Ship of Fools: Can schools be run with mainly 'unqualified' staff in the classroom.

Thread: Can schools be run with mainly 'unqualified' staff in the classroom. Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

By unqualified I mean people who don't have qualified teacher status (QTS) but who may have degrees or other qualifications and work experience.

At present private schools, government supported free schools and AFAIK those with Academy status can employ unqualified staff as teachers. Most schools now use unqualified staff as 'cover supervisors' for classes where a teacher is absent and in some schools there is no significant difference between what a cover supervisor does and what a short-term supply teacher might do.

For about 10 years I worked as a supply teacher through an agency and when I began there was more than enough work, often a choice or two or three bookings with every phone call. The situation is very different now and I doubt if I could earn a living through supply teaching. Cover supervisors, often themselves working through agencies, are being used for short term work. The new Agency Worker Regulations have made older supply teachers too expensive for many schools and long term work has also been affected.

I can remember a discussion with other supply teachers, about ten years ago, when there'd been reports in the press about a 'think-tank' proposal that schools could be run with a few qualified staff to prepare lessons and to assess progress and that most lessons could be delivered by unqualified staff. Many supply teachers thought it couldn't happen but this seems to be the way things are now going.

Is it possible to run schools this way? Is it right? And, if this is the long-term plan, what is happening in the meantime to reduce the number of qualified teachers on the payroll?

My own view, looking at it dispassionately, is that it could be possible for most lessons to be delivered by staff without QTS. If the system has become akin to a manufacturing process then the lesson is the product, carefully planned and quality assessed before being passed for delivery to the consumer.

In the meantime from what I've observed schools are using the performance management and capability processes to get rid of teachers. Officially these are 'under-performing' teachers but in reality it's quite easy to target an expensive older teacher, or indeed anyone regarded as inconvenient, to manufacture circumstances and to manage them out of the school system. The pace is likely to speed up from September when new performance standards are introduced and a shorter time-scale for processing 'under-perfomers' out of the system.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by justlooking:

In the meantime from what I've observed schools are using the performance management and capability processes to get rid of teachers. Officially these are 'under-performing' teachers but in reality it's quite easy to target an expensive older teacher, or indeed anyone regarded as inconvenient, to manufacture circumstances and to manage them out of the school system. The pace is likely to speed up from September when new performance standards are introduced and a shorter time-scale for processing 'under-perfomers' out of the system.

Yes, I have seen this happen recently to two good, very experienced teachers. Teaching is a stressful job and if they are targeted for 'under-performance' they soon become over stressed and end up leaving.

This has huge implications for their future and pensions.

It's fast becoming a young person's profession. The patience and experience of older men and women is being cruelly wasted imo.

[Frown]

[ 03. July 2012, 08:17: Message edited by: Boogie ]

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

It also means that all lessons are prepared to a set plan and taught to that plan. No chance to go through one area quickly when the class obviously understands that section and slow down for something not understood.

No chance to use the teaching opportunities of outside events - when the class is in uproar because something has happened outside and actually, scrubbing the teaching plan for half an hour and discussing whatever is bothering them is often more productive and constructive in the long term - and more memorable.

Having worked in both secondary and primary schools I can understand why schools do not want to use supply teachers. They were notorious for coming in for one day, not knowing the students, not bothering to find out, working through the list of instructions haphazardly and not bothering teaching. Having supported some lessons with supply teachers, I have taught more of those supply lessons than the teachers did (Learning Mentor going in to support particularly challenging students). Organising SEN support for lessons as a SENCo, priority was always lessons with supply teachers. I can really understand why schools chose to move to employing cover supervisors. They at least build relationships with the students.

But the total package of initiatives adds up to a continued denigration of the skills of teachers. I'm not sure how the Government can logically want to recruit high level graduates to the teaching profession and put most teaching in the hands of the unqualified. There seems to be a bit of a mismatch here.

Posted by Mili (# 3254) on :

I believe some people without teaching qualifications could learn to teach as well as a trained teacher once they had some classroom experience. The issue is they would be doing a teacher's work for far less pay. Teaching is hardly a highly paid profession as it is so it seems unnecessary to hire people to do the same work for much less.

In England when I was there in 2006 doing supply teaching (admittedly I didn't have QTS as I trained in Australia so I'm not sure if my pay was the same as local supply teachers) the national curriculum was so set and detailed that even regular teachers did not have to do much planning. They still had to prepare resources etc, but often I did that as a supply teacher too. In Australia I still do a lot of planning as a supply teacher as work is not always left and the curriculum here allows a lot more teacher input in how it is planned, taught and assessed.

Thankfully in Australia there seems to be a push for more qualifications in teaching. Sometimes they talk about putting people with degrees in the classroom and then letting them study teaching while on the job, but these programs are suggested for attracting people who have achieved highly in their first degree. Therefore they would be paid more, at least initially, to encourage them into teaching. Even in childcare there has been a big overhaul of regulations so that workers need to be more highly qualified. We can't even employ secondary teachers at the vacation program where I work, which means we lost some great male staff and only have one male staff member working now. (He's studying to be a primary teacher).

It definitely is all about the money when the UK government claims to be improving schools by removing bad teachers, but then lets unqualified teachers teach classes.

Personally now I have been teaching for almost 10 years I find planning easy and enjoyable. Actually working with kids is the challenging part, especially if they have special needs, mental illness, difficulty with certain subjects or difficult behaviour. You could plan the most amazing curriculum ever, but it is how it is taught to each class and each individual child that makes the biggest difference.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

One only has to attend a few training courses as an adult to grasp that teaching is a SKILL. And not one that people automatically have just because they have a lot of knowledge about a subject. Knowing something yourself and being able to effectively teach it to others are entirely different things.

And two people could take the same 'lesson plan' (for adults, insert whatever name for course materials you like) and get entirely different results.

I don't know all the ins and outs of how one gets QTS over there, or precisely what qualifications a cover supervisor might be expected to have, but it certainly seems to me that teaching ought to involve... well... teaching skills.

Now, whether supply teachers are effectively fulfilling the teaching function strikes me as an entirely different question. Who ends up in supply teaching? To my mind there's an argument that supply teachers need to be, or ought to be, even more skilled than regular teachers - experts at getting the teaching done with little build-up and in quite difficult circumstances. I suspect the reality is often different.

Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :

I agree with Boogie. I'd say that teaching is a profession where the "official" demands are impossible to meet. If you try to meet them you will run yourself into the ground. This is distressing, because the conscientious new teacher tries to "do the right thing" and becomes horribly stressed and depressed, very likely leaving the profession as a result.

In order to survive, let alone be effective, you have to decide what is really important and let the non-essentials fall onto the floor. I believe every teacher has reams of useless stuff that they are "supposed" to do, but actually don't do.

Unfortunately this means that you are always vulnerable. If management wants to get rid of you they will always be able to find a reason. Luckily most senior teachers are people of goodwill (no, really) and will not pry too far below the surface. But if not... [Frown]

[x-posted with many]

[ 03. July 2012, 09:01: Message edited by: TurquoiseTastic ]

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

Now, whether supply teachers are effectively fulfilling the teaching function strikes me as an entirely different question. Who ends up in supply teaching? To my mind there's an argument that supply teachers need to be, or ought to be, even more skilled than regular teachers - experts at getting the teaching done with little build-up and in quite difficult circumstances. I suspect the reality is often different.

