Unqualified Teachers Are Welcome

A mate of mine watches Top Gear every week, but I wouldn't ask him to fix my car.
My sister is a big fan of Holby City and Casualty, but I wouldn't expect her to take my appendix out if the need ever occurs.
In which case, why do the government think that it's acceptable to have unqualified people teaching the young people of the UK?

Supporters of Michael Gove will tell you that people have been teaching in the top private schools of the land for centuries and produced the best results, so why not have the same policy for state funded academies? The reason is not that those without Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) don't know their stuff - according to the DfE there are engineers, scientists, musicians and university professors with a burning desire to relinquish their large salaries and swap them for the average salary afforded to a teacher. Of course, academies have the freedom to pay more to the "right" candidates for teaching posts, but with the news that the Natinal Audit Office are refusing to sign off a £63 million overspend by the DfE last year, this "benefit" may not last too much longer, unless savings are made elsewhere.

There is a marked difference between private/public schools like Eton and Harrow and many academies/state funded schools that will almost certainly ensure that those who haven't done a teaching qualification will struggle in the classroom and that is behaviour. A university or school based teaching qualification trains its attendees in two main areas:

1. How to plan a lesson effectively.
2. How to control a class of 30ish kids.

The key for both points is behaviour. If the class is "nice" and has a will to succeed (like almost all classes in private schools) then a teacher will get away with a poor lesson and some learning will take place. In a classroom with less diligent children shall we say, a poorly planned lesson from an inexperienced and unqualified teacher will be mayhem at best, and once that has happened that teacher will struggle to win the class over in future lessons.

Trainee teachers always say that the hardest part of their teaching practise is controlling a class and discipline within the learning environment. To think that anyone who knows a lot about a particular subject can just walk in off the street and be a success in the classroom is frankly naive, insulting to teachers and only goes to show how out-of-touch politicians really are. It is also another stealth dig in the ribs of the profession itself, something that appears to be an active policy from Michael Gove and his chums.

This government has been a disaster for the morale of the teaching profession in the UK. I have to be honest that all I can forsee for the near future are more strikes and disruption as teachers, having been backed into a corner, have little option other than to vote with their feet. Recruitment of teachers will slow and experienced staff will look to get out, leaving a pretty bleak future for the young people of Britain.

ICT is Boring!

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, has announced a radical overhaul of the ICT curriculum, and not before time. The current, government written curriculum is out-of-date and very boring as he rightly says (I'm going to have to sit down, having just agreed with the man!). Gove wants children in schools to learn coding and being able to design apps.

This is great, but not all children will find these new activities interesting either, and even less will find them of any use outside the classroom. Whereas the stuff Gove wants to eradicate actually will be of use to most: using MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Also, staff may actually struggle to teach the new topics due to lack of knowledge and confidence with the software/language of coding. I regard myself as being fairly ICT savvy but have struggled with Google's App Inventor, which presumably would be one of the things on the new curriculum, or something similar at least. The same with game design and coding - even "simple" html is quite tough.

There is also the cost of purchasing the new software, which will run into thousands, plus the money required to train staff to enable them to teach the stuff. Where's the money going to come from, as we keep being told that there is none? Those who have the expertise to the level required will, or perhaps should be earning more money in the private sector.

How many jobs nowadays invent apps and games? Ok, more than there used to be, but not that many.

How many jobs nowadays use MS Word, Excel and Powerpint? Loads! Especially Excel for accounts and Word for writing a CV in order to get a job in the first place. Powerpoint is perhaps not as useful as it once was, but most managerial positions would require some knowledge of it.

I think that there needs to be a shake-up, no doubt about it, but there needs to be a mix of the apps/games and MS Office (schools can't afford Mac, I'm afraid). Those who are bored with the current system will be those who have an interest in ICT in the first place and will be on the computer for hours at home and therefore know all about MS Office. There are plenty of kids who aren't as good as that and need to be taught how to use the software. Some can't even send an email with an attachment in my view, although they are brilliant on Facebook. Most jobs I know don't require a thorough knowledge of Facebook but probably require you to send an email.

This announcement has substance, but still smacks of "give me your votes" to me.

What Do Teaching And Policing Have In Common?

I realise that with a question like that you could have numerous answers - perhaps it could be an exam question, as long as it's not deemed as being too difficult or easy. My (short) answer would be this:

Everyone has an opinion on how to do the job.

When I hire a builder to do something at my house, I tell them what I need doing and then bow to their superior knowledge on how to achieve that goal. I won't stand over them whilst they carry out the required work, telling them that they are doing it wrong and that a better way of doing it would be a way I suggest.

