Ex forces members as schoolteachers, (Panorama tonight?)

[GabbyLoggon]

Are they being unreasoable?

Its a government idea copied from America
(suprise, suprise)

Training ex forces members to be schoolteachers (It has always been open for them to do that.)

Is it a gimmick? The trouble is Cameron learned from Blair the art of regular publicity stunts.

So it is difficult to know what to take seriously.

What do the teaching profession think of it? "Gabby"

meditrina Tue 01-Mar-11 13:15:08

Harking back to a couple of my earlier posts, I'm concerned about the lack of faith there is in this thread about the quality control for both teacher training and headship training, and in appointments systems in schools, for producing and appointing suitable people to posts (irrespective of previous career).

..............

I do think there is a problem here though. I'm not sure whether it's down to recent changes in teacher training producing ill-equipped NQTs or older teachers who have found themselves unable, for whatever reason, to adapt to the way that things now need to be done. Or both. Some teachers leave teacher training completely unprepared to teach. That, IMO, is a problem! The GTP and other SCITT programmes are excellent preparation but they're intensive to administer so schools aren't necessarily too keen. I think in a modern PGCE course there's too much emphasis on policies, legislation, paperwork etc... This reflects modern teaching in a way (and I think teachers should be left to teach in peace) but it also means that people who do well at that side of things are perceived as being the best when, in fact, they might not be. It also means that excellent teachers who trained 20-30 years ago are being pushed out in favour of bright young things who know the system (and are cheaper).

I also think that in ye goode olden dayes headteachers had a lot more autonomy, they were a visible presence in the school, they taught classes, they had a connection with the pupils etc AND the pupils had more respect for them and for education. Now head-teachers are given many more tasks without necessarily being equipped to perform them well which has a knock on effect of reducing the contact time they have with the school, which makes them a very distant figure and reduces their authority.

Schools don't always appoint the best person to the post - I'm not a fan of internal promotions to headteacher for starters - however that goes both ways: appointing an excellent teacher to a school which doesn't need an excellent teacher at the helm or the other way around and very often that's the fault of the people doing the appointing who haven't looked at what's needed. Independent schools, by contrast, often do this very well. If the school is coming up for a big expansion phase with new building work etc they will seek someone with experience balancing the differing needs presented in that situation, if they're changing from A-levels to IB they'll look for an experienced teacher with experience of both systems and the transistion between them. State schools, very often, not so much. The academically excellent grammar where my mother teaches has just gone started a big fundraising/grant application/view to expansion process AND appointed a new head....a very experienced teacher whose acheivement at their previous schools was doubling the 5 GCSE pass rate but who has no experience of the challenges facing the school and that experience isn't an isolated one from reading around. It does make one wonder.

Just to be super-clear I have no intention of insulting the vast majority of teachers, who do an excellent job, occasionally under very difficult circumstances working in a sysetm which is sometimes not geared to their best interests. As with any debate on a perceived problem the negative instances are outweighing the positives.

However I also think that in some cases the quality control/management of teachers/appointment structure is not working. Those may be identified and publicised and strategies conceived to fix them but it's the undiagnosed incompetence which is most damaging.

If it ain't broke then it don't need fixing, but in some places it is quite severely broke and it may take a fresh approach to solve the problem. Now that fresh approach may be to encourage military personnel into the classroom, it may be to parachute in senior management with experience in relevant areas, it may be the 'free schools' which are being touted...

Oh dear...I killed the thread :(

I should go back to planning anyway Anyone got any bright ideas on making the conditional interesting which don't involve Abba?

for what age group and what's Abba got to do with the conditional?

