand to be corrected 🙂

Just don't bother to come in. Make sure your second subject is a core subject. Art this kind of subject is deemed as third grade in the eyes of MOE and some schools. You can't really go far with this CS. I totally do not advise it.

In terms of seniority and with the batch, they have promoted with just straight C's throughout their career. But me? one C- and all goes down. This is a darn crucifixion man.