From my experience supply teachers comprised returners, often women who'd spent time raising a family, teachers who'd taken early retirement, late entrants to teaching who'd had a previous career, people who were between permanent jobs and those who chose supply work in preference to a permanent post. For most I'd say the short-term bookings were interspersed with long-term work and many supply teachers had a 'core' of schools to which they returned frequently. A lot of my work was covering maternity-leave and long-term illness (often stress-related illness). The benefits of supply work include being able to avoid the politics and a lot of the admin which cause such stress for some teachers.

I certainly wouldn't claim that supply teachers are more skilled than regular teachers but the skills needed are different.

Cover supervisors who are employed as regular staff in a school are often a better choice than a n unknown supply teacher who's just there for the day. However it's not school-employed cover supervisors who've killed off most of the day-to-day supply bookings in some areas, it's the supply cover supervisors who work through agencies for less than half the pay rate of a teacher. Some schools still need to be able to call on cover staff at short notice and if they can get cheap cover with an unqualified person then that's what they'll choose.

Posted by Smudgie (# 2716) on :

Thank you, justlooking, for saving me from contemplating a return to teaching if things ever go pear shaped with my current job - that was just one of the many reasons which caused me to realise that my ethics and those of the education system in this country are too ill-matched.

I think a crowning moment for me in my teaching career was when the head teacher decided I was too good a teacher to waste on children who struggled with maths and so moved me to teach the top and middle stream and left my teaching assistant in charge of the two lower sets where she had previously been my spare pair of hands whilst I was teaching them. She was the best teaching assistant I'd ever had the honour to work with and she has since gone on to train as a teacher, but she was no teacher - her skills were in one particular area (the area of being able to approach the kids at their level and making the learning fun) but not in classroom control or planning or giving the lesson clear direction whilst doing that. And for her to be paid peanuts for doing what I was doing but in a more challenging environment was a disgrace.

As a teacher, even if I meticulously planned a lesson for a stand-in teacher to take - whether supply or a colleague from my own school - I knew that it would have been misinterpreted or taught in a different style or even totally ignored when I returned. As a result I virtually gave up on ever leaving worthwhile work for a stand-in to do. There again, I am a bit of a control-freak [Biased]

So the concept of regularly planning a lesson for someone else to teach is a travesty of the role of the qualified teacher. Besides which, I went into the profession to teach - if I'd wanted to write textbooks or teaching guides instead, I would have pursued that path.

Yes, you learn more on the job than you do in the teacher training establishment, but what you learn in the teacher training establishment is also of great value and it gives people time to judge your degree of vocation to teaching before you are entrusted with the education of a group of children who won't get another shot at doing those lessons they have with you.

Posted by busyknitter (# 2501) on :

This doesn't have much bearing on the general discussion here, but at my son's special school for autistic children each class (of 6-8 pupils) has one teacher plus three teaching assistants to support the whole class plus any teaching assistant provision for pupils whose statements stipulate 1:1 support.

So while the teachers do all the planning, reviewing, assessing, reporting etc the school is actually run with a majority of unqualified staff. It is a brilliant school.

Not saying I would recommend this model for mainstream classrooms, just that (as ever) context is all.

Posted by Smudgie (# 2716) on :

quote:
Originally posted by busyknitter:
This doesn't have much bearing on the general discussion here, but at my son's special school for autistic children each class (of 6-8 pupils) has one teacher plus three teaching assistants to support the whole class plus any teaching assistant provision for pupils whose statements stipulate 1:1 support.

So while the teachers do all the planning, reviewing, assessing, reporting etc the school is actually run with a majority of unqualified staff. It is a brilliant school.

Not saying I would recommend this model for mainstream classrooms, just that (as ever) context is all.

I would recommend this model for mainstream classrooms - small classes, a qualified teacher with overall responsibility and leadership, a coherent team of skilled assistants to support the teaching by adapting it to the needs of individuals, almost enabling the teacher to be in four places at once by proxy. I once taught this way - a "bottom" set of 17 children with varying difficulties within a mainstream school and with three excellent unqualified classroom assistants. Boy, you should have seen the progress those kids made in a year! Mind you, didn't make any difference to their SATs results or our position in the league tables so it was obviously a waste of resources.

Bitter? Me? Nah! [Biased]

[ 03. July 2012, 10:53: Message edited by: Smudgie ]

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Smudgie, just try looking at current school job descriptions to be put off. I looked at SENCo post yesterday and it's really bad news when the job requirement includes

the ability to do so much it was an impossible work load - including returning all phone calls within 24 hours* and written communication within 7 days;
to manage a large team (of LSAs) and
to maintain a work-life balance.

Someone told me that management of 17 people is normally seen as pretty full time work, not just a sideline of a huge role. And interviewing, employing, training and supervising that many unskilled people is a huge job in itself - weekly meetings, regular reviews (at least annual, but 3 months and six months in the first year), timetable planning, adjusting timetables around sickness and absence, being available to discuss issues and support changes. And that's a sideline to dealing with the students, their parents and the staff.

I don't think the people who are planning this have any concept of how much work is involved.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

It's obviously possible to run schools that way.

It just isn't going to be possible to run them well, effectively, or to the standards Ofsted is demanding.

As it is obviously possible to run a country with people who have no qualifications to do so, and are clearly ignorant of the needs of the job, just come up with brilliant wheezes.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
I agree with Boogie. I'd say that teaching is a profession where the "official" demands are impossible to meet. If you try to meet them you will run yourself into the ground.

Yes - to survive we cut corners, the wise teacher quickly learns which corners to cut and which to pay attention to. The job is truly un-doable otherwise.

A young teacher I chatted to last week said "You have to dodge work tactically, but do it for the children. She'll go far! (unless someone gets it in for her of course)

A sensible headteacher (like ours) recognises this and values the staff for their teaching ability, rather than ability to produce A+ paperwork.

But, if a head wants rid, it's easy now. Soon to become much easier. The head I referred to earlier is not ours and she is a bully - so very arbitrary in who she gets rid of. In fact she tends to remove those who are competent and confident, no doubt because she feels threatened by them.

I only teach two days a week now (semi-retired, wayhay!) but I put two days planning and preparation into those two days. It's wonderful to have the time and energy to do it.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

The tories have long been suspicious of teacher training establishments because they think they're hotbed of lefties.

Plus, tories are suspicious of 'theory'

So they aren't interested in how kids learn because their narrow idea of 'learning' is the digestion of factual information.

Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :

Teaching may well be a skill that comes with experience but I doubt that skill comes with a teaching qualification. Many private schools with excellent standards of teaching have in the past avoided teachers who have been through the teacher training route because they thought it was a pretty useless qualification, they simply went for the best graduates.

A lot of modish claptrap was fed to trainee teachers in the past.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
Many private schools with excellent standards of teaching have in the past avoided teachers who have been through the teacher training route because they thought it was a pretty useless qualification, they simply went for the best graduates.

Private schools have well motivated pupils - money motivates! Swap their teachers with the one down our road and I know which would get the best results (and which would survive!)

The people with the best degrees are most certainly not automatically the best teachers. Our maths teacher had degrees from Cambridge coming out of his ears, he wore the gown to prove it. But he couldn't teach maths for toffee, and put many, many pupils off the subject for life.

Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :

One of the benefits of training, though, is precisely that you gain experience by going on placement. Often somewhat chastening experience.

As for independent schools - well, I teach in one and enjoy it very much, but I think we have two great advantages:

1 - we select our pupils hence we don't have to teach (many) disruptive, demotivated pupils. Therefore someone with great academic gifts can be a highly effective classroom practitioner even if they wouldn't be able to survive in a tougher environment.

2 - the government mainly leaves us alone to get on with it rather than insisting we waste masses of time on things like National Curriculum assessment.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

ISTM that there are two issues here and not one (although they are related).

