AIBU for thinking the DfE have got this one wrong?

[herculepoirot2]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7242631/Maths-spelling-tests-trainee-teachers-scrapped-attempt-boost-staff-numbers.html

Trainee teachers hated these tests, because they meant they could invest in a PGCE or on-the-job teacher training route, but be asked to leave because of limitations in their ability to spell or do basic calculations.

Then the Government cancelled the cap on the number of times you could take the test before being disqualified from teaching, because it was affecting recruitment numbers. Now the Government are abolishing the test altogether, because of the several thousands of potential teachers who have failed to qualify every year as a result of failing them.

Aren’t they mopping the decks on the Titanic? If teaching has become so undesirable as a profession that they can only plug the gap by recruiting people who struggle to spell twenty middle-order words, or to calculate a simple percentage value given pen and paper, shouldn’t they be dealing with the very obvious workload and behaviour issues affecting the numbers of people applying to teacher training, rather than lowering the standard of education required to do it?

I have a small child. Although I sympathise with those colleagues who have signed up to teacher training and had to leave because they couldn’t pass these tests, some of whom have been absolutely lovely, I do not want my child taught by someone whose ability to spell and do simple maths has never been tested in any robust way.

AIBU?

Piggywaspushed

That’s great. I definitely would have taken that up, assuming “rent-free accommodation” doesn’t mean a crate under a desk in the staff room.

😂😂😂

I am really confused whether rabbit is talking about primary or secondary. If someone has a grade 4 or 5 in GCSE maths and teaches, say, history, that seems fine to me. If they taught maths, yes, they would have an A Level and, at that stage, I'd like it to be a B at least at A Level, with a degree in something strongly mathematical.

It means a new build one bed flat. So no use to anyone who isn't a youngster.

I passed all three skills tests (yes I am old

I must be older then as I didn’t do any skills tests!

That’s not to say I don’t think they are a good idea though-I would have been happy to do them.

It was only a few years ago where they were talking about teaching becoming a masters-only profession. What went wrong?!

No I am not Piggy. Other subjects who have different tiered papers have much higher grade boundaries. The fact is, that you can get a lot of a paper very wrong and still pass. It’s why current Maths teachers are struggling so much at A Level currently because of this and it’s not fair on them or their results.

Therefore, the QTS skills tests are still vital in my opinion and I am not happy it has been scrapped.

It was only a few years ago where they were talking about teaching becoming a masters-only profession. What went wrong?!
A few things:

1. People are burning out and leaving quicker than they can be replaced and it's too much effort to do anything to retain staff (though I'm hoping elements of the new Ofsted might help in schools with sensible leaders)
2. There's kids coming to ITT with a first from university and an inability to write a grammatically accurate sentence or understand that 'youse' is not the plural of 'you'.
3. The higher the qualification the more respect and autonomy staff will expect and it doesn't suit some MATs to have critically thinking teachers who might challenge the MAT leadership who decide every lesson most be in 5 parts and all marking should be done in the right shade of burnt orange pen.

Piggywaspushed

But still better than a poke in the eye! I’d prefer subsidised family housing once people had completed a number of years in the profession.

I'm currently revising for these tests. The literacy one is very easy but I actually think it should in some form be a requirement for all teachers. All teachers need to be able to spell and communicate well in written form.

The maths one however is needlessly hard. No one, or very few people in real life, do this sort of Maths without a calculator or a spreadsheet to help. I've been a social work team manager for years and I deal with complicated budgets and staff ratio etc. Never do I get asked to convert a fraction to a decimal and then add together four figures in my head in under a minute. I would not need those skills to teach secondary school history.
Basic numeracy yes-the ability to do in head long division no. There's a very real possibility that I won't pass this test in time to start training in September. I am degree educated, intelligent, passionate about my subject and really keen to get into teaching at a time when not many people are. It doesn't make sense to me that there is a possibility I won't be able to do this because I can't pass an unrealistic- to -normal -life Maths test.