I have been criticised for my arcaic views of the military and for perpetuating stereotypes of them as the kind of people who are aggressive, shout all the time and walk around like clones of each other with no sense of normal functionality in society. I was also criticised for saying that the military is based on violence. Admittedly I did not make a good enough argument yesterday, half of that was probably because I was using my phone to post and a small screen and little buttons dont help if you want to type longer things (I know that sounds silly but...)
I will try to be clearer now. When I said for instance that a career in the military is one influenced by violence, that is what an army is for. An army is not just defensive, and Britain?s long colonial history alone should teach us that, I will not go into the touchy subject of Iraq as I think it is too recent. My point is that it is very clear that the military is not just defensive, especially not Britain?s. An army is built around the use of weaponry and a lot of military funding goes into learning how to best utilise these tools of ?peace keeping?, hence the title ?The Armed Forces?. No not all military personnel will see action but they are all part of a greater institution based around the discourse and doctrine of violence.
I was criticised for stating that I felt there was psychological conditioning that went on in the military and general psychological issues that meant people who joined the military became removed from normal civilian mentally. What it is called is RESOCIALIZATION. Someone said I was talking about brainwashing, what I was talking about is psychological conditioning, there is a difference. I have some links here and if you scroll to the bottom of the articles you will see that the short pieces are accompanied by references as to where the information has come from. It is based on British military experience and research:
www.vexen.co.uk/military/drill.html
?When training recruits in drill it tends to bring out peoples' attitudes. Employing typical low-level popular psychology, it is used to "drill" discipline into recruits by pummelling them harder the more they resist, until they "break". When they break, they accept that they're rubbish at drill, that they are making mistakes, and that they will have to keep doing it until they get as good as they are being trained to be. Until they reach that point of breaking, recruits will resist the training. They may think they're "good enough", they may reject the need to do drill or they may reject the commands or make fun of drill. Once broken, they will accept drill. Although previous "attitudes" will surface, they won't interfere anymore with the actual obedience to the commands given. In short, their attitude has been overridden by freshly instilled discipline. That's how drill is seen to instill discipline amongst the average person.?
www.vexen.co.uk/military/weeding_out_the_weak.html
?Training is supposed to be stressful. The seeming pointlessness of some of the routine and training elements all add up to create an atmosphere that is testing. It should be impossible to complete basic training if you cannot adapt, take anything on the chin, and carry on. When everything goes wrong, a soldier needs to continue; not break down. If, after a days physical and mental punishment, a recruit still can get it together to iron their kit, clean the block and socialize with others, they will pass off the parade square at the end of training as a capable soldier. If they cannot, and they find themselves constantly whinging about the overloaded routine, bringing others down and bemoaning the difficult life, they should not be allowed to finish training because in times of war they are a detriment to the willpower of their unit.?
www.vexen.co.uk/military/inspections.html
?I'm sure there are people who actively realize the behind-the-scenes mental training that occurs, and even people who design protocols in order to maximize the development of soldierly skills, but sometimes it does feel like there is actually no-one in charge of the whole process... it just happens to work.?

So when I said ?cut from the same cloth?, what I meant is that psychological conditioning is employed to create soldiers from civilians. The training they go through is also to mold them into part of a larger group, an instrument that can be used for whatever purpose they are needed for, but they have to become one entity so to speak, otherwise without adequate cohesion, they cannot function well together and achieve team goals, an absolutely necessary skill in the military as it is based on an ideology of working together for the ?greater good?. So my point was not that they have no contact with the outside world, but that their military lifestyle and training removes or suppresses many of the independent personality traits they went into the military with, they become uniform. With this in mind, I think it would be much harder for someone with a military background to appreciate the individual characters and backgrounds of a class of children, the individual would be much more used to the uniformity of the military and may not take key issues into account when teaching individual students. Knowing how to treat students as individuals, is key to unlocking their potential and much teaching theory talks about this. I think the ability to move away from an instilled sense of uniformity is possible, but it would take a lot more than the PGCE or Teach First courses could provide.
As for more severe psychological issues such as PTSD, many specialists who deal with treating ex military personnel are reporting that the problem is getting greater and largely ignored. It is now being referred to as a ?ticking time bomb?. Yes there are mental health issues facing any average person, but ex military personnel are far more likely to develop mental health issues that can go unreported or unnoticed for even over a decade. With that in mind, would we really want to put ex military people, especially those who have seen extended tours, in front of a classroom of children without psychological analysis first? I personally wish more was being done to help and protect military personnel who are suffering mental health issues due to a career in the military, my mother works in mental health and it is more frightening for the sufferer than anyone else and it is a shame how people are treated. I have put some links and quotes below from ex military personnel and just general articles.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/british-soldiers-go-awol-because-army-ignores-mental-health-problems-441938.html
"Lads come back [from Iraq] traumatised with no idea how to deal with it, he told Panorama. "Asking for help with mental health issues in the Army is something you don't do. It's looked down upon. When I came back from Iraq, my behaviour was different. I found it difficult to relate to people. I became withdrawn. On leave, I just sat in my room all day drinking."?
?The programme suggests many soldiers leave because army life does not match the image presented by recruiters desperate to find new service personnel.?

