We Need Bad Teachers!

There is a great article on the front page of today's Sunday Times (I can't link to it unfortunately) where Zenna Atkins, chairwoman of Ofsted (whose job it is to maintain standards in state schools) announces that "every school should have a useless teacher"

I was inspired by this comment and have immediately re applied for my old job.

Her rationale is that "children learn how to identify which teachers are good role models and become adept at exploiting incompetent ones, which is a valuable skill for playing authority in later life" (seriously, I'm not making this up)

Hopefully those recruiting for other jobs (such as airline pilots or nuclear power station controllers) will take Zenna's wisdom on board and stop this ridiculous drive to only take on people who are good at what they do.

It does make you wonder though. How exactly did Zenna, who apparently left school with just one 'O' Level; manage to become head of the education standards watchdog?