What astonishes me having read a significant amount of the above posts and my own school experience is that schools can go so long employing dreadful teachers, and that something only happens when the teacher flips out, the students get reallybad grades or the police get involved.
When employing new staff, schools need to actually see the teachers teach surely? I would be far more interested in how well students perform under the applicant than how the applicant performs at interview. I understand that sometimes there isn't a pool of unemployed amazing teachers that schools can dip into at a moments notice, when the last teacher is arrested for murder (this happened to us...whoops), but new teachers are qualifying every year and there are quite a lot of unemployed people about.
Am I the only one who thinks being a teacher isn't that hard? Respect of a teacher comes from their knowledge of the subject, their discipline and pupils being able to learn from them full stop