A voice for advancing the profession of teaching?

This chapter tells the story of the Advanced Skills Teachers (AST), drawing on extensive research data with ASTs themselves, Local Authority AST coordinators and a range of Senior School Leaders. It provides the experience of ASTs, their passion for teaching and learning, and their anger and disappointment at the summary abolition of their hard-earned status. The chapter explores Head Teachers and others who were equally concerned about the peremptory policy change. It examines the need to overcome the empty rhetoric of politicians who make much noise about ‘world class teachers’ but do nothing to develop the profession to achieve such a level. The chapter addresses the narrow prejudice of the media who often deride the models as ‘Super Teachers’. The chapter concludes with a new conceptual framework emphasising the nature of the ‘voice’ that leading teachers can offer the profession as a whole.