The Secret Teacher (@DCSecretTeache1)

  Extracts from the website: Extract 1 Comments: [School name edited out] has fantastic students and many good teachers which are just about holding it together. The salaries are still relatively good, however recent housing allowance cuts and having to pay contributions to school fees definitely places it below some of the other ‘top’ schools in the region. Doha is a great place to live and you can have an excellent standard of living. Singles and families alike have plenty to do, despite its reputation for heat, the weather is lovely for most of the year. Water sports, sports, international sporting events, shopping, nightlife, camping, dune bashing, beaches are all available and reasonably priced (well drinks are quite pricey, but the good salary and cheap petrol makes up for it). The school is a British Curriculum school. The students are the highlight of teaching at [School name edited out] . They are bright, ambitious and extremely well-behaved. They are ...

  We have not published any new blogs for a while. We have been observing.  For those students who sent emails asking about the identity of the authors of this blog, we applaud your admirable innocence. For the parents and university students who have sent us emails asking for more blog entries, you are welcome to send us your views. We will publish them. A contribution by an anonymous email: An intriguing development (if you can call it so) has occurred. With the outrage, protestation and complaints experienced over the past few months, now we see a fatigued staff body that seems to have decided to play the dead. Some have been quietly hopeful whilst others have just retreated in despair. You would think that the staff have just given up the fight but if you think about it again this is a far more serious outcome. When staff stop voicing their discontent, it is because of one of two reasons: they have succeeded in changing things or they have stopped caring. It is certainly n...

 Hello, Ex-pupil here. Attended said school until I “graduated” (cheers, Covid) in  2020. Among pupils at [edited out] there is a general consensus that the teachers themselves are great but the leadership is terrible. For us, the cracks really began to show following the implementation of high performance learning (whatever the f*ck that is). The senior leadership desperately trying to peddle this teaching structure/mindset (whatever you call it) that probably cost an arm and a leg and had absolutely NO use at all apart from making the school look good. I know HPL became a joke amongst teachers and pupils alike, and it was something many of us could tolerate although it clearly demonstrated the priority of the senior leadership to maintain a perfect school image rather than make any actual changes to learning itself. Many of us have long said that the current principal treats the school as a business/advertisement campaign rather than as a community of teachers and pup...

Our dear principal's wish has finally come true. When he announced it again to the whole staff that if they were not happy with how things are at the school they would have to leave, he did not expect that teachers would do just that. With the unprecedented number of teachers leaving, the school's reputation is now in an accelerated descent. The critics and competitors of the school are watching with gleeful eyes. For them, every departure of an experienced teacher at WCC is a gain for them and their schools. At least three Heads of Departments have 'jumped ship' and joined one of the competitor schools in the same country. Others are contemplating joining them where they can be free from the tyranny of the current principal and his First Officer. Unleashing your wrath on teachers because they are suspected of being the authors of this blog and threatening them with police and disciplinary actions broke the camel's back. Teachers were left in fear and in a delica...

 In the growing trend of falling standards at WCC, it has become ever more pertinent to ask why there has been such a drastic change. This change is especially of deep impact in the secondary school. The change started just over two years ago when the new Head of Secondary joined the school. Never has such addition been this impactful on the normal functioning of a once decent establishment. There are a few reasons for this but we will touch on the main ones. The new Head of Secondary has almost single-handedly united the staff in their disapproval of her ways. Stubborn, inflexible, lacking in warmth and genuine empathy, she has made some deep changes in the way the school works. Some teachers, heads of departments and heads of faculty have resigned themselves to the fact that presenting her with an alternative view would be futile. In a Borg-like style, she has recruited members of staff who are compliant and eager to please. The new teachers or heads of departments/faculties are ...

When you look at TES job adverts, you will notice that a number of WCC teachers have chosen to leave their feeding grounds and look for greener pastures. This is a normal event that occurs yearly and, in early summer, the teachers along with the whole family take off from their nesting grounds to find more productive feeding areas—and this movement could be in any direction. This happens in the early summer before the massive outward migration as job opportunities open up across the continents.  However, if you are familiar with the surroundings, you will find that an abnormally large number of Heads of Departments have regained their flight. At least eight (8) HoDs or Heads of services have been compelled to look elsewhere for a safer environment. (A.K.A a mass walk-out) Among the most conspicuous key roles to leave the nest we find Arts, Chemistry, Psychology, History, MFL, Digital Leader, School System Expert and Business Studies, not to mention some other roles of critical infl...

  Today, we are advancing the argument that less is more.  It has become obvious through all the interactions between teachers, Heads of Years, Heads of Key Stages and tutors that information exchange has suffered as a result of all the layered instructions, changes, additions etc. It seems that no one has a clear answer to anything. Directives are unclear as are too long to understand. Who the heck is putting this together? What planet are they on? The level of stress is continuing to go up and the embarrassment among teachers has now grown legs to kick us in the groin every couple of minutes. Teachers are buried in meetings, schedules, data analysis, more meetings, assessments, revision sessions, before-school and after-school meetings, materials, activities --and sprinkle a little goal-setting, demands, testing, accountability, evaluations, and relentlessly high expectations for change and improvement on top for good measure. And did we mention meetings? We have to rea...