First, the issue of whether non qualified teachers are on the increase - and if so, is it good or bad.

Second, the issue of performance management in schools.

As to 1. IME the results are mixed: I visit quite a few schools with varying socio economic and other factors in play. One school where I used to be a Governor had 35%+ of pupils who needed additional help - that it functioned and functioned well was down to teamwork. Teachers and TA's alike worked with one aim and gained excellent "added value" for the children.

Other schools do not so well with different mixes of qualified/unqualified staff.

Secondly, performance management. It is, IMHO, a belated change for the better to the school environment. Stats show a miniscule % of teachers across the UK who have been subject to discipline owing to poor performance. Most poor performers get moved on and rarely disciplined.

When do you ever hear of a teacher being dismissed for any reason other than misconduct with pupils?

Depending on the employment sector a figure of 3 - 5% underperformers (as a % of total employees) is to be expected. This covers those who should have never entered teaching and those whose performance has declined. Anyone who isn't reaching a minimum standard is, by definition, also not helping the pupils that he/she is entrusted with.

Please don't overlook the fact (as is done so often) that Performance Management ("PM") identifies talent as well as bringing incompetance or pooor performance to the surface.

If we don't have PM then we are, inevitably, going to settle for a status quo where we have to accept that "satisfactory" is OK and "poor" is untreatable as at present.

The changes to PM bring the timescales into line with other groups of employees.

Of course PM is stressful - esp if you are in it. Its correct operation requires real sensitivity from leaders esp if a change in performance is due to personal factors like bereavement or divorce, for example. That's wholly different from circumstances where there is no other apparent reason for not reaching minimum expectations than based on ability and/or delivery.

Different causes demand different approaches. Don't though forget the increase of parent power: parents increasingly recognise that education is not "free" but paid for by their taxes. Like healthcare they now expect a satisfactory return on their contribution and bad schools and shody teaching don't push their buttons.

Expect more complaints if schools don't sort the not so good from the good: it's happened and happening in hospitals - watch out schools you are next in line in the social consumer economy.

Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :

I think performance management would be a disaster for the maintained sector. The problem is how to quantify the performance. It would mean even more time being devoted to "cover your back" assessment, meaningless targets, generating reams of useless data etcetera...

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
I think performance management would be a disaster for the maintained sector. The problem is how to quantify the performance. It would mean even more time being devoted to "cover your back" assessment, meaningless targets, generating reams of useless data etcetera...

How do you think Nurses (and others), manage?

How would you assess Teachers' suitability for their particular posts? How would you monitor needs for continuing professional development?

PM may help schools when the stuff rally hits the fan (as it surely will), when parents (like patients elsewhere), really start kicking off.

[ 03. July 2012, 16:16: Message edited by: ExclamationMark ]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
I think performance management would be a disaster for the maintained sector. The problem is how to quantify the performance. It would mean even more time being devoted to "cover your back" assessment, meaningless targets, generating reams of useless data etcetera...

We have had PM in maintained schools for over ten years. I passed through all the hoops quite easily and earn lots more money because of it.

[ 03. July 2012, 16:35: Message edited by: leo ]

Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
I think performance management would be a disaster for the maintained sector. The problem is how to quantify the performance. It would mean even more time being devoted to "cover your back" assessment, meaningless targets, generating reams of useless data etcetera...
How do you think Nurses (and others), manage?

How would you assess Teachers' suitability for their particular posts? How would you monitor needs for continuing professional development?

PM may help schools when the stuff rally hits the fan (as it surely will), when parents (like patients elsewhere), really start kicking off.

To take your questions in turn:

I think nursing is also suffering from a box-ticking, over-assessed culture which actively inhibits nurses from giving good nursing care.

I would assess teacher's suitability by having them work closely with their departmental head and colleagues, who will then be able to see if something is going seriously wrong.

I would monitor their need for CPD by having their head of department/year asking them what CPD they would find useful, possibly making some suggestions.

This is roughly what happens in the independent sector.

Your comment re: PM "helping schools" is rather telling I feel. It will not improve teaching; rather, its purpose is to "show that something is being done". The goal of the assessment is not to help educate the pupils but to tick boxes for the school management and the government.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

I'll echo leo - state sector schools have had performance management for years. It's been the only way to up pay points for easily 10 years in secondary schools. And the unqualified staff also have to have regular reviews in the same performance management format. Which means additional work for whoever is managing those unqualified staff.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
[QUOTE]
1. I think nursing is also suffering from a box-ticking, over-assessed culture which actively inhibits nurses from giving good nursing care.

2. I would assess teacher's suitability by having them work closely with their departmental head and colleagues, who will then be able to see if something is going seriously wrong.

I would monitor their need for CPD by having their head of department/year asking them what CPD they would find useful, possibly making some suggestions.

This is roughly what happens in the independent sector.

3. Your comment re: PM "helping schools" is rather telling I feel. It will not improve teaching; rather, its purpose is to "show that something is being done". The goal of the assessment is not to help educate the pupils but to tick boxes for the school management and the government.

1. Define "good nursing care." When have we ever had it? I agree with the box ticking thought to a certain extent but the lack of box ticking will not make a poorly performing employee, good. Just how are you going to determine someone's suitability for a position? Are public sector employees to remain a case for special pleading on non assessment?

2. PM, then.

3. It will improve teaching because "something is being done." As regards your comment referring to school management and Government, who do you think the school is accountable to?

If you believe it to be parents then take real care: they are far more likely to "hire and fire" than any Government. They have far more to gain and far less to lose than any Government who want the support of the teachers.

Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :

I think we may be talking at cross-purposes - apologies. What I would worry about is if "performance management" came to mean purely "how many levels did you make your pupils go up on their assessments, and can you prove it". No objection to professional review as such.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Well, that is largely what PM has been about - really difficult for teachers whose subjects don't have assessment levels, e.g.PSHE

Posted by catthefat (# 8586) on :

If PHSE has no levels yet I am sure some will soon be invented. They have already got them for five year olds; twenty seven scale points for each child just for this one (of six) areas of learning.
As part of performance management these are scrutinised and percentages worked out. Then there are percentages for children having free school meals, ethnicity, and boys versus girls. So,when we know that 2.4 of a boy on free school meals is similar to 1.8 of a EAL girl and has made 3.25 progress in PHSE everyone is a little happier and everything is hunky dory. Boxes are ticked and the children have done well, or not.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

The university sector used to run with 100% unqualified staff.

Some universities now require new staff to take a teaching course, but the proportion of "qualified" teaching staff must still be well under 50%.

Posted by Martin L (# 11804) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
It's fast becoming a young person's profession. The patience and experience of older men and women is being cruelly wasted imo.

And isn't is so very much easier to force a first-year teacher into jumping through administrative hoops than a thirty-year teacher who knows better?! Administrators do so love a staff that doesn't snicker when yet another "new" fad surfaces with those immortal words, "This isn't going away, folks."

[ 03. July 2012, 19:24: Message edited by: Martin L ]

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:

But the total package of initiatives adds up to a continued denigration of the skills of teachers. I'm not sure how the Government can logically want to recruit high level graduates to the teaching profession and put most teaching in the hands of the unqualified. There seems to be a bit of a mismatch here.

The same mismatch as between Gove insisting on an even more prescriptive and narrow curriculum, and at the same time persuading more and more schools to become academies who will not be bound by it. Does not compute.

I've always thought Tories were idiots.

Posted by AntarcticPilot (# 17195) on :

I have three lots of family experience of teaching; my mother was a teacher, my aunt was a teacher and my late wife was an LSA.

