To think ‘teenage teachers’ are not the answer

[Xmasinfrance]

to the recruitment and retention crisis?

“Postgraduate teaching apprenticeships already exist but the Department for Education is drawing up plans for degree apprenticeships that would involve trainees as young as 18 years old being in the classroom alongside experienced teachers.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teenage-teachers-in-classroom-under-new-apprenticeships-hqqjf299p

I’m not sure I would’ve trusted an 18 year old to teach me as a Year 11 in high school.

Meh - I was 23 when I started,
Kids still think you are old.

the only thing is that they will struggle with is professionalism and boundaries

in more academic settings they would also lack that broad brush knnowledge of their subject, I suppose.

Surely you could be 18 starting a BEd ?

I would say that 18 is difficult for teaching secondary because they are really not much older.

However, training to teach through a full uni degree is really not much different in that we were in schools once a week all year and then in for block placements. I was in from 18yo and the children just saw me as an adult. That was primary and I have always looked younger than I am.

Yes very true. Hadn’t thought of this. Suppose it’s more the idea of going straight into the classroom having pretty much just left it.

If they're 18 and don't have a degree, they may not have the necessary subject knowledge for secondary. I also think boundaries might be a big problem if your pupils are only 2 or 3 years younger.

I did this. Straight out of A levels into a primary 4 year BEd.

Most secondary routes were PGCES for a long time though, so did expect you to have completed your degree first.

The job was a lot less complicated back when I started (25+ years ago) too. So much is expected of teachers and of student teachers these days.

Whether the scheme will work will depend very much on the amount or supervision and training being given and the amount of time they are left to just 'sink or swim'.

I went to university with girls who were still 17 starting their undergraduate teacher degrees

Primary... maybe, alongside university

Secondary... no way. In fact I think they should be at least 25.

Having now left teaching for good, I would strongly discourage anyone I know from applying. My eldest DD said she wanted to be a teacher and both DH and I are telling her not to.

Presumably it would be like a BEd but with more classroom time.

The issue here isn’t the age of the trainees; it’s that there is not the capacity in the system for all the supervision and school-based support this will require.

Who is going to do this? Who will cover the things they’re not doing while they are looking after the apprentice? Are they going to get paid more for the extra work?

That's the age they'll be on their first placement while doing a primary teaching degree anyway. The article isn't clear and seems to have placed the (scant) info about teaching apprenticeships next to some other information about the secondary recruitment crisis but I'm not 100% sure they're actually linked, rather than that the link is implied. I'd need more info to know what's going on but it reads like half the article (or more) is missing.

Surely this will be aimed at primary teachers. It couldn't work for secondary because you need a higher level of qualification than the one you're going to teach, so you'd just have more glorified HLTAs on the payroll who couldn't teach the top end where the shortages of qualified teachers (rather than support staff which is a different issue) are being most strongly felt.

What they need to do is pay teachers properly and make the working conditions liveable, not throw more younger people headfirst into situations that lots of mature adults are struggling to deal with.

I agree subject knowledge is a big issue for A level teaching, but it should not be so much for assisting in a lower level classroom.

Obviously this idea was conceived in desperation and is fraught with peril. I suspect the amount of guidance 18-20 yr olds will need to make a positive impact in the classroom is being vastly underestimated. But they are a source of idealism and enthusiasm. Done properly (haha) the idea could have real merits.

Whenever I see Teach First I wonder why they don't have Operate First.

Tbh, loads and loads of young people want to train as teachers. Not as maths and physics and computer science teachers, admittedly, because they can earn more with less shit to deal with elsewhere.

The really bad crisis is in retention of the people who actually do train. Maybe the government could try to persuade experienced, trained teachers that they want to continue doing the job by… oh, I don’t know… making it a nicer job to do. Not changing the goalposts and scapegoating teachers all the time. Decreasing the meddling and micromanaging and trusting them as professionals.

You know… they could listen to all the teachers leaving in droves about why and improve things.

Doesn’t matter if they add an additional
training route if they all leave the profession shortly after qualifying.

Agree with @SisterMichaelsHabit that the real answer is to improve the professional environment for teachers. In that context and with plenty of support I might like to see this trialled, like any other degree apprenticeship. But I don’t think that is what will happen.

Well if its good enough for nurses at 18 dealing with matters or life and death....or the police for that matter....

Surely you can see that the skill level to teach children is not the same as the skill level to cut them open? You're being facetious.

I think the apprenticeships are a great idea, especially for the lower end of primary school. There is not that much difference between reception and preschool and you can do apprentice nursery nurse courses. You can't complain about the staff shortages and complain about every initiative to increase staffing.

Of course, getting rid of Ofsted and the ridiculous inspections would help more.

This has been under discussion for years. I was involved in discussions about it at least a decade ago.

The problems with it are numerous, but the main one is that it won't increase the numbers in training. It'll just shift them between routes.

Is the idea that they won’t ever have a degree or are they being funded to do a degree as well?

I don’t think the solution to a recruitment and retention crisis in teaching should be to hire people without a degree. I can well believe some members of the Conservative Party want this to happen though-it’s cheap babysitting.

Stupid plan.

I had trainee teachers the same age as my siblings in secondary school, and so did a few others in my class. Yes we got our classes to behave but the head of department could see that it wasn't due to the trainees' skills. So she advised one to drop out instead of being failed.

So at 18 you maybe old enough to legally look after and teach children but doesn't mean you have the skills to deal with the other shit that goes with it.

I think at least a year “on loan” to industry would be a good starter. They would have little concept of the world beyond education establishments.

I think 18 is way too young to be a nurse or police officer too but you’re not having to teach anyone else those skills.

I think if you’re expected to teach others something, you need to be much older and much more experienced to do so.

Thank you for this. I know you're joking but it's a very good point, this is all part of the systematic devaluing and deprofessionalising of teaching that is in vogue in this country. Starting about a decade ago.

They abolished the General Teaching Council about ten years ago and that was the beginning, in my view.

Then they turned lots of schools into academies that were a lot more autonomous than schools previously were, particularly with regard to hiring untrained teachers.

They brought in the HLTA, a TA that could teach a whole primary class with way less training or qualification than a teacher.

Many academies commissioned powerpoint-based schemes of work for a "consistent" cookie-cutter teaching regime, removing the need for extensive subject knowledge, making hiring in shortage subjects easier (I know one of the guys who wrote some of these for Harris in my subject, great guy, but still doesn't make it a great model).

Also heavy bias in both political sides of the press: every article about teaching or teachers portrays us in a negative light. Once you notice it you can't miss it, in every paper.

BEds aren't really a route to secondary teaching, so we don't currently have 18 year olds teaching secondary.

The apprenticeship route is very much meant to be a secondary thing as that is where the major crisis in teacher training is.

Keegan is a big fan of apprenticeships because she thinks that people are being put off higher education study due to student debt. However, the better scheme here would be loan forgiveness for students following post-graduate training routes.

I don't understand how they can expect trainees to gain their specialist subject knowledge after starting to teach it.

I'd be worried about drop-out rates too. These are extremely high within the first 5 years of teaching. Would the teaching element lead to trainees dropping out, leaving them with no subject qualification either?