 School Governors play an important role in any school. Governors set the aims and objectives for the school and set the policies and targets for achieving those aims and objectives. They monitor and evaluate the progress the school is making and act as a source of challenge and support to the headteacher and their management team.  The best governing bodies act as the school’s critical friend, take difficult decisions where necessary and make a major contribution to the leadership of the school and its successes. They ensure that the schools fulfil their duty to their students, their budget and their staff.  For governors to be effective there must be a good working relationship with the school, especially between the principal and the chair of governors, with candour and mutual respect. The chair of governors should be a head’s greatest advocate and so it’s essential to be totally open and frank and kept in the loop about all major events and decisions. A good ...

WCC has seen better days. Amidst the continuing struggle to get a grip on the hundred and one issues that the school has to face, we know that teachers continue to express their dissatisfaction with the current conditions. Again, the pandemic is one of the causes but one cannot ignore the developing trend of teachers leaving or wanting to leave. This trend started before the pandemic and continues to show no sign of slowing down anytime soon.  People entering the education field tend to be ambitious, passionate, and lively. We choose to be on our feet all day: popping from table to table, often performing to engage students, and immersing them in active, relevant, real-world issues that get them on their feet and diving into the work. However, the job itself is increasingly sedentary. Our time, instead, is occupied with filling out Google Doc after Google Doc, answering emails, filling in admin forms, temperature checks, after-school meetings. Teachers spend more...

 We're back! We would like to wish all our colleagues a happy new year but we reserve the right to hold back on our enthusiasm for positive change. To us, it seems quite clear that it's all just a little bit of history repeating. (Please refer to the great Shirley Bassey's song for further details). We would like to inform you that our blog has been the target of multiple attempts to hack it. Some have attempted to gain access to our email box and the blog login but their attempt can only be qualified as amateurish at best. We have a sister blog as backup with a copy of all the blog entries.The blog would be up again hours later. Thank you for your interest.  

 We believe we know our school well and that we can accurately predict the next moves. Over the past few years, the school has resorted to settlements to avoid further damage to its reputation. We are not surprised when the contracts from now on will include a gagging clause. Schools consider themselves absolutely experts at safeguarding pupils against bullying, but we don’t really say the same for the staff. We are also not surprised, though nonetheless dismayed, to see the disingenuous nonsense trotted out by some schools' management in order to justify their use of gagging clauses, in which they conflate legality with morality. Their wish to silence former staff has absolutely nothing to do with access to private student data and everything to do with protecting the school’s reputation against potentially damaging disclosures from a large number of disgruntled former employees. Employees often just wanted to “move on” from a situation, rather than face an employment ...

Although we are not keeping this blog to increase the blog's viewing count, it goes without saying that your views count. Current parents and former students have contacted us and shared their opinions about the school. We will share some of the emails we received in due time. Some will be included as excerpts only as the language may not always suit our audience. 

We have been sent a screenshot of this review by a teacher from a school in the UK (!). It was published on the International Schools Reviews. This is a sample of the basic reviews that can be posted. A full review is also possible with a paid membership. We will publish other 'sample' reviews when we receive more. Some comments from reviewers: Comments: Riding on a good reputation from times past. Almost half of leadership group seem to have gotten their jobs through default, not a selection process. Staff appear overworked, underappreciated and fearful of speaking out. Micromanaged by unprofessional leadership group. Comments: The school has moved into a new campus. Unfortunately this has been the main focus of the Principal for the last two years so his leadership team have been fumbling around trying to run the school which has reached a peak this year when they have handed out disciplinaries and non-renewals of contracts to experienced staff like hot dinners. It is a shame...

Thanks to those who sent messages of support and articles to be published. We appreciate your contribution. However, including specific names and details may not be the best course of action. Rather than edit your contribution, we have opted to ask you kindly to re-send us any articles without obvious details that may jeoperdise your anonymity. As a parent contributor, you would be the first to get in touch with us. We advise you to await a positive solution from the school first. We remain hopeful that things will change.  We apologise for not emailing back but we'd rather not clutter your inbox. We remain open to anyone who would like to get in touch with this blog via the Contact Form. Regards.

Two's company, three's a crowd. Although this saying is rooted in a simplistic wisdom about social company, it is certainly very pertinent in a school's structure. The efficacy of managing a large body of staff is not a simple task but this task is made ever so complicated when you have weak links in the chain of command.  It is inevitably apparent that some people fail to make any meaningful impact on the school life when they are just an additional stratum in the management sphere.  What they are achieving is a mystery to a few of us. You'd have more luck finding clues in a three thousand year sarcophagus than looking at these missing links in the evolutionary life of the school.   Why again? Why them? Because their existence is not only just an inconvenience it is now a threat to the stability of the workplace and a burden on the remaining members of staff. Some of these managers show a distinct lack of experience and that is, without doubt, a natural event in lif...