All very laudable upping the bar on qualifications to become a teacher, and I follow the logic for secondary level as how can you enthuse/ have authority on your subject if you haven’t studied it to the highest and most effective level? Kids would suss that and unpick you sharpish.
But at primary level (and below) and as a general point, teaching is a skill set in itself, not necessarily following from excellent academic achievement. Both my parents were teachers and the norm for teaching training then was exactly that: you trained to be a teacher – yes in a subject area of interest – and that skill set is where you focussed your learning. You became a professional teacher. They both had 40 year careers out of that approach.
I’ve had a lot of further education, work in a professional arena and am reasonably well thought of in the speciality in which I work. But that doesn’t mean I am able to teach other people (especially not children) to do what I do. I wouldn’t presume to be so arrogant to assume that. The nuances of inspiring and enthusing and coaching should not be determined by a few certificates. Perhaps some better selection methods based on those headings would be a more effective approach? Could a probation period be arranged before you applied, when your general demeanour around children was assessed?
And let’s just touch on that tricky area of discipline. No certificates are going to equip you for somehow transmitting authority over a class without any real sanction. Gone are my dad’s days when you could set a boy’s bottom on fire to put the fear of God into a class (he didn’t know there were matches in the pocket!). I’m not entirely sure you can train people to exude credibility either as there seems to be plenty of teachers out there regularly eaten alive by their classes. So, again I would suggest that there is a need for better basic assessment of teaching applicants. Perhaps, as laudable as Cameron et al’s interjection is, we really need to take a deeper look at this issue? Knee-jerk reactions and black and white solutions: no thank you.
Totally agree with you. As a newly qualified primary school teacher I know there is a whole lot more to teaching that qualifications. I have a 10 O levels (aging myself there!), 4 A levels, a 2:1 degree and a PhD, so David Cameron should love me! Does any of that make me a good teacher? Absolutely NOT! I am totally against barriers against people training as teachers. Maybe better quality control of ITT (inital training providers) wouldnt go amiss, but I do resent the implication that the quality of teaching is related to the grade they got in maths when they were 16!
Loving the idea of a probation period to observe general demeanour around children. Teaching has to be about more than imparting information and especially at prmary level where children are dealing with the transition from home to school, it would be reassuring as a parent to trust that your child’s teacher would be sympathetic (rather bitter through personal experience here I confess as my daughter who found it difficult to settle at school was generally treated as a nuisance by her teachers). And in primary it is important that teachers are the “right” sort of person for the age group they are teaching because you are with them a LOT of the time.
My Godfather was a headteacher in a primary school. He is such a gentle, inspiring man. Idea as a role model and perfectly suited to his job. But I wonder how he/ the teacher training college who took him in knew that? Are teachers born not made?
At the other end of a teacher’s career. My son’s primary school maths specialist has just been seconded as a LA consultant to other schools in the area to advise them how to improve numeracy amongst children. Whilst I think this is a cracking idea – and wonderful recognition to an excellent teacher who has had a clearly fabulous career – I’m somewhat peeved that for the period my son would have had her teaching him in a subject he needs some stimulation to get him going, she’s not there! But there’s got to be some nuggat of good practice here for Cameron to chew on?
Well in fact, one of the worst ideas I’ve heard from Labour in the history of this government was the plan to fast track out of work bankers to become teachers within 6 months. You’re so bad in the money trade that you couldn’t hold onto your job even though that’s the only profession still paying bonuses. I really don’t understand the rationale behind this one. Greed and a willingness to work 16 hours a day chasing money around does not qualify anyone to do anything except more of the same. Even the successful bankers ought to have no advantage over other candidates for teaching positions. The skill is in making (and not losing) money by managing risk and reward. I’m sorry, I just don’t see how this is applicable.
About as barmy as the notion of getting ex-army people in as teachers to sort out secondary school kids. Cant remember whose idea that was, but its rubbish!
I suppose it all comes down to that idea that since we were all taught once, we are all perfectly able to be teachers. Humph.
I agree entirely that we need to be thinking outside the box when assessing suitable candidates for teacher training.
Highly intelligent people who are experts in their subject are not necessarily going to be any good at communicating and teaching their stuff to their others. I remember some shockingly awful lecturers at university who were enough to switch anyone off to their subject.
Particularly at primary level the skills which make a ‘good’ teacher are so broad. Relating to children, communication skills, behaviour management and an ability to make learning fun to name just a few.
However I *do* believe that we need to make sure that teachers aren’t thick (to quote your headline here!).
In my ‘former life’ as a primary teacher I remember a very dedicated student teacher who was working in a year 6 class. Her maths was just not up to it. Several of the children in the class were far more competent than she was, and it was painfully obvious. At the end of the teaching practice she was given feedback by the headteacher that her skills might be more suited to early years.
Of course refusing applicants who don’t get a 2:2 or above isn’t really going to help with that is it? You could get a first in History or English and still be a hopeless mathematician.
