Can 'teach first' really be doing this?

Remus - Ah thanks. I didn't realise PGCE teachers job-shared in effect. Thanks for explaining.

Beautiful please READ the posts.

PGCE students work with current teachers and their existing classes - so the PGCE student would be teaching my class. I didn't really go anywhere in particular - sometimes just a walk down the corridor - to give them chance to establish themselves with a class without me staring at them all the time! But I was always near enough to support/pick things up again as needed.

TF are pretty much on their own for most, if not all, of their lessons, from the word go.

Remus - when you nipped out for 20 minutes, what were you doing then? Didn't you have your own classes to teach?

A PGCE teacher may be left alone for a while, but the class remain the responsibility of the class teacher, therefore it is in the class teacher's interest to keep a close eye on things. I used to nip out and leave PGCE students for twenty minutes, but the students always knew I'd be back!

Evil So are you saying a PGCE teacher won't teach a class on their own? That their lessons are always supervised?

Yes a PGCE student may well make those mistakes. They are very common. The difference is that a PGCE student will not be taking the class for a full year, and also, crucially, the PGCE student will have the normal class teacher working alongside them the whole time. The class teacher will be in lessons with them at the start, checking their planning, stepping in with behaviour management. They can do this effectively because they are 'free' when the PGCE student is taking their class. As the Teach First trainees were in charge of their own classes, support would depend on the teaching commitments of the other teachers.

I was astonished that it apparently took till after Christmas (if the show timings were accurate) for Meryl to implement a seating plan that split up the naughty kids. Claudenia didn't seem to get the feedback that her explanations were confusing for even longer. A PGCE student would have not just been left to it like they were.

TheBeautiful you are showing your lack of understanding yet again. The grades are less important than the amount of progress, and the obsession with C grades is, at best, outdated.

The other point you miss spectacularly (again) is that whilst PGCE students make mistakes, they are seen as students and are not being paid a salary. They do not have responsibility for the class. A TF teacher does get a salary and does have responsibility for the class. This is one of the problems, IMO. TF is saying that these inexperienced teachers are capable of instantly taking full control. At least with PGCE there is an expectation that the trainee is there to learn, not that they can already do it.

The biggest problem is that TF trainees are an enormous responsibility to their mentors, who are often HoD, or another role too. If the TF person only stays for two years, that's massively wasteful of the mentor's already stretched time. Better to have an NQT and nurture them to stay 4/5 years, rather than a TFer who's using it as a step up to the City (many don't but some do).

As I said before though, it CAN work with the right TFer in the right place!

Teaching pays insufficient money to afford a London lifestyle of any kind. Unless you bought your house in 1984. Teachers used to be able to live in London.

It may be very little money by City standards, but teaching salaries are, I believe, on a par with what's paid in other professions such as social work, nursing and various other healthcare disciplines (not medicine, which requires far longer training). When you then take into account the annual leave, it's an attractive option for arts and humanities graduates in particular. It is a hard job, though. I wouldn't last five minutes in the classroom.

I'm sure lots of excellent teachers make similar mistakes in their first year of teaching, no matter what route they've come to teaching. Judging by those comments on the TES board, a PGCE teacher can have similar problems asserting authority in the classroom and suffer a lack of peer support.

Teaching is a very hard job, for very little money. Is it really any wonder it doesn't usually attract the best graduates? So getting those excellent graduates in huge swathes (TF cohort is growing) is an excellent idea. I don't think it matters if they only stay a year, two or three. Loads of women teachers take maternity leave and disrupt children's education, the will then take another maternity leave. And some never go back. And the staff retention rates probably aren't great in those tough schools in any case.

EvilTwins - I think Chloe was pleased for the students who'd exceeded expectations. That seems entirely reasonable to me.

The blonde one was too obsessed with C grades though. Progress is far more important. That whole "look at me - you got a C!" thing when she was giving out mock results annoyed me. Fine, unless he should have been achieving a B or an A. I also found her entitled attitude irritating - she felt that after 2 years, she deserved promotion if they wanted her to stay.

