To think most parents would be unhappy with their child being taught by a 19yo apprentice?

[Postapocalypticcowgirl]

schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-developing-teaching-apprenticeship-for-non-graduates/

The DfE are developing an apprentice scheme for teaching for people without degrees.

I think there are some serious problems with this idea, but this isn't about those, really.

I'm just thinking about the attitude that some posters have towards NQTs (IE they don't want their child taught by them) and I'm curious as to what posters think.

In terms of voting, I'd like people to vote not on whether they think it's a good idea overall, but just on whether they would be happy with their child being taught by a 19yo apprentice who's just left college/sixth form.

YABU - I would be happy with this for my children.
YANBU- I would not be happy with this for my children.

I do assume at least at the start, it would be under the supervision of an experienced teacher, hopefully with them in the classroom full time. But to make it viable for schools the apprentice would likely have to be unsupervised at least some of the time pretty quickly. I do think it would be much more involved than initial placements on primary teaching degrees AND this specifically targeting secondary level.

It sounds like a way to get 'teachers' into the classroom who will likely be very poorly paid.

It’s not really much different to now though is it?
If you attend a teacher training college you will be in a classroom during that time.
If you do a PGC you will be in the classroom after your standard degree but those 21 and 22 year olds are equally inexperienced.

I don't mind really so long as they are sensible and supervised.

My child once had a conventionally qualified overtly sexist teacher, that bothered me more!

this is just a return to the old "licenced" teachers, a route into teaching which meant all your training was on the job, as opposed to the current additional few weeks in college - there is no difference in the end result, and many older teachers still around now came through the "licenced" route - some senior managers and head teachers.

It was ended for some reason or another, not sure why, maybe for standardising the route into teaching, but the plummeting levels of recruitment clearly show that the current methods are just not getting enough teachers through the doors, so this is a perfectly worthwhile alternative

I don’t understand how this is different to a 4 year teaching degree? Maybe more classroom focussed? Presumably they will be supervised like the existing trainee teachers? Not enough info for me to vote really.

It's a way of further devaluing teaching. It won't be a profession, just a poorly paid job along with the rest of childcare. You can guarantee that these apprentices won't be in the schools of the MPs kids.

Lots of TA apprenticeships already - you may be surprised to find out how much teaching TAs do.

Placement teachers. Early career teacher etc Inexperienced but often enthusiastic and with fewer responsibilities so can really focus on the teaching. I think properly supervised it could work well.

TBh I suspect career changers will use the apprenticeship route more than school leavers.

Recruitment in teaching has become so bad that initial teacher training providers are forced to accept candidates that would never have been allowed close to a classroom ten years ago. But at least those candidates have already studied successfully at degree level, if it's a PGCE or similar.

I could see the entry requirements for this being driven lower and lower, as has been the case for other routes into teaching, just so the DfE could try to meet their recruitment targets. As such, the quality of 18 year old thrown in front of your child's class could end up becoming truly dire.

I think it's fine for Primary teachers.

Learning the skills of teaching is far more important than the content IMO - you don't need to be degree educated to understand the content at primary level.

At secondary level I don't see how it would work at all.

It would be under the supervision of a qualified teacher, just like it is when people are training for via PGCE or BEd. Many of those on a BEd course would be 18 and 19 as well. I have trained many student teachers over the years and had a teacher apprentice before I went on maternity leave (albeit one with a degree) and she had all her planning checked and taught under my supervision. If anything, the children in my class benefitted from having two adults teaching them. My concern is more for the apprentices who would do all the work to become a teacher but would not have the same level of qualification which could put them at a disadvantage when looking for jobs here and would unlikely be able to teach abroad.

Routes already exist for those people. Some incur fees, sure, but some are free and, in others, you're paid. If that's the target audience, this route is surplus to requirements.

The narrative around it will focus on that though. Just like the narrative around academies being able to employ unqualified teachers focused on bringing in industry experts rather than the reality of what's happened: sticking any warm body in front of a class.

its no different to "teach first" or "now teach"

Can only see this as a huge positive! It's the ideal type of job that lends itself to an apprenticeship, which has a far more extensive and challenging workload than the traditional route. I'm unclear why you think the apprenticeship will be 19 though?

I'm just coming to the end of my Social Work Degree Apprenticeship. I'm 44 and there are 30 of us in the group, don't think any are under 25 with ages mostly being 30/40/50's. We cover everything academically that the traditional Degree route covers plus about 30% more work due to the Apprenticeship side. We generally have a huge amount of experience and expertise between us, I worked in Children's Services for almost 10yrs prior, plus another 15yrs experience of working with children and families. This is also my second degree.

I'm thinking a lot of people who oppose don't understand the Degree Apprenticeship route.

Rather an enthusiastic 19yr old than a jaded 50yr old who hates their job but won't leave

Some of my kids' best teachers were NQTs

It's a Degree Apprenticeship. They study the exact same degree PLUS additional work as part of the Apprenticeship.

In primary school maybe. For a GCSE class, no.

I would absolutely do this as a second career in my 50s! I don’t have a degree but have quite a lot of tutoring experience and have got kids through their MFL GCSEs. Why would someone with a degree in something modern and useless like Mime be any better as a teacher than someone with a lot of life experience?

Given current rules and regulations, you could already teach in any academy or free school if they wished to employ you. You don't need a degree nor a teaching qualification.

So how do you expect young people to start a career?

I think it’s a great option.

I recently retrained (have degree & postgrad degrees) and had to do yet another undergrad (& take on a student loan - I really really really wanted to retrain). The profession I retrained in has just started to develop degree apprenticeships & I absolutely would have taken that option over returning to uni.

My youngest doesn’t want to go to uni. I suspect he’ll end up doing a degree apprenticeship or employer sponsored OU type approach eventually.

Hard to recruit/retain professions do tend to have multiple ways to train. Teaching, social work, nursing spring to mind.

There has been no such thing as 'teacher training college' since the 1970s but you are correct that a student doing an Education degree at university will be in the classroom in their first year. They would, however, be under supervision at all times.

I'm not in favour of teachers learning entirely on the job though as they will be learning only the ways of that school which, in some Academies, can be questionable imo. Its better to have studied the subject at University with a broader knowledge of philosophies of education etc and then apply them in practice.

So the work of the universities and teacher training tutors is to be dumped on teachers. How do they expect teachers to find the time to train these apprentices? I help to train many PGCE teachers over the years - and that was very time consuming and difficult to juggle along side my full time teaching. There is no way I could have trained an apprentice.

I can foresee these apprentices being used in place of qualified teachers in front of classes. Not good.

When this question came up before, you could hear the laughter of all of us teaching graduates who were at Uni & in the classroom at 18/19 in the first year of our degree!

Teaching is a vocational qualification. There is absolutely no substitute for a student to have practical learning experience in a classroom.

As I’ve said before, DS’s Dad is an old sod who did his BEd specialising in secondary teaching (back when it was possible in the old days). Being born in July, at his first placement in October, in a secondary school, he would’ve been just 18.

There are currently education degrees where 18yo are teaching in a classroom. The only difference with the apprentice is that they don’t get an academic qualification in the theory of education as a discipline, which is, to be frank, absolute codswallop voodoo bullshit anyway.