My mother was unqualified, her highest qualification was School Certificate (roughly equivalent to GCE). She was asked to take up teaching after the Second World War, and did very well. Throughout her career she taught the Reception class; she regarded her job as being "Civilizing" the children and instilling basic reading, writing and arithmetic. She regarded herself as a failure for any child that could not read, write and do simple sums at the end of their first year in school. The introduction of the requirement for degree-level qualifications ended her career as a teacher; she felt that if her track record didn't qualify her, then she did not wish to waste her time on getting bits of paper.

My Aunt was a career teacher; she went to teacher training college at a time when a woman teacher had to repay her grant, and could not continue teaching after marriage. She never married; I am sure she was an excellent teacher; I had the privilege of preparing her funeral tribute, and fortunately (by chance) met one of her former pupils - strict but a good teacher summed it up! But her professional qualifications (although accepted as degree-equivalent when the requirement came in) were nothing like a degree - she entered her course from School Certificate level.

My late wife was an LSA providing learning support to statemented children. Again, she had no degree qualifications, but was regarded as an excellent teacher and supporter, to the extent that she was one of the TES Friday Heroes! And she supported several NQT's, several of whom regarded her support as crucial to their development as teachers.

I'd say that degree level qualifications are a complete irrelevance to teaching; what matters is flair and understanding. Of course, the degree-level qualifications may provide a filter to remove some who are unsuited to the profession - but I very much doubt if my mother, my aunt or my wife would have been better at teaching children if they'd had modern BEd or PGCE qualifications.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Knowing that there has been a history of primary school teachers who did not understand maths handing that phobia on to pupils and these days, an appalling lack of scientific understanding, leaving huge misconceptions to be retaught and explained later on, some training is necessary. If you can't see why children are getting the maths wrong you can't help them move beyond it.

But the degrees and no teaching qualification provision is mostly aimed at secondary school teachers.

Posted by ecumaniac (# 376) on :

Overseas trained teachers can work in govt schools for up to 4 years before having to get their QTS. I got mine this year - it was the most ridiculously patronising thing I've ever done. I just about managed to keep my mouth shut long enough in the debrief session of my final assessment for them to pass me. I might have at some point muttered something like, "I'm just trying to respond to the realities of teaching in a classroom with 32 children and no money for resources."

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Well, I'd like to echo Curiosity Killed...'s concern about primary staff with poor knowledge of science and maths, having been present at a session on Nature for infants (5-7 year olds, for non-UK people) led by a classroom assistant. I managed to bite my tongue when one of the children referred to spiders as insects (yes, yes, they're really arachnids but there's plenty of time higher up the school to teach him the finer points of taxonomy) but was unable to keep my mouth shut when the classroom assistant (who really should have known better as she is a keen gardener) started telling the children that ladybirds eat leaves. [Eek!]

Posted by The Kat in the Hat (# 2557) on :

I've also chosen supply teaching as a career choice, to allow me the freedom to support my husband in his career, and more recently to help with the care for my father-in-law.
When I started I could choose when I worked, but over the last few years that choice has been taken away.
I understand that often children see a supply teacher and think "I can do what I like - they don't know me or the system". I've always been complimented by the support staff on how well I do manage behaviour, compared to the majority (it seems) of other supply teachers. Usually they are NQTs who came straight from school into college.
I can understand that a CS (cover supervisor) or HLTA (higher level teaching assistant) employed by a school will have a better understanding of the school and the children and will probably do a better job at managing the behaviour than I could.
But I have never understood why a supply HLTA or CS should be better - they are in the same position as I am. However, the rate of pay is much less and schools are struggling to balance their books. As a result the short-term day-to-day supply that I wanted no longer exists.
I had to listen to a HLTA telling the Y2s that the festival of Purim is celebrated by playing the dreidle game, and telling the Y4s that there are in total 13 Hindu gods. [brick wall]

But I was the one on the temporary contract, and when the parents complained that their children were not happy (because I made them work, or they faced the consequence) I was the one who had to leave.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

Mrs Cod taught in English schools in the late 1990s.

The impression she had then and I have now is that teachers in the state sector have just about now discretion concerning what and how to teach.

Given that the essence of a profession is that its members should have the responsibility and freedom to exercise their own judgment according to the expertise, could one say that the UK government has abolished the teaching profession?

That being so, perhaps it could provocatively be said British schools would be no worse without trained teachers given that the job teachers are being asked to do is more suited to robotic bureaucrats.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
The same mismatch as between Gove insisting on an even more prescriptive and narrow curriculum, and at the same time persuading more and more schools to become academies who will not be bound by it. Does not compute.

Does compute. The private schools and Oxford University are for "people like us:, the land-owning officer class. The so-called academies and the revived grammar schools and the posher of the church schools and the minor private schools and the other universities are for the junior officer and NCO class - people who need some technical knowledge in order to be able to serve their lords and masters more effectively. The comprehensive schools and the National Curriculum are for the scum of the earth who need to be taught to obey orders.

These people are Tories. That is how Tories think.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Knowing that there has been a history of primary school teachers who did not understand maths handing that phobia on to pupils and these days, an appalling lack of scientific understanding, leaving huge misconceptions to be retaught and explained later on, some training is necessary.

But that is also true of secondary schools. Some have no-one at all capable of teaching more than the most elementary maths. Sometimes even no-one capable of teaching physics or chemistry.

Maths (and maybe sciences) in the GCSE and A-level years might be the one big exception to the general rule of "trained teachers only". Because the sad truth is that there are not enough trained specialist maths teachers to go round. And the even sadder one is that quite a few trained specialist maths teachers do not know maths well enough to handle an A-level course, and some not well enough to encourage a clever GCSE student.

To teach an academic subject well you need to go beyond the curriculum and need to know more than the government says your pupils need to know. Partly because that way you have a context and intellectual structure, partly because you will get questions from kids that go further than the curriculum (and if your answer is "that's not in the curriculum its not important" you ought not to be teaching), partly because you need enthusiasm for the subject to communicate it and someone who didn't care enough to learn more for themselves probably hasn't got enough enthusiasm to be catching.

Also in science subjects (though maybe not maths) someone teaching the older years in a secondary school really ought to be aware of current developments since they graduated. Or since the textbooks were written.

quote:

If you can't see why children are getting the maths wrong you can't help them move beyond it.

A sore point with me. When I was at school the almost universal maths teacher reaction to a kid who got the answers wrong was to assume they hadn't understood the previous bit of work so give them dozens of easier ones to do. Repetitive and tedious and nowhere near explanation or help.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
And the even sadder one is that quite a few trained specialist maths teachers do not know maths well enough to handle an A-level course, and some not well enough to encourage a clever GCSE student.

This is true, both of my boys did Maths and Further Maths A levels. Both got A grades, but only because I employed an (expensive) tutor who plugged the gaps left by the school. He was an ex maths teacher who found the stresses of class teaching too much, but became a very in-demand tutor.

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cod:
...Given that the essence of a profession is that its members should have the responsibility and freedom to exercise their own judgment according to the expertise, could one say that the UK government has abolished the teaching profession?

That being so, perhaps it could provocatively be said British schools would be no worse without trained teachers given that the job teachers are being asked to do is more suited to robotic bureaucrats.

This is a good point. There seems to be very little scope for professional judgement. It seems more like a a highly monitored and scrutinised process for delivering a public service.

ISTM to the aim is to drive down the cost of providing state education. Teachers' salaries and pensions are a huge part of the cost. If these costs can be reduced without any reduction in outcome, or even with a perceived improvement in outcome, then the process will have general support. A lot will depend on consumer response and the ultimate consumers are the parents.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
I've always thought Tories were idiots.