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5989498.ece
?almost 4,000 military staff annually are found to have some form of mental disorder?
?the social impact of returning soldiers is also likely to be profound?
?The guerrilla nature of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts means that veterans will find it difficult to differentiate between a safe environment and a dangerous one, even back home,?
?On average veterans wait 14 years before seeking our help, and they often only do so after their lives have fallen apart,?
It is a fraught issue for the military, where the potential for psychological problems remains a taboo.?Most guys don't go and seek help,? said former Sergeant Charles Brindley, 58, who has PTSD. ?I didn't and nothing's changed. They still see it as a sign of weakness. Unless your leg's fallen off you carry on.?
?I thought I was fine,? [...]?I had to give up work a couple of years ago because I was so afraid I'd slap my supervisor,?

There are obviously a lot of psychological problems and the conditioning that has gone on to teach military personnel how to survive in a war zone has encouraged a desensitization and way of dealing with situations that deviates drastically from that of a civilian. If you are taught how to effectively torture people, live in constant paranoiac fear for your life and are party to some of the crimes or destructive elements of war, it will have long lasting psychological effects. And also, this further emphasises my points on the brutal nature of war.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10838951

www.killology.com/art_beh_solution.htm

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks

www.swp.ie/news/humiliate-strip-threaten-uk-military-interrogation-manuals-discovered/3742
?Last month the Guardian reported that British soldiers and airmen have been suspected of responsibility for the murder and manslaughter of Iraqi civilians in addition to Mousa. The victims include a man who was allegedly kicked to death on board an RAF helicopter, another who was shot by a soldier of the Black Watch after being involved in a traffic incident, and a 19-year-old who drowned after allegedly being pushed into a river by soldiers serving with the Royal Engineers.?
?One PowerPoint aid, entitled Any Questions?, explains that the techniques have been developed over decades by British military interrogators serving in Borneo, Malaya, South Arabia, "Palastine" (sic), Cyprus and Northern Ireland. It explains that interrogators have faced "adverse pulicity (sic), investigations and problems" in the past. During operations in Cyprus in the 1950s, it says, such problems were created by members of parliament, and in Aden by the International Committee of the Red Cross. In northern Oman, trainees are informed, the problems were created by "our own side!".
?One lieutenant colonel told the inquiry he took the view that photographs of the mistreatment "would be extremely detrimental to our image", and recommended that a screen be placed around the Jfit facility "so that practices which might alienate the local population were not publicly exposed".
These are the reasons why I think this idea really is not practical, I also watched the Panorama and it confirmed what I thought about the military influence on young children. The returning student who had become a teacher stated that he didn?t recognise the place, people were walking around in army uniform! It confirmed what I thought, that a military influence would permeate the educational environment, why on earth do you have to wear a uniform or military paraphernalia while teaching? Besides, even the skills utilised by the American ex military teacher are not at all specific to the military. My DP has been aware of the quiet voice technique for years as has one of his NQT friends who utilises it as she does not like to raise her voice; so new new skills in my opinion that a good NQT would not know. Shouldn?t we be focussing then on making sure there is more support for teachers to discipline in class?
In response to comments upthread, using ex gang members to reach out to young people has been tried and confirmed as effective because of their ability to relate to the children they help. They generally work with children from very disadvantaged backgrounds and are heavily vetted and have to go through a lot of experience and work to teach. I have friends who work in youth groups and it is very helpful. When I said that it is much more valuable to be able to relate to the children, I did not mean by being all matey with them, I meant by having more of an understanding of their socio economic background, their social circles, their home lives and cultural backgrounds and how these factors may influence their learning. By being able to put yourself in their shoes, you can better lesson plan even because you know what will translate to them; not speaking slang lol. And when I said that IMO I thought people from the same sort of background as children in a sink school would be better suited to teaching, I meant with adequate training on top as everyone should have.