I don't think the entry levels for teachers should be dumbed down at all. You should need a degree and to have trained and been assessed throughout that training extensively. That should be a rigorous process. But the current Maths test doesn't prove much other than that you've spent months revising maths online in order to pass.

I'm now going to be spending every spare hour between full time work, kids and everything else looking at Maths techniques that I haven't looked at (or needed to in the world of work) since 1996 🤷🏽‍♀️.

It seems the government patch on retention is to allow as many people as possible to qualify in the hope that just about enough will actually stay.

@Piggywaspushed yes!! Yes I am!!

YABU those tests are horribly stress inducing. I sat mine a few weeks ago and passed first time but the stress and worry I had over them was ridiculous. And where in teaching would anyone use the skills needed for the maths one? Yes you would need the ability to work out the answers but why is such a horribly short period of time? Awful.

Ok, so a teacher in the uk may have 3 ‘B’s but they could be in, say, drama, PE and Sociology (correct if I am wrong?!) All well and good but why can universities in the uk not stipulate that they need a level maths and/or English and one another subject (whatever they choose)

Because you would lose people who have chemistry, physics and biology, or history, French and Latin and all sorts of other perfectly valid combinations.

Sometimes it helps to have teachers who aren't the brainiest who actually understand that telling dyslexic kids to use a dictionary to find a spelling is bonkers

Not sure what that has to do with being brainy.

What other explaination is there for teachers telling dyslexic kids to look up a dictionary for spellings?
Being too brainy (or maybe NT is what I mean) means they just don't get the issues.

I have concerns my DC is dyslexic. I just about hit dispare when HT gave the dictionary advice. Wtf surely that advice went out years ago.

For the record i flopped the teacher spelling test. Wasn't until I was in my twenty with a electronic dictionary did I realise "certain" began with a 'c' and not a 's'.

For the record it's easier to look up a similar word in a thesaurus and get correct spelling than find the word in a dictionary.

And where in teaching would anyone use the skills needed for the maths one? Yes you would need the ability to work out the answers but why is such a horribly short period of time?

Well, if I’m teaching my class and a student asks me how long they need to spend on Q2 of Paper 2 and I can’t remember off the top of my head, I haven’t got all lesson to sit there working it out. I need to be able to go, “Right, 1 hour 45 minutes is 105 minutes, roughly 15 minutes to read the sources, so 90 minutes, 10 minutes to proof read Q5 so 80 minutes, 80 marks on the whole paper so a mark a minute, 8 marks Q2...”

It’s a poor example because once you know it’s roughly a mark a minute on that paper you can just say that, but you do need quick mental maths on occasion in the classroom.

And generally outside of the classroom, too. If you’re sat there in a meeting you want to be sat round the table with people quick enough to do some back-of-a-fag-packet analysis of the latest mock results, rather than everyone having to laboriously sit down with a calculator to work out that, if only 40 kids in a year group of 270 are predicted higher than a 3, you’ve got a problem.

young, I am not sure you understand the difference between Irish and English qualifications. I am Scottish educated so have a different experience again, where I have Highers and CSYS. I still don't have maths beyond O grade. In my school, everyone did do Higher English. My friend is Irish and always talks about her qualifications. There is no way her English component is anything at all like an A Level. It is far more functional and practical. There were discussions about all students taking some form of maths or English to 18 (eg core maths). Always scrapped because... there aren't enough teachers and there isn't enough money!

I think the tests should have exemptions for those who have A Levels mind. I have always thought it is ridiculous that someone accepted into the profession to teach maths to A Level still has to do the maths skills test!

If I taught someone now who said they wanted to teach primary I'd recommend Lang/Lit A Level, and maybe history/ geog , a science or maths (or art or music) : but only if they were good enough to get a good grade, otherwise what's the point in a load of students with Ds?

As it goes , quite a few A Level Eng students do want to be teachers.

