Desperate DfE tells teacher trainers to take all comers onto PGCEs, plus infinite chances to pass skills tests

The thing is, they are not taking all comers.

I have a place on a Physics PGCE. But lots of providers (mainly school based ones) have asked for A level Biology. One even suggested I take a year out to get that A level. My A levels were yonks ago, but it was highly unusual to do three sciences at A level. Even at O level it was unusual.

Oh I'd love to have the luxury of endless time and cash to collect A levels in everything.

Then there's the skills test. It's a four hour round trip to take it. It's booked up for all of eternity so unlimited resits is not really the fantastic change it's advertised as.

The whole process is complete anti-career changer to be honest. But maybe that's the plan, just a rapid turnover of young grads

Do not get me started on the silliness of giving a science test to BEd Primary science applicants who you are insisting not only have CC at GCSE but also at least 2 science A levels.

Can only be a tick box everybody must sit it policy.

You know what would deal with the recruitment and the retention issue? Actually making teaching an attractive profession. Some things obviously are outside the remit of the DfE but there are some places they could start other than with the skills tests.

The skills tests were originally introduced just for those people who didn't have a C grade equivalent in maths iirc (you always needed English). I must be missing something, having never done one, but why on earth if people meet requirements, do we even need skills tests? Why not just scarp them?

I just had an interview for my PGCE - at a proper uni and everything- and away I went. No silly task , no tests. It would have plainly been silly to make me and many others do them

And here I am, nearly 30 years later!

I must say in my years, I have encountered a few trainees who can't pass these skills test : none of them should ever have been teachers, and none of them are. But their level of academic qualification did, in the first place, suggest they shouldn't have been doing a graduate job...

One of mine I had to teach something to a group of 6 other applicants. Which was tbf slightly better than the one where they presented me with a random object and asked me to tell them about it.

I do remember being tested on subject knowledge endlessly. Most tested English, maths and science at interview. Where I went didn’t but tested them once we’d got there with revision classes you could attend if you didn’t pass the first time.

And that was before you got to the QTS tests.

Don’t we usually have to have a change of party in government before we have this much of a change in policy?

Honestly, the whole thing's so crazy. There's a huge structural problem about recruitment and retention that is structurally discriminating against people with disabilities, people of colour, women with caring responsibilities, older women ....

That's a massive issue and actually pretty appalling when you think about what we will be, inherently, teaching children about diversity and opportunity when it comes to who they see actually teaching them.

This is so ... nothingy when it comes to those issues, it's kind of laughable.

Yes (re. teaching lesson in interview). It's quite odd, when you think about it.

Madonna yours possibly even sounds a bit more detailed than mine!

Lucky you, TheFallenMadonna.

I think the ability to read graphs and so on is (possibly) because (of course) we are all going to be super-reflective, data- and research-literate professionals - so we have to be able to read box and whisker things.

Maybe.

Or perhaps there just needed to be something/anything suitable for a computer-based test.

I was a bit bemused by it all, to be honest.

I am also old. No skills test. No school experience. No probationary/NQT year. No teaching standards. One and a half sides of A4 with 3 paragraphs written by my mentor: Subject Knowledge (aha...); Classroom Management and Professional Responsibilities. Then graded good or inadequate, and away you go as a fully qualified teacher.

To be fair, noble, I think the whole experience in school thing was to try and limit the numbers of trainee teachers running for the door once they found out what actually working in a school was like. And you can see how it can prepare the ground for what you learn on a PGCE.

The Skills Test should be a bit like a driving test, I think: proof you've acquired certain skills at a set standard. I can see no reason for a limitation on attempts or a time-limit: they're in no way supposed to be an indication of intelligence, aptitude, whatever. I thought the (temporary) introduction of a limit for attempts was a bit bonkers - bringing in a quite unnecessary level of stress (it's horrible sitting in a pokey cubicle, speeding your way through bizarre questions, fingers slipping on the keyboard, in a weird area of London).

As for lowering standards ... it's an interesting one, isn't it? MN has been quite a revelation for me, in that I've realised that a lot of secondary teachers seem to be teaching subjects they have no training in. That's weird, isn't it?

On another tack completely, I'm following the UCU strike with interest. It seems to me that their strike covers many of the issues that may be significant in the teaching retention crisis and it's just interesting to see how they are articulating and communicating those issues.

When did box and whisker plots become a thing?

I had to teach my menter about them before she did her skills test.

Seems only five minutes since the attempt-limit and purdah before re-attempting was introduced.

And likewise the whole 'time spent in school before application'.

Goodness. If I re-painted my house that often, it would look so neat and gorgeous.

And I had spent no time in a school before my PGCE !!

I never did skills tests because I am old

What purpose do they really have?