Agree with Hippylyte. It’s about balance.
Qualifications are part of the picture – but a small part of a huge picture!!!
Bless Cameron. I feel I want to thank him. Every day he makes it easer than it already was not to vote for his party
I’d like the people teaching my children to have a certain level of intelligence, but I’m not sure if having a 2:2 degree or above is a sign of that! I’ve got a 2:1 and I’m nowhere near as intelligent as my husband, who flunked his dissertation and got a third class…
I think that suitability for the job is far more important than degree class. I got a first in my subject and trained as a teacher. I was dreadful. A close friend got a third. She is an amazingly good teacher who has gone on to become a subject head in a school with a reputation for academic excellence.
I guess, thinking about it a bit more, the reasoning is that by making teaching a more ‘intellectual’ profession, then it will increase society’s regard for teachers, as well as improve ‘quality’. The current government is keen for all teachers to eventually have (or be working towards) a Masters level degree for this same reason. My comment to that would be that there are probably better ways to increase respect for teachers, not the least of which is to pay them more! But I would say that ;)
The thing is though, these measures are already in place. I’m in the early stages of doing a course to teach in the lifelong learning sector, and had to pass a numeracy and literacy exam in order to get on.
When I’m on the course, I have to pass my teaching placements, and I know at least one person who hasn’t passed theirs. I quickly asked my father about this (he is an Assistant Principle – Deputy Head in old talk – in a Sports College – Secondary School to you and I) and he says he always fails people who aren’t up to scratch after offering a lot of support and guidance to help them pass.
As it happens, I did get higher than a 2:2 in my degree, in 1997, but I also have a wealth of experience since then working in the public and voluntary sector. I learned a lot more about relating to other people in the ‘real world’ than I ever did at university, and I don’t think you can only gauge someone’s ability to do anything based on how well they do at exams or how good they are at writing essays.
It seems to me as re-inventing the wheel, and pointlessly so. We need bright, dynamic teachers, sure, but as others have said, university marks are a tiny part of the overall package.
Oops, and it’s Assistant Principal, not principle, although that does have a nice ring to it!
I’ve read more stuff on this this afternoon and picked up the point about making teaching a more ‘intellectual’ profession. But I still think the commons committee is missing the crux of this. You need to attract people who want to be teachers, who have a calling, are enthused to pass on their belief in education as well as being able to. Back to my dad’s day, teaching was an honourable profession. Something that was the mainstay of the middle classes and something to aspire to from the working classes (and I am aware how cliche’d and politically incorrect that now sounds, but that’s how it was 40 years ago). Everybody had respect for someone who could be a teacher no matter what side of the tracks you were from. It’s that that this generation of teachers has lost. The ‘modern’ words might be ‘role models’? I don’t know. But I am pretty sure that qualifications and foisting intellectuals on our kids is not the whole solution, by far.
Depends on the subject. Practical things like art/dt/cdt could be taught just as well if not better by people who have been practising professionals in those fields. Since the GTP exists to give the teacher training side of things, then forcing people out or to go back to college to get a degree that’s almost insulting to them if they’ve been … See moreworking as a professional in that field for years just seems like an unnecessary waste of time to me. I feel certain I would be able to teach art to A-level standard, but although I have a degree, it isn’t an art degree so despite working as a professional artist for years, knowing much about painting, drawing, CAD, photo-editing, mosaic, sculpture, lifecasting, moulding, engraving, photography, jewellery design, fashion and so forth I would be expected to go back to uni and do a 3 year BA, being marked and graded by people who I don’t necessarily feel are more qualified to grade me than I am them. Same with my other half – modelmaker in the film industry for 12 years, can make anything from anything, experience of lecturing to degree level at universities, but only has an HND as degrees in his subject didn’t exist back then. He too wouldn’t be qualified to do a GTP in design technology when he would walk all over the other candidates in every respect but formal qualifications. Neither one of us wants to have to go back to college just to tick other people’s boxes when we are far more ‘qualified’ for such roles than 21 year olds who rolled out of a degree with no life/teaching/business experience in the real world.
It’s unfortunate, though, that while highly intelligent, competent, skilled professionals may not make good primary school teachers, it is equally true that primary school teachers do not make not highly intelligent, competent, skilled professionals. They are great with a bunch of under-developed not-yet-humans (i.e. children) but that’s hardly a mark of intellectual prowess – quite the contrary, in fact. The fact that a dyslexic with a 2:2 “degree” in Sports Science from Sunderland University is qualified to run a classroom when Russell Group PhDs wouldn’t touch the job with a barge pole tells you all you need to know.
Teachers cannot be trusted with the intellectual development of a child in their care, because intellectual development is not their job. They’ll get the children to behave, do what they’re told, jump through the latest hoops the government of the day has put in their way, and so on, because that’s what they’re there to do, but at the end of the process, unless the child has intelligent parents that support the child’s intellectual development through out-of-school activities, the child’s intellect will be as unstimulated and under-developed as it was before it went to school.