'Thought'? 'THOUGHT?!'

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
The comprehensive schools and the National Curriculum are for the scum of the earth who need to be taught to obey orders.

These people are Tories. That is how Tories think.

Well said!

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Kat in the Hat:
I had to listen to a HLTA telling the Y2s that the festival of Purim is celebrated by playing the dreidle game, and telling the Y4s that there are in total 13 Hindu gods

Many primary teachers are wary of reaching RE so they delegate that to TAs while they take their preparation and planning time. This is yet one more threat to my subject.

Posted by Mili (# 3254) on :

What if things were taken to extremes though? Imagine the UK Government decided to replace the majority of teachers with unqualified staff, deeming that these unqualified staff deserved less pay than trained teachers. How many people would want to teach? When I lived in London I had a friend who was teaching music in a secondary school who got some sort of subsidy towards buying a flat because London was desperate for teachers, but it was difficult for teachers to live there on a teacher's wage. Imagine how much less affordable London is for lower paid staff in schools.

Who could afford to work in these unqualified positions? All I can think of based on the type of people who work as lowly paid integration aides in Australia, is these staff would need to be married to someone who earned a lot more than them. The spouse would be the main breadwinner for the family while the teaching partner would supplement the family income with their low wage.

In Australia it is usually women who work these roles and I have know some integration aides who have really struggled when they have divorced after their kids have grown up. Suddenly they're stuck in a job with a low wage and no monetary support from the ex-partner.

There is already a fairly strong argument that many people, especially men, who would be great teachers are not teachers because they can earn so much more in another field. If the UK government used this round about way to reduce teaching wages, surely even more potentially great teachers would be lost from the system. (This is not to say that teachers and other staff in schools do not do a great job on low pay, as low pay generally means the people doing the jobs are there because they love the jobs not the money. However lower pay definitely makes choosing to teach a low priority for many people).

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

If this is indeed the plan then the lower paid staff would not be called teachers and what they do would not be described as teaching.

At present the system now has a recognised role of cover supervisor and agencies send out supply CSs who are paid around £50-£70 a day. Supply teachers who work through agencies are generally paid £100-£150 a day. Those who work through LEA's are paid to scale, which for an experienced teacher would be around £190 a day. The new Agency Worker Regulations mean that any supply teacher who is in a school for 12 weeks must be paid to scale and receive the same benefits as regular staff. It makes keeping an older experienced supply teacher for longer than 12 weeks very expensive for the school.

There are now supply teachers who are taking CS work because it's that or nothing. They are not supposed to teach and some I know do make a point of establishing this clearly with a school. However, they can safely be used to cover long-term absences because the school can claim that a class has a qualified teacher even though they are in the role of CS.

There is also apparently a surplus of newly qualified teachers from what seems to be a policy of recruiting more than the system needs. I don't understand the rationale for this but it seems to be the case that some NQT's find it difficult to complete their induction and the time-scale has been increased to five years.

Officially, CS work needs only GCSE level qualifications but some of the job requirements need a higher level of qualification and the kind of experience which is involved in teaching. Being able to speak to large groups of people, to outline and explain a task, to ensure good behaviour and to be able to contribute to pupil assessment can be part of a CS job specification.

Posted by no_prophet (# 15560) on :

@OP

Short answer - it is a generally risky idea.

Long answer - I don't know if teaching is considered a profession in the UK? Like medicine, lawyering, occupational therapy, plumbing. In professions here, you require a licence to practice or a journeyman's certificate to show that you've had the necessary training and supervised experience to do the job. I don't think I want an operation from a skilled person who is not a doctor, nor my house wired by someone with skills but not a qualified electrician. Why would I want to be taught or have children taught by persons who are not qualified?

I did go to a private school in the 1970s which had unqualified teachers. I won't suggest that all schools who have unregulated unofficial teachers are bad from my personal experience, but I think it is is risky. Who exactly regulates the unregulated? It took Child Protection investigations and lawsuits to sort my school out.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no_prophet:
I don't know if teaching is considered a profession in the UK?

Depends who you ask and what you mean by 'professiopn'.

Old-fashioned teachers like me regard 'professional' as meaning that we do it for the kids and not for the money so we are prepared to work long hours of unpaid overtime. But we were exploited and our goodwill has largely run out, especially when they came to steal our pensions.

If 'profession' entails membership of a registering body, then we had that in the General teachers' council - which this government has disbanded (though my trade union calls itself a 'professional association.'

Teaching has always moved back and forth, in the eyes of politicians and the public, between a mere job and a profession.

When we lobbied for an all-graduate profession, we arrived there only to see this undercut by the use of assistants. These assistants were invented to do the boring chores like photocopying, under a working agreement delightfully known as WamG. Now, they are 'delivering' lessons while proper teachers stay in their offices and write lesson plans for them.

I use the word 'deliver' because this government has the banking model of education - you parcel up bits of knowledge and deliver it. They have no idea of education as inspiring curious minds - just filling them with 'stuff'.

Posted by ecumaniac (# 376) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
And the even sadder one is that quite a few trained specialist maths teachers do not know maths well enough to handle an A-level course, and some not well enough to encourage a clever GCSE student.

You have got to be kidding me. It's hardly rocket science!

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Well, I'd like to echo Curiosity Killed...'s concern about primary staff with poor knowledge of science and maths, having been present at a session on Nature for infants (5-7 year olds, for non-UK people) led by a classroom assistant. I managed to bite my tongue when one of the children referred to spiders as insects (yes, yes, they're really arachnids but there's plenty of time higher up the school to teach him the finer points of taxonomy) but was unable to keep my mouth shut when the classroom assistant (who really should have known better as she is a keen gardener) started telling the children that ladybirds eat leaves.

It was our TAs who caught me and asked what they should do about a student who taught the class that spiders were insects. One of them had queried it, and the student was backed up by the observing tutor! We got some books in. Our TAs are pretty good, despite not being able to go beyond the lesson stuff in personal knowledge.

Another student asked us at a planning meeting what a tetrahedron was. Along with our concealed shock at the ignorance, was also the shock that she did not see the problem with asking us, rather than going to a book and concealing said ignorance.

leo wrote "They have no idea of education as inspiring curious minds - just filling them with 'stuff'." Inspiring curious minds! They don't want that. No curiosity, and as for minds? Us Morlocks don't have minds, do we? On the other hand, it is probably their own shortage in the curious mind department that leads them not to see what is so obvious to us.

What ken said, re Tory thought. Too.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

<tangent re spiders and inaccurate information>

Thinking back (and making an effort to be fair), I wonder if the issue in the incident I mentioned was that the TA didn't want to challenge too many of the children's misconceptions. But surely that's what education is for?

And it's not just students - I heard a CBBC presenter referring to spiders as insects. This is how my own daughter learned the difference (as a result of seeing Mummy turn purple with rage and yell abuse at the TV screen).

Oh, and what Ken said again again, with the corollary that the Powers That Be have not yet woken up to the fact that this model of education is no longer appropriate for a modern economy.

[ 05. July 2012, 08:56: Message edited by: Jane R ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
The same mismatch as between Gove insisting on an even more prescriptive and narrow curriculum, and at the same time persuading more and more schools to become academies who will not be bound by it. Does not compute.