Someone commented on my age and its relation to my understanding of education, I could argue the point that being younger and having a clearer understanding of coming from a sink school in one of inner London?s worst areas actually makes me more informed and able to judge who would make a better teacher as I have been a student under these circumstances, not just looked at it from the outside. I come from the type of schooling background that these ex military personnel are supposed to come in and sort out as some people have talked about upthread, knowing what it is to be on the other end of the teacher student /divide in this context surely gives me a measure of understanding that older people who have not had this experience will not understand.
As for this statement: ?Perhaps you should be grateful that there are people in this country prepared to put their lives on the line to protect your rights and freedoms.?
You may like to know that I am not English, I come from west Africa, A place where the British army was used as a tool to subjugate my ancestors and suppress and diminish their god given rights. I am also part Arabic so the same goes for my other cultural heritage. I am also part European on both sides, so I see things with a balanced perspective, but I far from believe that I would need an army to protect my freedoms if they weren?t being used to remove them in the first place. Britain is my adopted hom and I respect that so do not take me wrongly, but I am more realistic about the subject of my rights than that.

Yes my response is massively long I hope people actually read thorugh all of it lol!

And please excuse grammar if you do

LDN - I will read your full post later once the kids are in bed

Likewise LDN but a quick answer to vintage - Money, Money, Money (If I were...I'd (would)). And age group is 18-mid twenties (naval ratings incidentally).

LDN, whether you are 100% English or not (and these days who is?) is irrelevent. If you live and work in this country you are a citizen and therefore protected by the UK Armed Forces.
As bad as some of the historical aspects of the Empire were, they have no bearing on today's Armed Forces.

As for Iraq, yes that is a minefield (pardon the expression), but you have to remember that it is the politicians who make the decisions as to where to send our Armed Forces, not the military themselves.

There have been failings are far as the treatment of PTSD goes, but this has massively improved. n Now all returning service personnel are talked to and given information on how to seek help if they feel they need it. They are also given leaflets to give to their friends and families which outline the signs of PTSD.

No one is saying that everyone in the military would make a far better teacher than those already teaching, but this thread is in danger of descending into pure military bashing.

You are of course entitled to your opinions, but your posts read as though you consider every member of the Armed Forces to be the same - mentally unstable, violent and unable to think for themselves.

LDNMummy - thank you for taking the time to represent your views. Many of them are completely valid but to be honest the numbers of people who operate in the way you describe (traumatised/desensitized etc) are small, and I don't think anyone in this thread are saying that military personnel should be accepted on to a teacher training programme without appropriate vetting, in the same way that any candidate who applies to be a teacher is. That vetting would include extensive references, so if a person is exhibiting the kind of behaviour you have decribed it should be picked up on straight away. The fact that are % wise a very few personnel and vets struggling with these issues should not preclude others who are extremely capable from being allowed to teach. There are no doubt many teachers who come from traumatic and violent backgrounds who have gone on to be highly effective teachers. Are you saying that because they have witnessed violence that they should precluded from working as teachers?

