if so many people are about to be made redundant in the country, why can't experienced individuals be fast tracked as teachers?

[elmouno]

Yes, I know teachers require different types of certification. But in these pressing times, if we have people being made redundant in every industry, why can't they be placed as extra teachers so we can get class sizes smaller? For example, if someone is already a scientist with work experience in biology, chemistry, etc surely they will be able to teach it at secondary level? Redundant IT engineers could teach what's relevant now in tech? HR or former project managers could teach English? Bankers teaching certain maths? I don't know but I think it is really important that we get more teachers (of course they would have to pass a background check). I mean perhaps we need to get more creative with curriculum and scrap the tests for now? Perhaps children who want to get into certain universities can take a SAT test like they do in America?

It just seems a shame that we have so many people being made redundant and we have such a pressing need to make more bubbles. Large bubbles imo, won't work. What will happen to keyworkers when their bubbles pop? It doesn't make sense to me. The only answer is to build more schools and have more teachers.

[cantkeepawayforever]

@YinuCeatleAyru

even after 1973 you could still skip the Teacher Training course if you had a Masters degree. my mum became a teacher in the mid 1980s with no teaching qualification but she had an MA and that meant she was allowed. The change in the 70s just removed the privilege from those with only a Bachelor degree.

Tongue in cheek here - a proper MA or an Oxbridge 'just live for a few more years' MA?

My mum also taught, but started her career in the 1960s, so just went straight from her (Oxbridge) degree.

[RollercoasterRaver]

I, too, wonder why HR was the best you could come up with for English!!

I think of all roles, HR may current be safe (and a bit snowed under).

I'm HR and have lost my job! Interestingly (slight side point) a lot of HR have lost their jobs so they're just as vulnerable. 300+ applicants for a role I fancied on LinkedIn. I didn't even bother to apply.

I have a good grasp on English and got As at school but wouldn't at all think I could teach it! Agree with @motherrunner....

I’ve been an English teacher for 20 years. Are you suggesting anyone who can read or write can teach my subject? Please some insult me.

OP you are especially naive in your thinking on this. Teaching is such a skilled job and people can't just slot into it as is your thinking.

[BeingATwatItsABingThing]

@Cloudburstagain

Well my school will have a handful of “teachers” this academic year who have no more than a degree. They have no experience of teaching, no training, no qualifications, they will learn on the job with a reduced timetable. However, every lesson will be planned for them by somebody else - so easy??! Cheaper than another year of study and debt for them, and cheap for schools.

Would I want my GCSE maths teacher for my dd to be someone who has never taught, or marked a gcse exam paper, or knew the syllabus during a pandemic? I know my own answer,

This year more than any in recent times is the year children desperately need good teachers. They’ve had months off and it will take a lot to get them back to where they were let alone where they should be by the end of the year.

My DD is going into Y2 and I would be seriously hacked off if the school chose paying someone significantly less because they weren’t actually trained in any way to teach. NQTs are different. They have done some training and now just need help implementing it with their own class.

[Cloudburstagain]

Well my school will have a handful of “teachers” this academic year who have no more than a degree. They have no experience of teaching, no training, no qualifications, they will learn on the job with a reduced timetable. However, every lesson will be planned for them by somebody else - so easy??! Cheaper than another year of study and debt for them, and cheap for schools.

Would I want my GCSE maths teacher for my dd to be someone who has never taught, or marked a gcse exam paper, or knew the syllabus during a pandemic? I know my own answer,

[Peregrina]

I didn't know that Yinu - I only knew about people with Bachelor degrees because it affected friends personally.

[YinuCeatleAyru]

even after 1973 you could still skip the Teacher Training course if you had a Masters degree. my mum became a teacher in the mid 1980s with no teaching qualification but she had an MA and that meant she was allowed. The change in the 70s just removed the privilege from those with only a Bachelor degree.

[Peregrina]

Peregrina, until well after the war I don't think graduates needed to do any specific teacher training?

Indeed so. I graduated in 1973 and we were the last year to be able to go and teach in Secondary schools without having done a teacher training course. So some of my friends did that. You had to do a two year probationary period from what I recall. I have lost touch with people, but one of them definitely went on to make a career in teaching - the others I am pretty sure only gave it a few years at most. One gave it a term.

For primary it had been stopped a couple of years before that, from what I remember.

B Eds seemed to start up in about 1969 or thereabouts. I think it was mostly Grammar schools which took the graduates who hadn't trained as teachers, and the primary and secondary moderns took the College trained people.

I think we had a couple of teachers who had been in the War and trained via the scheme to encourage people into teaching, and they were pretty good, but I suspect that the useless ones had given up long before. In fact thinking about it, one was very good, he taught maths and used to invent maths games, some of which got marketed and could be seen in classrooms.

[SnuggyBuggy]

Also with the lower leaving age I bet teachers weren't expected to do as much with the no hopers as they are now

[Nellodee]

After the war, teachers maintained discipline by caning their students. Behaviour management - not such an issue. I don't think the same techniques would go down quite so well now.

[cantkeepawayforever]

Peregrina, until well after the war I don't think graduates needed to do any specific teacher training? Obviously there were teacher training courses that were instead of university - which grew into the more modern BEd. I come from a family of teachers and while some of them [now in their late 70s / early 80s] did teacher training courses instead of going to university, those who went to university just went straight into teaching posts, rather than doing any specific training to teach. I don't know, overall, what the balance was - since going to university was so much rarer, the 'graduate straight in to teaching' route may have been fairly small, whereas thinking of how many towns have 'the old teacher training college' now repurposed as flats or grown into a university, that may have been by far the commoner route.