I'd bring back AS!

And where in teaching would anyone use the skills needed for the maths one? Yes you would need the ability to work out the answers but why is such a horribly short period of time?

You would need to demonstrate these skills every day when teaching maths to primary level children!

I could count on the fingers of one hand (because I can count!!) the number of students I have taught who did both maths and Eng A Level. None of them is a teacher now.

A bit of hope for everyone sitting it soon - as I said I just did it and passed first time and it wasn't nearly as horrible as the practice ones!! There are lots of videos on YouTube that go through it step by step which are ace.

Being too brainy (or maybe NT is what I mean) means they just don't get the issues

Nonsense. Failing to keep up with relevant guidance for teaching students with SEN is the problem. "Brainy" people are perfectly capable of doing that. Whether they have the time/inclination/money to do so is a different matter - and totally unrelated to how clever they are.

What primary kids are going to need to answer

"You take 250 children on a school trip. 85% have an ice cream which costs 75p each. If you took £200 how much change would you get?"

In a minute and a half????? Really?! I must have been in different primary school lessons for the last 5 years then!!

Yes you might need those skills in the classroom OP, or in a meeting, but you would not have to work out those figures in 45 seconds or else you can't progress in your chosen career.
There's a big difference between basic numeracy and the ability to do quick, sometimes complicated, mental maths in a high pressure test situation.

My suggestion would not be to scrap the tests but make the tests more relevant to teaching and tailored to the teaching you are intending to undertake. The Maths skills you need as a primary school teacher are very different to the Maths skills you need to teach secondary school humanities. Why bar people from a progression for not having skills they won't realistically need?

(Of course I'm biased having just spent the last two hours revising fraction to decimal conversion, which is not proving to be the great joy of my life )

Skatastic - This is not a world away from a Year 6 maths SATS revision 'challenge' question where I work. Bog standard MAT primary. This is one is just a multi-step word problem, isn't it?

Yes, the kids wouldn't have to do it in only a minute and a half (you'd probably give them 5 because you liked them), but you'd expect the teachers to pretty much have it down in a few minutes.

And where in teaching would anyone use the skills needed for the maths one? Yes you would need the ability to work out the answers but why is such a horribly short period of time?

Primary.

We mark during the lesson so we have to have the answers ready or work them out pretty quickly.

Some of the standardised LA plans are wrong and you need to not only be able to spot the mistake,but also realise why it's wrong and how to fix it.

Extension work for that one kid that always answers everything you have prepared and you sometimes have to think of extra questions on the spot(and the answers for them).

Again, marking . A child might have a wrong answer but you need to be able to see if they have made a small mistake somewhere in the middle and they can just fix that and work with the new numbers instead of just starting over again. And still getting it wrong.

Being able to model and solve a question correctly alongside the kids. Maybe you have more time than just a minute but that doesn't guarantee a correct result if you don't know your stuff.

That's just strictly lesson time.

Concrete example: lesson on decimals. Riddle question: two digits, the tenth twice the value of the ones, rounded up makes 5.
Two adults in the classroom teacher and TA. Their answer was 84. There were several children with the correct answer ,that had it marked as wrong and made to swap for 84. Then I came in and I had two options leave it or grab all the kids/books and make sure they had the right answer and why it was right. After I figured it out myself first, of course.

You can get the free accommodation - a family house even - in a boarding school. But that means involving the whole.family in your teaching job in a way that has never been acceptable to me. Plus who wants to be on site for evening sports coaching etc etc. I do think some of the SE/London MATs should consider providing accommodation or subsidising it. I have worked with young teachers spending 60% of their wage on housing (that was a one bed flat so she at least had peace and quiet to plan and mark, unlike the house sharers). As I like to encourage my students to write in essays, this is a complicated issue with no clear answers...

Also the UK does have an equivalent to the Irish leaving cert - the IB. Costs a fortune to run though!