I am not at all military bashing, I have not stated whether I dislike the military, I am stating that I do not think that military people can transition into teaching as easily as some have said. Of course this does not apply to every single individual, but it is something to be concerned about. The psychological conditioning I referred to is part of the day in day out existence as a military personnel so I feel that it does apply accross the board just in a varied degree (if that makes sense).

Thank you to those who are taking the time out to read my post, just because we have different opinions is not a reason to be hostile.

I do not agree with the use of any military by any state but human beings are naturally aggressive I suppose, but I am not bashing them, I am actually quite sympathetic toward a lot of young poeple who join the forces as they face a lot, more than I could probably cope with, but TBH I do not like what they are a part of.

I was struck by part of the long post:

"It should be impossible to complete basic training if you cannot adapt, take anything on the chin, and carry on. When everything goes wrong, a soldier needs to continue; not break down".

This is not a description of the breaking down of a personality; rather the bringing out of its strengths. The best - the adaptable and resilient - go on to have successful careers.

And there are whole swathes of the military where drill is barely done, so it shouldn't be given undue prominence in the (much wider) context of military training.

The comments about PTSD would make a whole new thread. To be brief here; just two points:

a) Combat Stress has a vested interest in "promoting" the issue because, like many charities, it is competing for funding in narrowing circumstances. The very highly regarded study by Kings College comes up with a much more moderate picture.

b) shouldn't teacher training be alert to mental health issues for all new mid-career teachers.

Again I am astonished that the checks and balances en route to the classroom are inadequate.

I am sure that there are many people in the military who will make good teachers, and for that matter good doctors, lawyers or engineers. There are also certainly people working in the military who already have some of the qualifications needed to become teachers, doctors, lawyers or engineers.

But if you were in the military and you wanted to become a lawyer, you would have to have all of the qualifications that other lawyers have. The government is going to let people from the military teach without having the same level of qualifications as other teachers, because the Government doesn't really consider teaching a profession. It has been eroding teaching as a profession for years with cover supervisors who are teaching not covering, Teach First graduates who have only six weeks training, people with dubious first degrees teaching Physics, people who don't have a lot of prior classroom experience being put on the school based entry route, PGCE places and funding being cut despite research showing it to be the most effective type of training (apart form the BA Ed).

I am very concerned about the erosion of teaching as a profession and the increasing numbers of people teaching who are not fully trained teachers, despite their being lots of teachers who cannot find a job.

I am also concerned about this constant talk of the military promoting discipline. Classroom discipline is essential, but that doesn't actually address the underlying SEN issues of many vulnerable children. We seem to be throwing all the elements of child psychology and child development out of the window. One thing many people bring from prior experiences before starting teacher training is extensive experience of working with children. Surely those are the people we want to be encouraging into teaching, and working with children is something that really isn't central to an experience of military service for most servicemen and women. But, as usual, experience with children is devalued by society.

I also agree with LeQueen. People who have good degrees and people who work well with children are not mutually exclusive. If someone is teaching in a Secondary school and they haven't the ability to get a decent degree, then a number of the children they teach are going to more intellectually capable and know more than the teacher.

Perhaps I should also say that I have a child in Secondary and a child in Primary, and my children have been taught by fully qualified teachers, who have almost all been really good at their jobs and to whom I am grateful. So while there are problems in the education system, I'm sure many of us on here have very good experiences with the professionals who teach our children.

LDN, I would like something from a reputable academic source please, not some psychobabble off the internet from someone who is 'forcing humanity forwards'. He says himself his face didn't fit in the Army, so you have to wonder about his bias. He also doesn't bother to put in his bio how long he was in for, so evidently not for long.