Is Gove's curriculum narrower, though? When I did GCSE English 10 years ago, it was pretty much entirely twentieth-century stuff, plus bits of Macbeth (not even the whole play). Putting Jane Austen and the Brontës into the syllabus seems like broadening it to me.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

Though what I really don't understand is: if you abolish the national curriculum for academies, surely academies will still be bound to follow the GCSE / O-Level syllabus, so in what sense have they actually been freed from anything?

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
[QB.... the Powers That Be have not yet woken up to the fact that this model of education is no longer appropriate for a modern economy. [/QB]

The PTB see education as a commodity to be delivered in the most cost-effective way. Getting value for money is the central principle. In recent years there's been a steady stream of rhetoric about the costs involved in providing education, including teachers' salaries and pensions, along with the idea that the system is supporting a large number of 'under-performing' teachers.

ISTM that the stage is being set for the kind of system which would reduce the number of qualified teachers and allow for classes to be taken by lower-graded staff.

From September, along with a faster process for getting rid of 'under-performers' there will be new professional standards and a new system of grading and rewarding those considered to be the best performers. At present all teachers progress annually to the top of the pay scale after which they can apply to go through the 'threshhold' to a higher band. Beyond that there are two other higher performance designations. This is set to change to a single higher grade of 'Master Teacher' and, if what I've heard and read is accurate, all teachers currently on higher-graded levels will be re-assessed. As things are at present any teacher who didn't make the 'Master' grade wouldn't lose their current pay level, however it would make them look overpaid and therefore vulnerable to being managed out.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

The English syllabus for the last 10 years has had a number of categories that have to be covered:

classic literature - cue list of authors
different cultures - cue list of authors
Shakespeare
media - understanding newspapers / advertising / etc

These have to be covered through

a play
poetry
prose - usually a book

Now that's the basic language course, literature also requires more of the above. There are then requirements on comparing and contrasting, in depth studies and the like.

So you could at its most basic:

write an essay on how Juliet relates to her parents to cover a play from Shakespeare,
compare and contrast WWI poetry from the classic literature list and
write a study of how the character of Lenny is portrayed in Of Mice and Men for your different cultures,
plus the media requirement by the exam
write a response to a poem (eg how the mother felt seeing her wounded son)
and another essay based on personal experiences changing your life

which is what the GCSE students did this summer where I worked.

Or you could:

compare and contrast poetry from different cultures in one paper
look at how Dickens combined the elements in A Christmas Carol to get his message across in one essay
write about how Act ii Scene ii of Macbeth is the pivotal point of the play;
I can't remember what the personal essay was now
look at how the coverage of the terrorist who sent a bomb onto a plane with his pregnant girlfriend as it came up for review

for English Language, as my daughter did 8 years ago. In addition she studied Educating Rita and To Kill a Mocking Bird for her English Literature.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

When I did English O levels (in 1980, showing my age here) we had to study 4 things in depth for the literature exam, which IIRC were Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), Hard Times (Dickens), Death of a Salesman (Miller)... er, I think the final one was Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) but wouldn't swear to it. We also did a lot of other stuff (I remember reading Our Mutual Friend as a result of reading an extract from it in a comprehension exercise and wanting to know what happened next). I don't remember all the things we did for the English Language assessments but it was mainly assessed on a portfolio of work produced over the whole course. Literature was an exam where you had to write essay-type answers to questions on the four set books.

I don't know whether that proves anything (if I'm right about the Steinbeck it proves we were expected to read longer books), but I remember enjoying my English lessons (which included studying poetry and drama and various other things that weren't directly covered by the syllabus). The highlight of the O level course was a school trip to Stratford on Avon to see Shakespeare being performed.

[ 05. July 2012, 11:25: Message edited by: Jane R ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

My recollection of GCSE English Language and Literature was that we studied:

Scenes from Macbeth (I am not sure if we were supposed to study the whole play and just gamed the system, or whether that was the exam board's favoured approach),

A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller,

A lightweight 'Anthology' from the AQA exam board, which was divided into sections, and each section had one item from a pre-1900 author and one from another culture. (And also a ghastly amount of Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy.)

Thus my entire GCSE-acquired knowledge of pre-1900 English literature consisted of bits of Shakespeare, a few poems, and possibly a short story. (Interesting, incidentally, that WW1 now counts as 'classic'.)

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Hard Times was probably dropped because it was too subversive... Dickens spends quite a lot of time ridiculing Mr Gradgrind's philosophy of education (where children are viewed as empty jars to be filled up with Facts).

Mind you, the Gradgrinds seem to be winning.

Posted by Sighthound (# 15185) on :

In fairness to the Tories - and my Lord, how reluctant I am to be fair to that crew - I'm not sure the last Labour Government was that much different in its attitude to Education. The real problem is that control over Education, which is very, very important to society as a whole, has been seized by some very dark and dodgy individuals. These people are good at putting forward populist theories that go down well with readers of the Daily Mail and similar 'newspapers'.

Much of this is based on fear (of rowdy, working-class or, heaven forfend, ethnic minorities, spoiling Jessica's educational opportunities) and prejudice (teachers are lazy, Marxist good-for-nothings who only work 25 hours a week and have most of the year as holidays; LEAs are even worse, Kremlins in miniature.)

So we end up with massive government interference, endless changes as the latest Whitehall idiot flexes his or her muscles, and detailed prescription of how teachers should do their job, written by people who are, at best, socially and ideologically conservative, and at worst nutcases.

And funnily enough, there is no evidence that parents, or people in general, think the system is any better than it was 30 years ago. So the 'revolution' continues, indefinitely.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Well, I'd like to echo Curiosity Killed...'s concern about primary staff with poor knowledge of science and maths, having been present at a session on Nature for infants (5-7 year olds, for non-UK people) led by a classroom assistant. I managed to bite my tongue when one of the children referred to spiders as insects (yes, yes, they're really arachnids

I always thought spiders were insects until i read this.

Then again, i did Physics and Chem., not biology (which was considered to be a girls' subject!)

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
(And also a ghastly amount of Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy.)

You might well have had to do more of these authors to the neglect of others, which is a pity. But how can you imply that either of them are 'ghastly'???

I would have thought they are exactly the sort of poet that should be read in schools: humane, serious, yet readable.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

The Armitage and Duffy were options for the English Literature poetry. It's the one my daughter did and has recently been cast into disfavour as someone decided Duffy's Education for Leisure wasn't suitable (Armitage's The Hitcher passed them by). For the literature there was also a section on pre-1914 poetry.

That AQA anthology had other options, and the option to use the short stories from that anthology was the choice your school made. You could have read books to achieve the same targets.

In the schools I've worked in the choice to just use the anthology was a bottom set option as a way of getting the lower ability students through on the minimum. Top sets got other options.

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sighthound:
In fairness to the Tories - and my Lord, how reluctant I am to be fair to that crew - I'm not sure the last Labour Government was that much different in its attitude to Education. The real problem is that control over Education, which is very, very important to society as a whole, has been seized by some very dark and dodgy individuals. These people are good at putting forward populist theories that go down well with readers of the Daily Mail and similar 'newspapers'.

This is true. Gove and head of Ofsted Michael Wilshaw are a double act. Wilshaw's tough talk, "If anyone says to you that 'staff morale is at an all-time low' you know you are doing something right" backs Gove's plans to make it easy for heads to get rid of "underperforming teachers" and paves the way for radical changes in staffing schools.

[ 05. July 2012, 19:38: Message edited by: justlooking ]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Wilshaw also reckons that teaching isn't stressful. How long ago did he teach and what sort of school?

I despair whenever politicians meddle in 'the secret garden' of the curriculum but never as much as this time round.

