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.

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.

Examiners - Cheating?

The Daily Telegraph has been running a story all week regarding examiners of various exam boards telling teachers who attend £200 per day courses what is going to be on the forthcoming exam. There are a few issues I'd like to bring up about this:

1. This is clearly not on - presumably this is how they encourage schools to opt to take the exams provided by the board. Exams are big business, with each major one costing around £30 per head - one average-sized school would spend thousands of pounds per year, per subject on exams. I suppose any carrot they can dangle in front of a school needs to be exploited I suppose, but telling teachers the questions is a step too far.
2. What the press are clearly expecting is that pupils will take everything their teachers tell them is taken on board. As most teachers will tell you, this is just not the case in general, especially if you only say it once. It also assumes that all the children in those classes actually care, which again, most teachers will tell you is not always the case.
3. The press have made out that those attending the course were told what specific topics would appear on the exam. Couldn't the schools just save the £200 and read the curriculum? I assume that the exact questions didn't appear on a powerpoint.
4. One examiner openly admitted that they were surprised that certain papers/questions were passed by board's regulators, but again this isn't huge news. It's no secret that exams are generally getting easier, although in my view it is still difficult to get the top grades. Government targets have made this a necessary evil for the boards who are in the business of making maoney ultimately.
5. What school nowadays can afford to send anyone (other than the headteacher or their deputy, or both) on courses that cost £200 per day?  The first thing to go when a budget is tightened is the staff's access to external training or CPD (Continued Professionaa Development), unless you are the headteacher of course.

The newspaper and media in general are making a big deal of this story, but what the public don't realise is that this has been going on for years, it's just the first time it's been made public. If people really think it will make a huge difference, they are mistaken, but schools will take any opportunity to improve their league table position  - what a pathetic educational world we live in, driven by league table positions rather than offering an education that could actually be useful in the marketplace.