AIBU to think getting into teaching should be easier?

[LavenderFields7]

My friend has a PhD in stem, is trying to get into teaching A-levels at local school but everywhere wants PGCE. AIBU to think it’s ridiculous to want someone so qualified to have to study another year, fork out £10,000 and work unpaid for a year? She has a Level 3 teaching qualification and has taught uni level students.

I see the OP hasn't come back to justify her view that teaching jobs should be handed out to whoever the hell wants them.

This agree with , I’d like to move career to similar to nursing but wound have to spend 3 years getting a MSc which costs then low wages. So I think I’m going to have to park the idea but it’s an area they are desperate for people to join.

I agree teaching needs a very specific set of skills and the PGCE gives that. I would imagine private schools may not be recruiting?

Because you need to do the Greys Anatomy conversion course, silly billy. Do you have a 3D printer to knock up body parts?

Sheesh, I’m obviously in the minority then 😂

Yes-how do you feel having read all of the posts?

As part of teacher interviews a lesson generally has to be prepared, resourced and delivered, there is always a huge difference in quality from those who have completed a PGCE and know how to construct and deliver a lesson and those who haven't, or have taught post 16. Having excellent subject knowledge and knowing how to teach it to teenagers are 2 very different things.

You would be amazed at how many people think they can, and then some even write outraged emails asking why they haven't been shortlisted..

Err I don’t really feel anything. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I still think my friend would make an excellent teacher. Some useful suggestions re teaching in private schools etc which I will pass on to her, so thanks everyone for that 👍

She might make an excellent teacher. So why doesn't she make a proper go of it instead of trying to take a short cut?

I have a PhD in maths and am currently doing my teacher training. My PhD has been fuck all use so far. I’m really good at maths. It’s always come naturally to me. That does not in any way help me explain it to kids who struggle with maths because they just don’t see it the same way as me. I know the syllabus extremely well, I could easily get a grade 9 if I sat the GCSE exam now, it does not make me a good teacher.

My mentor on the other hand actually trained as a primary teacher originally, is not a maths specialist, and only teaches the foundation syllabus because she’s not confident with the material on the higher syllabus. She is a fantastic maths teacher and I’ve learned so much from her.

If you’ve been to university surely you know that having a PhD doesn’t make you a good teacher. There are lots of lecturers who are really well respected in their field of research who still manage to be rubbish at teaching.

You don’t need a PGCE to teach in UK state secondary schools though, you only need QTS. You also don’t need QTS to teach in further education. I taught a GCSE resit class to post 16s for a few years without being qualified. There are a few different routes to get that. If your friend is serious about wanting to teach, googling “get into teaching” will bring up details of how to go about it and who to phone for advice.

Assuming that a PhD should be enough to get a job as a teacher is very naive. Teaching is a very challenging skill to master, and one that is not really connected to academic ability. I thought a PhD in the subject I want to teach, plus seven years teaching experience prior to starting my training, would make it fairly easy for me. It’s been quite a shock discovering how little I know. If you want to be a good teacher, regardless of how good your academic qualifications are, you have to leave your ego at the door.

Katherine Birbalsingh mentioned this recently - she said she's had great success getting people into teaching this way and that teachers coming this route can learn on the job in the same way that PGCE trainee teachers learn on the job.

PGCE training IS “getting into teaching”.

Paedagogy is important.

We could all say “I think my friend would make an excellent doctor” or “my friend would make an excellent teacher” or “my friend would make an excellent plumber” but without the proper, relevant training and qualifications, they don’t, and shouldn’t stand a chance. I wonder why you think it should be so easy to be a teacher? I guess it shows you have no real concept of the job.

The QTS is the teaching qualification. A PGCE is an academic qualification that you can do on top of QTS, and is worth a third of a masters degree. It’s essay/research based, and is not part of the teacher training. QTS is what you get for successfully completing all your actual teacher training. On my course about half are only doing QTS. We all do the actual teacher training together. Those of us who are also doing the PGCE have a few extra lectures and have to produce two 8000 word projects of the sort you might submit as a dissertation in a bachelor’s degree. They do build on the stuff we’re learning in teacher training, but it’s lots of reading journals and writing in an appropriate academic style, not really useful for classroom skills to be honest.

How about you go back and read again? Private schools do not just routinely take anyone..increasingly so as they have to justify the fees. No-one is paying £££ for unqualified staff. Unless your friend is prepared to understand go on the job training and is able to perform well at an interview lesson, and teach every year group, she'd best not bother.

Just because of her academic qualifications?

Having a PhD and teaching at university level will not automatically give her the knowledge and skills required to teach children/teenagers.

Subject knowledge is important but there is so much more to it. How to break down concepts, knowledge of the curriculum and how/why it is taught, how to assess pupil learning within a lesson and adapt accordingly, knowledge of SEND and how to support those children in a classroom, safeguarding, pastoral support. I could go on.

If she is qualified in STEM she will get a bursary while she trains.

Teaching in schools is very different to teaching adults. I work with trainee teachers through our SCITT and sometimes, people with PhDs find they just aren't cut out for it (as do some others!). They are undoubtedly very clever people, but keeping Y9 engaged and learning on a wet Friday afternoon requires a whole different set of skills.

If she wants to teach, she needs to do a SCITT course or PGCE.

There is an alternative but it will still require training. FE college, get your DET which will allow you to teach in FE, and then if you choose to, you can do QTLS, which has parity with QTS and will allow you to teach in schools too. But FE colleges are not just for A level students, despite only taking them from the age of 16, so even then you can't cherry pick what you want to teach.

If she thinks that then encourage her to go for it OP! She will just have to be a bit patient for a few years while she gets the hang of it.

I did it myself as a career changer and it's mostly been very satisfying.

One school where I taught had a regular connection with a teacher training course, and I, as class teacher, played some part in mentoring.
One candidate who came in was, in academic terms, awesomely well-qualified; I wasn't that much older than her, and my qualifications were humble by comparison.
However, it became painfully apparent that possessing all that knowledge, and communicating it, were two different matters, and things did not go well, despite my best efforts to support her. as I said, I wasn't that much older than her, and reporting my misgivings to her supervising tutor almost felt like "dobbing in". I expressed my misgiving to our lovely Deputy Head, who wisely advised me to look ahead to next September, and consider what was best for children in her charge.
And this was a student who had actively opted for PGCE.

For balance, I've worked with a dozen or so PhD qualified ex industry teachers who were perfectly decent teachers and colleagues.

Super specialist knowledge doesn't make you a good teacher necessarily but it doesn't make you a bad one either.

The ability to get on with all sorts of people, organisational skills, home support, a cast iron immune system, a grasp of organisational politics and optimism even in the face of experience are much more significant.

People in universities don't actually 'teach' in the actual sense of the word. They stand up and talk about their subject, and it's up to the students to understand it. In a school, you need to know how to get the pupils to understand it, and all the different things that achieving that for all the different types of pupils you'll have in her classroom, involves. She would be completely out of her dept if she was just thrown into a classroom without proper training, and this definitely wouldn't be fair to the pupils.

I wouldn’t bother, personally. It’s a myth that private schools routinely employ unqualified teachers. It certainly isn’t the case that unqualified teachers have been employed in any of the 6 private schools I’ve been involved with. Parents just wouldn’t put up with it these days.

I agree. Before we hand over a fucktonne of cash plus VAT we parents tend to check this kind of thing out.

They need to learn how to teach.
Knowing your subject isnt enough.
It twkes years to become good at ut!