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.

I do think if we were adequately staffed and had sufficient funding then a scheme like this would be okay.

It takes 3 years to get a maths degree, and 1 year to train to be a teacher. What is the benefit in interleaving the 1 year of teacher training with the 3 years of maths learning? The article also says that it would be longer than an undergraduate degree. You're going to get hardly any teaching out of them each year, and you're going to be hampered in the early years by their lack of subject knowledge.

Also, who would be teaching them the maths? Clearly this isn't Teach First's responsibility.

Its just like PAs in the NHS though isn't it, the government aren't doing it to benefit schools or pupils. It'll be some sort of random qualification that means it's harder to leave- people with a maths degree can have decent careers outside of teaching or can teach abroad; I'd bet money that these can't. This is a new scheme it was discussed earlier in the year when DfE released some stuff- it will be separate to teach first I believe and they're still pondering how to do it. We have plenty of teachers who don't even have maths at a level covering maths lessons for the entire academic year mind, I'm not convinced that's much better.

The problem with young teachers as opposed to nurses etc is the power imbalance. You are closer to the pupils than you are to some of the teachers. I know some of my fellow trainee teachers from my programme had issues with being mistaken for pupils! Having a bigger age gap between pupil and teacher helps sort the power imbalance

Anybody who knows anything about teaching at any level knows it’s usually not a matter of being an expert but being a step ahead of what you’re teaching and having the skills to get the class engaged with the work.

Anyone who knows anything worthwhile about teaching knows this is utter bollocks. You need sound and secure subject knowledge to impart it properly, provide breadth and challenge for the more able, identify gaps in understanding and misconceptions in others, and find alternative ways of getting ideas across if the learner is having difficulty.
This applies at all levels.

The problem is that this takes ‘teach first’ far too literally.

They need to learn the subject knowledge first. Then they can teach it!

Of course, the whole idea of teaching being like gap year career was never a good one in the first place. But at least it started from the premise that people would do a subject degree first!

Dropping standards is not he way to 'fix' education, better funding is.

I don't think introducing teaching apprenticeships is deprofessionalisation.

There are legal apprenticeships for people with A levels these days. If it works for lawyers, it can work for teachers. And there have been A level routes to accountancy for years.

The issues as others have said is subject knowledge and the age issue; and retention - the fact that teachers are badly paid and treated, and the spectre of Ofsted scaring them away before they've even qualified!

I also think getting rid of tuition fees and reintroducing grants or at least fair loans would be a big step forward. For jobs we really need such as teaching and nursing, loans could be reduced if you work as a teacher for x years or in the NHS for y years.

Indeed you do. Let's be real that plenty of subjects have people covering with really crap knowledge of the subject- well certainly where i work anyway. Teaching is way past best practice and into the realms of what's going to get us through the week. It won't change under this gov, dubious about any other party being bothered in investing real time and money in education and schools but can't be much worse.

Standards for recruiting trainees are already almost at rock bottom. This is a shameful move.
I bet none of the high Pisa ranked countries do this ...

The whole one step ahead thing only really applies to training already reasonably competent people.

It doesn’t transfer into schools. Or role who lack basic proficiency.

Take ski instructing. Yes a L2 qualified person can train L1 instructors. But the starting point is that they’re extremely proficient skiers in the first place. They aren’t teaching them to ski. They are taking proficient skiers and teaching them to teach others to ski.

The equivalent of this would be getting the intermediate skiers to teach the beginners. They’re a step ahead after all. Who cares that none of them can carve a turn?

Nobody in their right mind - no matter what age - would want to be a teacher with the unreasonable levels of scrutiny, impossible expectations and appalling behaviour.

I think the key thing is alongside experienced teacher

I love my job. I've loved it from day one.

I don't love what is being done to education.

Maybe if you could just guarantee they’d be teaching there might be a way to make it work. But when you add in the pastoral and behavioural expectations of teachers now it’s unreasonable to expect an 18 year old to deal with it. When I look back at what my friends in education had to deal with at 22 when starting their first job I often think they weren’t really qualified even at that point…so 18 year olds certainly not.

But accountants and solicitors are only learning how to be accountants and solicitors. They aren’t trying to combine learning how to do the job with learning how to teach others to do it too.

Thats what you’re asking an 18 year old physics teaching apprenticeship to do. They need to gain sufficient subject knowledge to understand where things have been simplified in the curriculum, and what the difference is between simplification and misinformation/inaccuracy. Then they can learn the skills of teaching.

Do you think there’ll be many 18 year olds though? I work in the nhs where OT, physio and nursing apprenticeships are becoming very commonplace. I have done one myself. I’m yet to see an 18 year old be accepted onto one. They’re usually offered to experienced assistants who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to go to university and train due to life commitments. No one in our cohort was under 25.

Wouldn’t these mainly be offered to current TAs who just don’t have the chance to go off to uni? If that’s the case it could be a really positive thing.

As a teacher it’s madness. I know mumsnet peeps are of the opinion teaching is easy and ooodles of holidays but well… it’s not. It’s actually really hard. Mentally and physically. This is stupid

In primary maybe but in some secondaries they'd get eaten alive. They don't have the classroom management skills regardless of their subject knowledge

This is what happens when teachers are leaving in droves and new ones aren't signing up in anywhere near the numbers needed.

It will be interesting to see what this actually looks like in practice (if it ever gets that far).

My DC and their friends are a pretty high-achieving lot and have gone to university and are looking at graduate jobs starting at £30k+. None wanted/want to teach and all wanted to go away to cities to university. What would doing an apprenticeship like this look like? What would it pay? How long would it last? Would they need to be near a university to do the subject study? Would they get/need a student loan or would they have to stay living at home as their wage wouldn’t get them anywhere else? I could see not needing student loans could be a pull to some, but having to live at home for another 3+ years rather than going away to university wouldn’t have appealed to many I know.

Or would this not be aimed at the higher achievers? It would be interesting to see what the A level requirements of such apprenticeships would be.

Plenty of people do and would if education wasn't in such a terrible state. DH has always been interested in teaching, but one look at the prospects and pay and he couldn't justify trying it (I was supportive but for some subjects it's just not surprising people aren't lining up).

Edit to add- why anyone with a computing degree would go into teaching is wild to me.

Seriously, what’s the point? It’s like having a bucket full of holes and sorting it by adding more water instead of blocking up the holes. Teachers are leaving in droves because it’s a hard job made worse by OFSTED, new initiatives every five minutes, ridiculous amounts of paperwork, evening work, weekend work, micromanagement, and so on.

Fix those things and you wouldn’t need 18 yr olds. You’d have established, knowledgable, well-trained teachers staying in position and providing skills, experience and stability.

What's the point? Cheaper than supply teachers. Also cheaper than dealing with the real problems.

This is when despite the shit-show that is curriculum for excellence (excrement), at least in Scotland you need a degree in your subject & a post-graduate PGCE to teach in secondary. In primary you still need a degree so are never left alone whilst training until you graduate.

If we let anybody just waltz in where is the professionalism?