You make the basic mistake of assuming that HM Forces is just composed of the Army. They are not - there are three different services all with very differing cultures and methods of training. Thus, you cannot say that all the Services are the same and trained in the same way, because they are not. I will dispute to my dying breath your assertion that those in the military are removed from the normal (whatever 'normal' is) civilian mentality, and that they are 're socialised' because that is utter bollocks. They are trained in DEFENCE, and in many of the aspects that make the Armed Forces run like logistics, engineering, navigation, law and education, not violence. Afaik, the only ones trained to kill will be the Special Forces and maybe the RM Commandos. Your average Naval/ RAF Officer is not trained to do so.

I also object to your assertion that the military suppresses their individual traits. If you get a group of military personnel together, they are just like everyone else - different religious/political beliefs, they have different interests to each other, you are stereotyping yet again. To successfully lead a group of people you have to be able to understand where they come from and what their problems might be in order to lead them and to get the best out of them. That is exactly what you are talking about with teaching - and that is what the military does. You are also assuming that all teachers have access to background info about their students - they don't. Some HoYs keep that info on a need to know basis, so many teachers struggle with not knowing what is driving their students.

Mental health problems -mmmm...there go some teachers I know after years in the classroom. Again you generalise; yes, some ex military will have mental health problems depending on what they have been doing - but this will not be true for most of them. A more balanced individual than my husband I have yet to meet. I think it would be discriminatory in the extreme to make someone undergo a psychological analysis before they went into teaching if they were ex military. If you do it for them then it should apply to everyone.

'There are obviously a lot of psychological problems and the conditioning that has gone on to teach military personnel how to survive in a war zone has encouraged a desensitization and way of dealing with situations that deviates drastically from that of a civilian. If you are taught how to effectively torture people, live in constant paranoiac fear for your life and are party to some of the crimes or destructive elements of war, it will have long lasting psychological effects.'

Firstly, they don't live constantly in a war zone,and many never get near one or are ever in one at all; yet another sweeping and inaccurate generalisation that you make. Military personnel deal with going to the Post Office or a restaurant or a hospital exactly as a civilian would. They deal with non military situations exactly as a civilian would - applying for mortgages, ordering a coffee etc. My husband is far more measured in his response to and much calmer about things that have me climbing the walls.

Military personnel are not taught to torture people (I'd like to see your concrete evidence for that assertion); they do not live in constant paranoiac fear of their lives and they are not in general party to war crimes as that is a sacking and disciplinary offence and against the Geneva Convention of which the UK is a signatory. The fact you can even begin to claim these things about the military shows how divorced from reality you are and how skewed your view of the military is.

I am also sick of the comments about 'military influence on young children'. How do you think children of military parents develop? Perfectly normally is the answer. If the military is as bad as you like to claim and as mentally unstable as you assert, then why aren't all children of military personnel removed from their families at birth? The answer will be because their military parent is just as normal and well adjusted as anyone else.

I commented on your age, and yes it has a bearing as although you may have been taught in a sink school, I assume you haven't yet taught in one. A student doesn't always know what makes a good teacher; the teachers my son likes aren't always the one I rate professionally, rather the opposite. You also make the assumption that those of us posting here didn't go to sink schools (they aren't exclusive to London) or haven't taught in them. I've taught students from one of the poorest wards in the UK with all the concomitant problems and those children didn't need or want my empathy; they needed boundaries, an adult who would fight their corner when necessary and who didn't back down or walk away when the going got tough. They needed someone old enough not to be phased by them and who could point to where the pitfalls where and give advice on how to avoid them.

Last time I looked, in response to your last paragraph - the British Army wasn't removing the freedoms of anyone in the UK. That's the job of the government, not the Army.

LDN isn't google marvellous!

[hmmm]

Fair enough, the sources are reputable as they base their articles on actual research literature, and if you look as meditrina pointed out, there were positives that I did not omit as they are part and parcel.

I did not say that all forces trainiing was the same etc... I was pointing out that there could be ex military people who go into teaching with what may seem all the right qualitiesa on paper, but end up having their military past impact their ability to teach and we do not know with the culture of mental illness with ex military personnel, wen mental health issues could manifest, risky to put people who are more prone to mental health issues with children without adequate mental health checks.

