Should Headteachers or Civil Servants be made to pay for their mismanagement

ntb1

The back ground to the question is that the head teacher of our local school has made a number of bad budget decisions. which has left the school in big trouble, the head had retiered, and now the pupils & teachers are going to suffer, possilbe loss of jobs. bigger class sizes etc. and the head gets to enjoy her over inflated pension.

now the governors are also responsible, they gave her a two point pay rise based on the fact she was going to retier, then she stayed two more years..

so many times you see in councils, the NHS, Schools people happily spending tax payers money badly and the retiering early or on grounds of ill health as it all comes to a head. they should have pensions cut - and in some cases be sent to prison for the woeful mismanagement of public funds, but more often than not appear in a differetn part of the civil service/nhs/local councils as a consultant or other and gain even more of our hard earn tax

yes it comes from the personnel postion than my wife may loose her part time teaching job and the head sitting on a 40k pension for the rest of her life.

Jennifer_Jane

It's always so distressing to hear that people not only are not penalised for wilful or stupid mismanagement, but get rewarded for it. For me it's a kind of corruption that gives people extra salary just before they retire on a final salary scheme.

What makes it worse, is that I don't really think there is anything you can do, except perhaps for you to go to the Taxpayers' Alliance and get them to name and shame the School, the teacher, the Governors. It won't change anything now, but hopefully it will stir some conscience in the Governors and asking them to say WHY they did this, would be something. At least they should be called to account for this.

That's all I can think of. Heartbreaking that in these austere times, there are people just not 'getting it'.

Sorry to hear about your wife's possibly losing her job. Very disheartening to hear about that.

ILW

Nobody gets chastised or booted out for incompetance in the public sector. At best thay get the option to resign on a full (or enhanced) pension. It is nearly criminal.

CLAPTON

well
it's the future

as schools move away from local government control each school will be free to spend as they see fit (localism and freeing school from bureaucratic control); salaries etc will be determined not by central government but by school managers/governors

inevitably, schools will be run by small cliques and incompetence and corruption will become the norm unless government sets up better control systems
sadly government seems to have no interest in the matter of proper governance

thescouselander

I'm not sure you understand how the civil service works - in effect no-one is allowed to make any decisions unilaterally for a number of reasons to do with policy. Any decisions taken have to be signed off by countless numbers of people until it is not possible to tell who actually made the decision to begin with. This is actually part of the problem IMO but you cant hold people accountable unless they are empowered to actually make decisions.

CLAPTON

ILW wrote: »

Nobody gets chastised or booted out for incompetance in the public sector. At best thay get the option to resign on a full (or enhanced) pension. It is nearly criminal.

it would seem no-one leaves the private sector either without a massive pay off, even if they ruin their company and adversely affect many peoples lives

ILW

CLAPTON wrote: »

it would seem no-one leaves the private sector either without a massive pay off, even if they ruin their company and adversely affect many peoples lives

That is a very select few, as opposed to a whole system. In the end if you own a company and screw up, you can lose everything.

thescouselander

How would you know what is mismanagement? There is always a level of risk in any enterprise so when something goes wrong is that just luck of the draw or incompetence? I think in many cases it might not be so easy to decide.

Jennifer_Jane

I don't believe schools should be in risky management. How/why should that be happening?

Just as I don't believe that local councils should be 'investing' especially in off-shore, high risk (Icelandic) banks. Especially when the roads are full of pot-holes and leisure centres left to rust and age. My local council lost £3m in an Icelandic savings account, yet the leisure centre is in need of constant upgrading to put a sticking plaster over things which need complete renewal. If we give them money via our council taxes, then they should be spending that money.

By the time a person has become a head teacher they should understand how to run a school.

ILW

A system like used in some of the more agressive private sector companies where the lowest performing 5% of managers are sacked every year would improve things no end.

poet123

ntb1 wrote: »

The back ground to the question is that the head teacher of our local school has made a number of bad budget decisions. which has left the school in big trouble, the head had retiered, and now the pupils & teachers are going to suffer, possilbe loss of jobs. bigger class sizes etc. and the head gets to enjoy her over inflated pension.

now the governors are also responsible, they gave her a two point pay rise based on the fact she was going to retier, then she stayed two more years..

so many times you see in councils, the NHS, Schools people happily spending tax payers money badly and the retiering early or on grounds of ill health as it all comes to a head. they should have pensions cut - and in some cases be sent to prison for the woeful mismanagement of public funds, but more often than not appear in a differetn part of the civil service/nhs/local councils as a consultant or other and gain even more of our hard earn tax

yes it comes from the personnel postion than my wife may loose her part time teaching job and the head sitting on a 40k pension for the rest of her life.

I am not sure how you understand how schools are governed. The head is not solely responsible for decisions, so any blame is collective. Similarly pay decisions are based on Performance Management which is a tightly controlled set of objectives which are set by the GB with outside (lea)input..

All decisions are taken with a lot of thought and with integrity but no one is infallible, and the way the goalposts have shifted in education recently means that hindsight and a crystal ball would have been a great asset for many.