Meryl wasn't an effective teacher as she didn't have enough control of the class to teach them.

Claudenia wasn't an effective teacher because her lessons were confusing so the kids couldn't learn effectively.

The business guy was rated outstanding, yet his results were terrible - unclear what went wrong there.

Maths teacher appeared to be good (apart from wanting to foist his religious views on the kids) but quit.

Who else was there? The RE teacher and the blonde one. The RE teacher was clearly slumming it for a bit, I couldn't see him sticking with teaching. The blonde one seemed good, but she was in her second year.

Hardly a roaring endorsement of the scheme, given that their classes were stuck with them for the whole year, potentially a GCSE year.

Good friend.

Noble giraffe - ah OK. So you're not saying Meryl's a crap teacher then. I didn't see anything on that prog that made her a crap teacher.

I went to a state school and our history teacher was a really shit teacher though kept good control of the class (he was also a god friend of my father) and as a consequence I know no history. It's a gaping hole in my basic knowledge. Versus geography where the teacher was superb although sometimes lost control of the class. In spite of not having studied geography since O level, I could still sketch a good diagram of an ox-bow lake, describe the Triassic, Jurassic & Cretaceous cliffs on the Jurassic coast. I remember his lessons almost verbatim. Good teaching does make such a big difference.

I'd be a shit teacher.

I did read the link from the TES, it was all about how Meryl should have been supported in her behaviour management. I entirely agree that the support she received was inadequate and have commented on that elsewhere on MN.

But we still didn't see Meryl teach. We didn't really see any of them teach. We saw them interacting with problem pupils etc, but we didn't really see them explaining a tricky topic to a class, questioning the pupils, or bringing along their understanding. I'd have liked to have seen the maths teacher teaching, out of professional curiosity :)

And is it correct then that different state schools have different recruitment policies? Wouldn't it be more sensible for all teachers to be recruited by a County panel? They could then be registered as approved and then free to apply to schools in that County. Much less scope for peculiarities and abuse of power.

Noble - you need to read the link from the TES above.

Beautiful, you are speculating that if her behaviour management wasn't all over the shop, her teaching would be fine. We never really saw her teach so I've no idea what you are basing that upon, apart from maybe blind support for Teach First. She might be fine, she might be like Claudenia, or the lad who taught business BTEC who struggled to break their instructions down so that the kids could understand them. That doesn't mean they won't eventually be good, it means they need support with planning and teaching. Support that a PGCE student would find it easier to access. FGS Claudenia had to ask another trainee to observe her to figure out her issues.

community.tes.co.uk/tom_bennett/b/weblog/archive/2014/01/28/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-meryl-tough-young-teachers-mid-week-special.aspx

Interesting reading.

Who was the science teacher at Crown Woods? Wasn't that Claudenia. I thought Claudenia was rather shouty. And of the TF teachers on the program I would have least liked her to be my children's subject teacher.

I thought Nicholas was the best and he left after just one year. Shame.

Noble giraffe - perhaps it was her crowd control that gave cause for concern. It seems to be a big part of teaching in some schools.

Astonishing that you have judged there was nothing wrong with Meryl's teaching despite the series showing very little. Those that did see her teach judged her cause for concern.'
I expect you thought there was nothing wrong with Claudenia's teaching either, and that her group were just ill-disciplined too. Yet when she was observed it was apparent that a major problem was the class didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing. Despite her being a 'top graduate'

Merryl - not just crowd control.

I thought her behaviour with the gymnast she was mentoring was a bit off. Far too informal and wanting to please.

I thought the Science teacher at Crown Woods probably had the best classroom manner. A pity she alienated the Queen Bee pupil at the start, but easily done and she did manage to turn it around.

Re interviews and who gets to decide. In my area, governors choose the HT but, speaking as a gov, we would sit in on interviews for staff and advise but it's the HT who makes the final decision. The views of the HoD probably carry most weight.