ABSTRACT
Why, when education is seen as so central to economic prosperity, social equity and individual fulfilment and when ‘learning organizations’ and ‘lifelong learning’ are vaunted as the absolute prerequisite for the post-millenium society, is no-one responsible for the strategic direction of professional development— lifelong learning —for the teaching profession? Why is no-one held accountable —except, it seems, the individual teacher herself—for enhancing the capacity and motivation of teachers to continue to learn and for providing accessible learning opportunities? (Brennan and Little, 1996, pp. 21–22). Why was it that there was no comprehensive, national programme of professional development to precede or accompany the introduction of technology in the primary National Curriculum, the simultaneous expansion of the subject content in science, history, geography, art and music, or at the point when the code for special educational needs (SEN) was introduced or when the responsibility for initial teacher training was transferred to schools? Why are the concepts of human capital, human resource management and people management not applied in the teaching profession? The result is that a managerial climate which dispirits, demoralizes and disaffects a newly-qualified teacher (NQT) carries no odium if she leaves the profession, thus wasting both the national investment and her personal investment in her education and training as a teacher, and the culpable neglect of an employee’s level of competence over many years results in fast-track capability procedures for the teacher, but neither naming or shaming of the successive management omissions which highly probably contributed to the situation. Why does no-one see the teacher as an internal customer of the education system, the inspection process or of senior management? Why does no- one think in terms of ‘delighting’ teachers with opportunities for personal and professional growth? (West-Burnham, 1992).