[echt]

@echt I’m looking for the clicks? You realise that term means looking for clicks on your own website/ YouTube in order to make money? You can’t even click through on a Mumsnet post? I’m just staying my opinion. That it doesn’t match you’re doesn’t make it invalid. Don’t they teach you that in teaching?

Metaphor.

[Peregrina]

As far as I know, those immediate post war teachers weren't untrained, I think they just made more training places available. I think a teaching certificate was a two year course then anyway.

[Kidneybingo]

People are always quick to mention market forces for private sector jobs, regarding pay and conditions. Comparing teaching with other jobs and talking about holidays is irrelevant. If many people won't stay in the job, or even start it after training, there's a problem.

[SnuggyBuggy]

But did you have to do all that planning every lesson with differentiation for 30+ kids including SEN, personalised marking and all that extra training in the 1940s? Teaching seems to have got a lot harder and we expect more of teachers.

[Kidneybingo]

As I said earlier, getting people onto training is really not the major issue. Getting them to actually take a job and stay in it, is. You can argue 'til the cows come home about how hard the job is or is not, but something is making people leave the job, in large numbers and until that's fixed, there will be a problem. Alongside funding of course.

[Peregrina]

They did this after ww2. Shorter teacher training courses for anyone who wanted to do it. Turned out quite good by all accounts.

Yes, because people had gone through the horrors of war and had the will to build a better society. The support was there. Think of Attlee's Government and what they achieved, and think of the current Government led by a liar and a cheat who has promoted a bunch of incompetents to his Cabinet. That's the difference.

[BeingATwatItsABingThing]

@AdelaidePlace

I think seeing all of the school budgets would depress me too much. Just seeing it for my school makes me so angry. Why do the children not matter? Why are more people not doing or saying anything about it? The only time they are interested in their child’s education is when it impacts on them and the childcare the school provides. If they genuinely cared about the vulnerable children, they’d have said something before now!

[AdelaidePlace]

Thanks being, I see school budgets (500 schools) at first hand in my role, huge issues.

count no offence taken, I just know how hard headship is with such a lot of pressure.

[cantkeepawayforever]

Just to clarify - as the originator of the disputed post - of course others work harder in their jobs than I do as a teacher.

All I meant was that public perception of 'jobs where you have to work hard', and the reality of which jobs ACTUALLY require you to work hard, are out of step, in my personal experience.

[CountDuckulasKetchup]

@AdelaidePlace

The only people I know in teaching who have a good work life balance are those who are promoted. Promotion = less teaching time and apart from pastoral responsibilities they don't actually have as much to do. Ours delegate most of it in the name of cpd for those beneath them*

Haha! You have no idea obviously. Can't decide if I was a really good headteacher or really rubbish. Did I fill my 14 hour days doing things that I could have asked someone else to do?

Sorry Adelaide, I meant heads of subject, I know our SLT work stupid hours and they definitely earn their extra money and time. Especially this year, think they deserve double time. Likewise any teacher heads of year (realise there's not many left).

By contrast every head of department I've worked for has done pretty much 9-5, made a point of never taking any work home and timetabled themselves mostly KS5.

As I said, my wife works in the private sector. She makes bespoke products. At the level of management analogous to SLT they are expected to make less products (so the equivalent of a reduced timetable) and the big boss, like the head doesn't have to make anything. But at her level, head of department, she has to make the same amount of product as everyone beneath her, as well as doing all the line management and stock management, maintenance of equipment etc which is considerable. Pre teaching I had a similar level of responsibility in a different industry and the same applied.

Apologies if I've offended you, I didn't mean to, I've just always been confused about the disparity between this and the private sector.

[peppermintpigs]

@Piggywaspushed

Nope, but they do teach us basic grammar .

Game, set and match to Piggy

[Piggywaspushed]

Nope, but they do teach us basic grammar .

[Fallowdeerhunter]

@echt I’m looking for the clicks? You realise that term means looking for clicks on your own website/ YouTube in order to make money? You can’t even click through on a Mumsnet post? I’m just staying my opinion. That it doesn’t match you’re doesn’t make it invalid. Don’t they teach you that in teaching?

[Pugdoglife]

[quote Fallowdeerhunter]**@echt* @Aragog*

Someone claimed this just a few posts above mine! But you’re right. It’s never ever happened on Mumsnet.....

Teaching is my second / third career. Although my first career was in something generally considered 'hard', and my second was probably most people's definition of 'a successful career in which people generally work very hard', I have NEVER worked as hard as I do as a teacher[/quote]
That's not an example of every single teacher saying that teaching is harder than every job ever!
That's one teacher saying they work harder in teaching than in their previous 2 careers.

What we say is that we work hard and we work long hours. We say it because it's true!

Of course some jobs are harder, for example I personally couldn't cope as a police officer, a paramedic or fire fighter, they could pay £500k a year and I still couldn't do it, the idea of some of the things that they might encounter are just horrific to me.
The issue we have is that people keep insisting how easy teaching is, how lazy and incompetent we all are, without having any experience of the job at all.

[echt]

Fallowdeerhunter and elmuono are cynical teacher bashers looking for the clicks.

Give them