If I'm not feeling well I will book an appointment with my doctor, and whatever the doctor tells/prescribes me, I will almost certainly do. I won't let them tell me sat their bit then argue that actually I should do something else.

So why do people feel that they can tell teachers (who've done years of training and in most cases have years of experience) and police (who've also done loads of training and often have years of experience) how to do their jobs?

I must admit that I'm as guilty as the next person in some cases. We had a drunk person trying to get in our house at about 1am the other night and duly called the police. Now you have to bear in mind that we have a yound child in the house and that the drunkard had taken off his trousers, for reasons best known to himself. The police were quick to repond to their credit, and were soon outside our front door coaxing the man to dress himself and go home. After what seemed an eternity he was escorted around the corner and told to get back to his own place of residence. A quick chat with the police and we went back to bed, although not straight to sleep due to the adrenelin still coursing through our veins! Not a pleasant experience.

My partner is a police officer and I was quite angry that the bloke hadn't been hauled off to a cell for this. In my opinion he'd been trespassing on our property, been quite abusive (anti-social behaviour?) and had taken off his trousers (indecent exposure?), so why hadn't he been charged with something? It all seemed logical to me, someone with absolutely no expertise in the field. My partner explained that he hadn't actually done anything worthy of arrest, although if he came back he could be arrested for harrassment. As he hadn't got into our house there was no grounds for trespass, still had his boxer shorts on there was no indecent exposure, and actually had sworn on private land (our property) so there was no anti-social behaviour. It just highlighted my total lack of knowledge regarding policing (and the law) as a profession.

We see a similar thing in teaching on a daily basis. Regularly teachers have phone calls from parents to explain that their children are not being taught properly, or that the teacher is doing something that's unfair with regards their child. On what basis do these parents make these accusations? The answer: on the biased account of their child who is probably knowingly in the wrong and therefore embellishing the story in an attempt to make themselves appear to be the party that has been wronged.

As a teacher you find yourself constantly justifying yourself and your actions to parents, and increasingly, line managers, who have little or no experience of teaching your subject. To a certain extent this is fine, as parents should be kept in the loop, if they are interested, but do they really need to question everything?

I had an example of all of this recently when a parent phoned to complain that I wasn't setting challenging enough homework for their child. Fortunately my head of department fielded the call, which went something along these lines:

Parent: My child's homework is too easy and not relevent to their ability.
HOD: How do you mean?
Parent: It's all too easy and most of it is set from a website that neither I nor my child think is very good.

Now I ought to point out at this stage that the parent claims to be a teacher. The fact of the matter, a fact they later admited, was that they used to teach trainee teachers, which is a totally different thing.

HOD: We all put links to our homework tasks, both set on that website and on paper, on the school's website, so I will just go and have a look to see what homework your child has been set.
Parent: Yes, most of it has been on that website - the exam is taken on paper not online, it's ridiculous. And it's nowhere near challenging enough for a child of my child's ability!
HOD: Ah yes, I've found the right page. There have been 17 homeworks set to date, of which 3 have been on that website. And looking through the list of topics, the difficulty range is roughly from A* to B grade. What's your child's target grade for GCSE?
Parent: Their target is a B grade. Are you sure that only 3 out of 17 homeworks have been set from that website?
HOD: Positive. And it would appear that the work is challenging enough for your child In fact, in theory your child should find this work very difficult, so they are clearly tackling questions that are supposedly above their ability level. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Parent (sheepishly): No.

This is not an uncommon conversation for teachers to have with parents, and actually it's quite insulting for a teacher. On the one hand it's nice that the parent actually takes notice of what their child is learning at school, but the constant justification of what we do in the classroom (and out) is demoralising and shouldn't be required. Teachers in many cases have spent years learning how best to go about teaching their subject informed by experience and training, although many areas will need fine-tuning still and could be improved. A teacher's judgement is almost always going to be better than that of a parent or member of the public who has little or no experience of teaching. A parent can aid their child's learning in class by pointing out things that their child has found tough in the past or learning styles that they respond to, but ultimately it's down to the teacher to deliver the content in any way they deem best. I don't know of any teacher who would purposefully teach something badly.

The notion that "I know better than you" as far as teaching (and policing) is concerned won't change though as it's perpetuated from the very top, i.e. government. Constant interference from ministers and their celebrity "experts" who regularly state that schools are doing things wrong mean that there is no confidence in the profession from the top level, meaning that the general public have no confidence in it either. The spectre of Ofsted and continual changes to the curriculum mean that teachers have to justify their every move instead of doing what they should be doing: teaching children so that they are employable and can function in the world beyond school.

I'm not saying that all teachers are faultless, what I'm saying is that there's got to be an element of trust that they are doing what they think is best for the young people they teach. That's why they entered the profession in the first place.