To wonder why on earth Troops to Teachers is considered to be a great idea?

[ballinacup]

Before we start, I'm not armed forces bashing, I'm sure there are some troops out there who would make excellent teachers. But why on earth offer a fast track course to troops without a degree?!

It seems like sheer madness, why not offer the fast track course to anyone? Am I missing some glaringly obvious fact that makes it all make sense? Or has Gove got a vision in his head of classrooms running with military precision if he has soldiers at the helm?

Can someone please explain it to me, because I'm genuinely puzzled.

Andie - yes. They can do exactly that. I know a number of people with humanities degrees who did 9 month conversion courses and now teach / training to teach chemistry/physics/maths.

It is called a SKE (subject knowledge enhancement) course. They are aimed at shortage subjects. As a scientist, it makes me mad to see people teaching the subject I love badly up to A level with completely unrelated degrees.

Ilovegeorgeclooney, presumably in this situation your Dh would not be teaching English lit but would teach a science which he would probably be perfectly capable of doing.

We should have Teachers to Troops for a lard.

larf

To be fair to Gove, he HAS said that academies can employ unqualified staff if they want to. This is simply a variant of the anyone can teach mantra, e.g. ex-military/Mums' army solutions to real or imagined issues in education.

The man actually doesn't care about the real issues in teaching, e.g. the. shortage of physics teachers, and just needs something to say to outrage the teaching unions. In this way they are cast as reactionary in the eyes of the public,while softening them up for another attack on their pay and conditions.

LaQueen- that (more eloquently..) summarises what I was trying to say about the relevant transferable military skills and mind set that the RAF taught me. AFTER I had been a teacher, sadly. I was pretty good in a classroom but could have been a lot better with them.

But yes, I still worry about academic standards and think HND/level 4 qual bare minimum for GCSE. I worry about standards sometimes anyway. It may just be press stirring but the reports last year about the number of graduates on the PGCE course that couldn't tackle basic maths (strike that- it was arithmetic) problems and parse a sentence. Appalling.

Academies and Private schools may be able to appoint anyone they wish, but in practise, most private schools won't employ someone without an oxbridge degree, and academies won't look at you if you don'thave the relevant degree.

Gove's pushing the discipline agenda, but OFSTED's own criteria will fail a school where students are complicit. Gove obvioulsy doesn't agree with his own inspectors way of doing things

Historically teachers did not need degrees,

Amazingly we still have several, ranging from 59 to 68 with a council certificate in competency in teaching. Imagine that - 68 and still doing supply (that's 6 hours a day) with a grip on the current curriculum, marks books in own unpaid time, AND does PCEs too. Able to teach, command a classroom, passes Ofsted as Outstanding too. Why does she do supply? Because she can and shes bloody good at long term subject specific cover AND she got an MBE for services to teaching last year.

So I deduce teaching is about the person, the command, the thrall of the subject, the presence, the ability to enthral but above all the ability to communicate the subject matter

This worked very well last time it was done (after WW2).
Education is all about progress and standards these days, if teachers don't make the grade they won't last. They won't even get pay rises under the new performance related pay. It doesn't matter how they got there, what they do in class and the progress made by their pupils will be what counts.

Well my husband died two years ago so that is unimportant however he often said that his military career made his life as a GP more difficult. He said that the culture of obedience made it difficult to empathise with people who didn't obey an instruction, Plus he hated Shakespeare!!!!

Plus can somebody please tell me which profession is full of amazingly faultless people?

And to be fair to Academies lots of them are enthusiastically employing as many unqualified staff as they can get away with...

Because they are cheap.

We have 2 TAs teaching approximately 15 lessons per week each. Neither has a degree or any teaching qualifications. Yet they are considered 'suitable' by our HT. They are teaching KS3. And one of them teaches 4 periods per week at KS4. Glad that's not my kid trying to get their GCSE in a subject being covered by someone with no real subject knowledge and no training. One of them is teaching Maths. And one is doing English. They have been doing this for the last two years. They are stressed and fed up to the back teeth with it, constantly complaining about their workload and the pupils' behaviour. Yep. Welcome to teaching.

We have had numerous supply teachers in this year. Speaking to them the majority have been aged 22, just finished a degree in something and are wondering about going into teaching. One 21 yo with a PE degree spent a fortnight with us teaching GCSE English. Badly. Classes wouldn't behave, and she had no idea of how to handle it - or any idea about the syllabus. She hadn't read the book she was teaching from.

We're expecting Ofsted at some point in the fairly near future. And SMT are panicking like hell...but still don't appear to consider actually employing people who are qualified to do the job.

Precisely why a child should be entitled to a graduate teacher so why dumb down the job. Service personnel often have great qualities that work with teaching but they also need degrees

It's fairly well known within the industry kim anyone can teach to GCSE without being subject specific, we have on occasion FFS who cannot speak a word of French but manage to get 80% A*-C.

I think that if some posters knew what happened in some schools in terms of who was allowed to teach what they would be so surprised. I left the profession for 2 reasons, the main one being, it is a waste of time complaining you shouldn't be teaching certain subjects, levels, in certain schools because them that be, don't care.