A lot of the information i sighted is sourced from reputable articles, some quotes have been taken from ex service people and the controversy surrounding the uses of torture has brought to light that it is a very real thing and commanding officers participate or were aware, the fact that there was legal action taken against the British military by people who had been tortured should substantiate that, it is common knowledge that it goes on.

I didn't say that all military personnel are exposed to combat, but all go through training to make them part of the military system, you cannot deviate from the core set of values and still be part of the military so it means extreme uniformity. I feel this would hinder a persons ability to teach when teaching is not about uniformity and I question whether the person could adapt.

Yes Google is great, I could not get to the library to source texts to quote from but the research is out there and no denying it is going to make it dissapear. The articles quote direct experience of ex military people and a lot of them site reputable sources where they got their info. Of course the military is full of all types of people but they are trained and conditioned for a certain kind of life and I don't think the skills they learn are necessarily all that positive in a school setting.

When I was talking of the war zone and that type of issue, I was reffering to people who do experience combat. I am sure that they will be as eligible as other military personnel who have not experienced combat to apply for these teaching courses, that is why I talked about it. No not all people experience that but the ones who do may end up in front of a class of children without having had the right psychological tests to see if they are ok, which is risky IMO.

Anyway, I am going to leave this subject now, there are too many right wing military affiliated people on here (which is to be expected) who will ignore obvious issues with the military.

I regards to the comment about my freedoms being protected, I am a dual national and have family overseas, yes my rights may be protected here but my family's and my rights as a foreign national are being eroded by Britain with the use of its military. So it depends how you look at it.

Wikileaks is a good place to start if you want to look at all the hushed up and disgraceful things perpetrated by the british military in terms of torture and abuse.

I am quite happy to agree to disagree, I am not being all that articulate as it is a very hard topic to type about on a forum, but I would be quite happy to have a face to face discussion as it would most likely mean I would express myself better.

I'm not an unreasonable person, of course there are things about the military I do not know, but I find to many absolutist points of view from the opposing side here, an unwilligness to maybe see some things have a substantial basis for concern.

But I am gonna leave it there, off to write my dissertation and thanks again to those who took the time to read my post

Excuse grammar and spelling, typing on phone again.

MillyR:

"The government is going to let people from the military teach without having the same level of qualifications as other teachers"

I think you must have been misinformed somewhere along the line. The proposals so far are about encouraging suitable Service leavers onto the Teach Next mid-career teacher training (akin to Teach First for new graduates). This produces QTS is a way that is identical to all mid-career teaching recruits on the scheme. The "compressed course" referenced in the programme has not yet been unveiled by TDA, but will also lead to full QTS. Whatever Gove says about incentives to ex-military personnel, waiving of QTS isn't one of them.

I was being sarcastic LDN.

Google IS marvellous though.

I know you were Guacomole, it was hard to miss the sarcasm.

But yes, Google rocks!

Well it is... But what I'm trying to say is that you'll get any number if hits based on what you search for and I can quote bits until the cows come home... Doesn't make it legitimate.

I really don't see the problem... Anyone with the necessary qualifications and the desire to train to be a teacher, irrespective of if they've previously been in the Armed Forces, should be given the opportunity and many will make excellent teachers and some will be crap, how is that different to recently graduated PGCE candidates with no life experience? It isn't!

Spouting nonsense about how former service men and women are prone to mental health problems and therefore shouldn't be let loose on our children is beyond absurd.

guacomole I already went over it and stated that I'm going to agree to disagree. Let's all agree that Google is great and take a breather. Hopefully I will see all you guys at the 26th of march protest against the cuts!

As a left wing pacifist I have to say that some of the best teachers I have ever worked with have been ex-services. Like most teachers they share a sense of responsibility towards making society work, but sorry Dave Cam I want to be paid!