I believe in Purgatory. In it, I hope to see Gove with bottom band year 9s on a wet Friday afternoon perpetually for a couple of thousand years. With no indulgences to get him out too early.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

You missed that Gove has to teach bottom set year 9 a modern foreign language on a wet Friday afternoon.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
You might well have had to do more of these authors to the neglect of others, which is a pity. But how can you imply that either of them are 'ghastly'???

I would have thought they are exactly the sort of poet that should be read in schools: humane, serious, yet readable.

I remember coming away with a sense of vapid pretentiousness, like the literary equivalent of Yoko Ono. (Though I probably didn't quite articulate it like that at the time.) I liked a lot of the other poetry though. It's entirely possible I'm just narrow-minded.

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...
That AQA anthology had other options, and the option to use the short stories from that anthology was the choice your school made. You could have read books to achieve the same targets.

In the schools I've worked in the choice to just use the anthology was a bottom set option as a way of getting the lower ability students through on the minimum. Top sets got other options.

In my school the Anthology was used for everyone, including Higher Tier candidates. Having said that, we weren't divided into ability groups for English, which might explain it.

I think what jars with me is the idea that everything before 1900 can be lumped together in a single category called 'pre-1900 texts'. It seems to me almost as meaningless a category as 'world music'.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Wet and windy Friday afternoon preferably. Kids are always at their worst when it's windy.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

And let him teach Arabic or Chinese - something really challenging. We mustn't dumb down the curriculum, must we.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Wet and windy Friday afternoon preferably. Kids are always at their worst when it's windy.

Yep - children and horses go wild when it's windy.

[Smile]

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Wilshaw also reckons that teaching isn't stressful. How long ago did he teach and what sort of school?

Up to his appointment with Ofsted he was head of Mossbourne Academy in Hackney and education director of Ark which is a sponsor of eight academies. He's credited with completely reversing the decline of the school which preceded the Academy. Critics point out that the pupil intake for Mossbourne has changed from that of the previous school, with many coming from outside the area. The percentage of pupils on free school meals has dropped which is an indication of a changing intake. He has a rigid military-style approach to education which undoubtedly appeals to many.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

(sorry about the double post - could a Host delete it, please?)

Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Wet and windy Friday afternoon preferably. Kids are always at their worst when it's windy.
Yep - children and horses go wild when it's windy.

And bung in a few Traveller kids (the chavviest of chavvy in behaviour)

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Alex, that was totally uncalled for and bloody inaccurate to boot.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ecumaniac:

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
And the even sadder one is that quite a few trained specialist maths teachers do not know maths well enough to handle an A-level course, and some not well enough to encourage a clever GCSE student.

You have got to be kidding me. It's hardly rocket science!

No, its harder than rocket science!

Only about 40% of maths teachers in England have a degree in maths or a related subject (like physics, engineering, or even computer science) About 15% of maths teachers don't even have an A-level in it. Something like one school in ten hasn't got a single maths graduate on the staff.

The situation in chemistry and physics is similar for graduates, and getting worse fast because of the collapse in physics and chemistry teaching in universities (itself partly due to the failure to teach the subjects properly at school so students think they are boring and don't want to study them) though nearly all physics and chemistry teachers at least have an A-level in the subject.

Biology is the other way round. Most secondary school biology teachers have biology-related degrees, because they are a lot more common than physics or chemistry degrees. But about a quarter of those teaching biology at GCSE don't even have a biology A-level, because most schools now teach combined science and science teachers in general are more likely to have physics or chemistry A-levels than biology.

OK, that's possibly not a problem. Maybe an experienced teacher can mug up enough biology or chemistry - or history or or English or geography or RE - to teach a GCSE class even if they never even studied it to A-level themselves. Probably they can. I suspect I could and I'm not even a teacher. But I also suspect that that's NOT true of maths (and therefore of physics, and at least some parts of chemistry)

Anyway, quite seriously, if you teach the upper years of a secondary school, you will sooner or later - probably sooner - find yourself teaching someone who is better at the subject than you are. They probably won't know anywhere near as much as you (although by A level the most enthusiastic students might well know the parts of the subject they are most interested in better than their teachers) but they will likely soon be going further than you did academically.

For most subjects that's probably fine. A large part of academic education is setting the scene, getting over to the students what the subject is about, sketching out the intellectual scaffolding that ideas and theories and facts and experiences can be fitted into. Another large part is passing on the culture of the subject - this is how we do being a scientist, this is how we behave in the lab, this is how we discuss things at a seminar, this is what we expect from an essay.

You don't have to be able to win an olympic medal yourself to be able to coach a 14-year-old runner who is going to get to the olympics when he's 20.

But I don't think maths works like that really. I'm not sure - because I wasn't particulary good at maths myself and I could never have dreamed of doing a maths A-level when I was at school - but I strongly suspect that someone who had not themselves studied maths to degree level would not only have a hard time being an effective maths teacher at A-level, but would be unable to offer very much at all to the really brightest students, even before A-level.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Adding an example to what ken is saying, I supported a year 10 GCSE science lesson* - bottom set year 10 science lesson albeit - where the teacher was covering some chemistry. It was so obvious she had no idea of any theory of atomic structure or chemistry†. She was horrifically wrong repeatedly - obviously had no idea why the periodic table forms the shape it does. It went on and I've fortunately blotted out the rest of that one. But she was a qualified science teacher.

* as SENCo - half the LSAs were off sick/nursing children off sick, the repercussions of that particular group unsupported weren't good, so I went in to cover. I'd got involved after the other knock on issues.
† OK, so I studied Chemistry, but that stuff also underlies some physics and my daughter was using it for material studies as an engineer.

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
..... Maybe an experienced teacher can mug up enough biology or chemistry - or history or or English or geography or RE - to teach a GCSE class even if they never even studied it to A-level themselves. Probably they can. I suspect I could and I'm not even a teacher. But I also suspect that that's NOT true of maths (and therefore of physics, and at least some parts of chemistry)....

Many classes in secondary school are taught by teachers who have no qualification in the subject. It isn't possible to cover every subject using only subject specialists. The non-specialists therefore rely on the specialists to provide them with work they can deliver.

Supply teaching can involve taking classes in a wide range of subjects. Even long-term subject specialist bookings can involve 'general cover' which a regular teacher wouldn't expect to do. IME many subjects can at least be delivered, if not exactly taught, in a productive way by a non-specialist so long as there is oversight by someone who has both subject knowledge and knowledge of the scheme of work. If there's no specialist teacher in the school then it's a shambles.

There does seem to be particular difficulty with maths. I've taught in three schools where there was either no subject leader on the staff or they were on long-term sick leave. I'd always assumed where there was a subject leader on the staff that that person had a relevant qualification but if this isn't the case it explains some of the difficulties I've come across in maths departments.

QTS isn't everything. For some subjects at least it may be better to have a subject specialist without QTS than a non-specialist with QTS. Academies employ people without QTS on instructor pay scale. There's a move to employ ex-military personnel in this way. From the government's pov they're more cost-effective.

[ 06. July 2012, 10:51: Message edited by: justlooking ]

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

That doesn't always work either. My daughter's A2 chemistry (at a sixth form college) was taught by a competent research chemist. She could not teach. I ended up teaching my daughter at home to fill the gaps and she went back in and taught the class.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Indeed. I had a dreadful teacher for physics - well, he was a lovely man, but he couldn't teach. He had a PhD in his subject. Teaching skills and academic ability don't always go together and even if they do they aren't always accompanied by subject knowledge in the relevant subject.

I was put off chemistry at the age of 13 by a teacher who was obviously scared of the chemicals...

