Gossip

Sorry, not anything to do with Beth Ditto, although I'm sure she's a lovely young lady. Instead, this is more of a return to blogging as I attempt to add ETL 504, 'TL as Leader' to my collection. I have not as yet done any of the reading, so am not going to attempt any critical analysis of the articles or my learning here today.

However, I suspect that, as on good old ETL 401 there will be some discussion of the value of Principal support and the duty of TLs to foster such support. As it happens, I was chatting with the parent of one of my year 2 children yesterday morn and she happened to be a TL in a state school on the Gold Coast. Apparently there is a distinct lack of support for TLs on the Gold Coast because a senior individual with responsibility for the area is decidedly TList. As a result many of the Principals have decided to remove their TLs altogether, and many of those lovely BER libraries are currently being run by Aides. My source had kept her position because her own Principal actually values having a TL and had bucked the trend by keeping her in place.

I personally find this information to be quite appalling. Perhaps some of those TLs could have held their positions if they had been more proactive and demonstrated their worth, but in the face of pressure from above and the opportunity to cut costs with an official sanction many Principals seem all too willing to wield the axe. This is particularly scary in that The Gold Coast is now Australia's 6th largest city and has probably the fastest growing population. A lot of children will be affected by the pressure applied by one individual with views that are destructive to our profession. No wonder that Australia continues to be overtaken in educational outcomes by other countries and is rapidly sliding down the international rankings.