Academies to be able to hire non-union, non-PGCE teachers

Hmm...and how do you think people with real life experience become teachers?...oh yes we do a PGCE...

Totally agree with yvy.

Hear hear Ivy!

Feels completely sick that someone has just viewed the last 9m of my life. The most gruelling, the most stressful 9m of my life as meaningless paperwork.

Yes there was a lot of paperwork. 80% was necessary to do the job of teaching and would be done as a teacher. The other 20% developed my understanding of a teachers roles. 100% had value IMHO.

I have a PGCE (and yes, it was a whole academic year of teaching children PLUS doing all the paperwork that goes along side AND reading up on the educational theories and psychologies to give us an understanding of how the brain receives, processes and stores information BEFORE writing essays that were assessed in order to ensure our own understanding of how children learn was sufficient to allow us to take responsibility for educating children). I have been teaching for 17 years (full time, core subject, state secondary school) and have supervised many PGCE students during that time. I am astounded that ANYBODY, let alone the minister responsible for rasing standards of education for our children, could think that doing away with this qualification (or equivalent routes to QTS) will improve what is happening in our classrooms.

Whilst some of my PGCE students have undoubtedly had a natural aptitude for teaching, NONE of them have automatically known how to assess and level students' work, NONE of them have had the automatic ability to monitor and help 30 students simultaneously and NONE of them would have been able to navigate their way through the absurdly complex paperwork that goes along with the job without considerable training and guidance.

Surely we (and I'm writing as a parent now) should be insisting on GREATER rigour and training - and possibly an increased rewards package to ensure the very best graduates are attracted to teaching - to ensure our children get the most skilled practicioners possible? It shouldn't be up to teaching unions to argue this point; it's about time every parent in the country stood up and said that our children deserve better.

Any school can hire an non-unionised (as opposed to unqualified) teacher can't they? I thought that the closed shop was illegal? That said, most teachers will join a union for their own protection. God help the unqualified teacher with no union who faces a false allegation of abuse or something.

I might ditch teaching - I reckon I was born to be a train driver. I'd be fantastic, I reckon.

How can teachers be "born not made"? Perhaps a certain type of personality is pre-disposed to be a good teacher/ doctor/ police officer/ architect/ nurse/ circus acrobat but they couldn't possibly do it without being shown how. Teaching is not about standing in front of a class of kids and telling them all the facts you know about Maths/ French/ History etc, it's about planning and structuring the methods to convey the knowledge you possess to all the hundreds or thousands of different individual children you will come across in your career. You need to be shown how to do that!! You can't just be born understanding it, that's hilarious!

denise do you have a PGCE?

Gove has done this because he wants to bring about change to teacher's terms and conditions along with messing up their pensions.

PGCEs are more about paperwork than actually proving you can teach.

Bollocks it's 10 months of non-stop teaching - which admittedly is a lot of paperwork also, but that's because day to day teaching involves lots of ridiculous paperwork.

Do you think 'hang on - do I actually know what I am talking about here, or am I going to say something idiotic in my ignorance again?' to yourself before yo u post about teaching, Denise? Because reading the last few staggeringly ignorant DM fuelled comments in the last few days, I am guessing not.

Once again, it is QTS that qualifies you to teach - NOT a PGCE. A PGCE is the route some teachers choose to qualify. But there are many others.

How would bringing the unions down a peg or two improve the standard of teaching? If a teacher is good it doesn't matter if they belong to a union or not.

If PGCEs are meaningless paperwork, how would schools decide if someone had the potential to be a good teacher or not? Why would the experts in their field want to be teachers anyway, and if they did, why would they be reluctant to do PGCEs? (they would surely put the 'meaningfulness' back into the qualification).

PGCEs are more about paperwork than actually proving you can teach. I think this is a good move by Gove. The teachers unions need to be brought down a peg or two.

I don't want my children taught by unqualified teachers. Why are PGCEs 'left-wing nonsense'? It would seem that Gove is the one spreading 'nonsense' (right-wing or otherwise).

God yes. Can't wait until they get rid of doctors' certificates too, silly unnecessary bits of paper that they are. Who needs qualifications to practise medicine, fgs? Pah.