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

Presumably in both the above cases, despite the judgement that they couldn't teach, the teachers concerned had QTS.

If there are people with QTS who can't teach, and people without QTS who can then the move towards employing 'unqualified' staff in the classroom is justified.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

I don't know whether my physics teacher had QTS or not, but surely if the qualifications required to gain QTS don't guarantee that the person in question has a minimum amount of teaching skill, the problem that needs to be fixed is the way that QTS is awarded?

When I studied to become a teacher (before escaping to what the head of OFSTED thinks is a less stressful profession) you had to spend a year as a probationary teacher after getting the paper qualification. If you failed your probationary year you didn't get QTS, even if you had a distinction and/or a First on paper. Have things changed?

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

If your school was a state school then I don't think your physics teacher could have been employed to teach without QTS. Presumably this teacher was recognised by the school as being able to teach despite your own assessment.

I think it's still technically the case in a state school that classes should be taught only by those with QTS or, in the case of student teachers taking classes there should be overall supervision by a qualified teacher. However the long term aim of the government seems to be in the direction of academy status for all secondary schools or at least the introduction of academy-style employment practices. This would mean that heads can employ as teachers anyone they consider capable of teaching whatever qualifications they have.

Until recently the agreement with teaching unions was that classes could be covered by non-qualified staff for the first three days of any absence and thereafter by a qualified teacher. However the reality is that schools often don't have the money to pay supply teachers and so they find ways of using cover supervisors for long term absences. Permanently replacing qualified teachers with cover supervisors or other unqualified staff is the next step.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

You did not need QTS to teach in a sixth form college, although that is now changing as there is more insistence on training to teach there too.

You can teach in a secondary school without QTS, there is even a payscale for unqualified teachers (this is from 2010). I'm not sure if the science teacher I mentioned earlier had QTS, she was South African, and teachers from abroad are allowed to teach in schools for a number of years before having to qualify with QTS.

To pass QTS there are a number of competencies that have to be passed to the satisfaction of the teaching college / supervising body.

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

The following information is taken from a Guide to QTS:

quote:
From 1 September 2008 the following people can be employed to teach in maintained schools or non-maintained special schools in England:

* teachers with QTS
* trainee teachers on mainstream or employment based routes to QTS
* Overseas trained teachers who have worked here for less than four years
* instructors

All new FE teachers appointed after 1 September 2007 will be following the new FE QTLS (Qualified Teacher: Learning and Skills) qualifications pathway. Teachers in schools who hold QTS will be required to undertake appropriate CPD to teach in FE. This will enable them to achieve the FE QTLS award.

Instructors

Instructors are 'unqualified teachers' who the law allows to carry out the same duties as qualified teachers. Instructors can be employed:

* to give instruction in any art or skill or in any subject or group of subjects (including any form of vocational training), where special qualifications or experience or both are required, in order to give such instruction
* if the school or local authority is satisfied that he/she has the necessary special qualifications or experience or both to do the job
* if there is no suitable qualified teacher, graduate teacher, registered teacher or teacher on the employment-based teacher training scheme available for such appointment or to give such instruction
* only for such period that no suitable qualified teacher, graduate teacher, registered or teacher on an employment based teacher training scheme is available.

Instructor posts should only be offered for as long as there is no qualified teacher or person on an employment based route to QTS available to supply those skills or qualifications.

AFAIK Academies can employ instructors and other unqualified teachers on permanent contracts whether or not qualified teachers are available. I am sure the government's plan is for all schools to be able to do this.

Overseas trained teachers can teach here for four years without gaining QTS provided they are recognised as qualified to teach in their country of origin.

Posted by CSL1 (# 17168) on :

I've been in university education 9 years (three degrees, two graduate, one of those U.S. doctorate-level). Yet I'm not qualified to teach anything below university level except as a fill in or emergency exception. One would have to have a degree in education and have served a semester as a student teacher under the tutelage of a high school, middle school, or grade school instructor to get qualified.

My experience has been that many university education departments are into whatever's trendy, often fail to measure the success of their methods by any reasonable scientific standards, and have far lower standards for graduation than the university at large--it's a scandal at my university every commencement how many of the education majors graduate with departmentally-bestowed "honors" vis-a-vis the rest of the programs--we can barely suppress the laughter.

In the U.S., but for a handful of inspired students, education is often a degree upon which one falls back, "So, you can't make the grades in Electrical Engineering, you can always teach mathematics in high school".

I think many university schools of education do a fair job of UNeducating their students and ill-preparing them for teaching younger children. National scandal. And I've been around a bit, bouncing around the ivory towers, as student or professor, for 20 years or so; it's not like I haven't had experience in this.

[ 06. July 2012, 19:53: Message edited by: CSL1 ]

Posted by Martin L (# 11804) on :

quote:
Originally posted by CSL1:
I think many university schools of education do a fair job of UNeducating their students and ill-preparing them for teaching younger children.

One of their biggest problems is teaching to a particular fad. If the students are able to see through this, there is plenty of valid coursework from which they can benefit--educational psychology, with particular attention to the various theories of cognitive development; developmental literacy; curriculum development, and so on.

Probably the best thing that can be done is to make the entrance requirements stricter, and they have done so. In this state, it is a standardized test of Basic Skills. In other words, what do you know about math, science, reading, grammar, history, geography, writing? In the last five years, the state's Basic Skills test has been made incredibly difficult, from what I hear. Hopefully this will weed out those who thought they would get into teaching and limit themselves to the lower grades that require less content knowledge, although a bit more in terms of literacy development.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by CSL1:
I think many university schools of education do a fair job of UNeducating their students and ill-preparing them for teaching younger children. National scandal. And I've been around a bit, bouncing around the ivory towers, as student or professor, for 20 years or so; it's not like I haven't had experience in this.

I was an associate tutor at our graduate school of education for 28 years. The course is taught by people involved in research and changed every year to accommodate up to date research and government dictats.

Those student teachers who were unprepared were those who did not do university courses but entirely school-led training.

Posted by ecumaniac (# 376) on :

My HLTA tells me that despite all her years of classroom experience and knowledge (and it's really very good, and mostly in secondary maths lessons) she would not be able to be employed as a maths teacher because she doesn't have a maths degree. So I had assumed that not having a maths degree would preclude one from being a maths teacher.

But then the teacher in the room opposite mine has (only) a psychology degree + PGCE.... [Confused]

I recall a student once asking me if I did maths at uni and I was like, "well duh" but I guess that's not always the case!!

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

No, my daughter encountered lots of head-hunting for engineering graduates to fast track as science and maths teachers last summer when she graduated.

BBC article on Sutton Trust report on state of Maths education in the UK.

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ecumaniac:
My HLTA tells me that despite all her years of classroom experience and knowledge (and it's really very good, and mostly in secondary maths lessons) she would not be able to be employed as a maths teacher because she doesn't have a maths degree. So I had assumed that not having a maths degree would preclude one from being a maths teacher.

But then the teacher in the room opposite mine has (only) a psychology degree + PGCE.... ....

ISTM that although the current system precludes your HLTA from being employed as a maths teacher the long-term plan is for a system which would allow her to teach and to be in charge of specific classes.

A system with fewer teachers with QTS and more 'support teachers' would cost less and I can't see any reason it wouldn't work at least as well as the current system. However, if this is the long-term plan, the process of change seems to rely on dishonesty and at least in some schools on harassment.

Whether or not someone can teach or how well they can teach can depend on context. I've come across teachers who were regarded as outstanding in one school and unsatisfactory in another, or oustanding under one head and then rapidly managed out of the system when a new head comes along.

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