The best Independent schools generally take the highest qualified teachers?

[Hamishbear]

It might be obvious to many that the most academic schools insist that their teachers have an outstanding degree from one of the best universities but it wasn't to me.

For example if you want a job in Maths at Guildford High school allegedly you need a first in Maths from a well regarded university. You obviously need to be an outstanding teacher in the fullest sense too.

So do the elite schools usually have the best teachers? I suppose it stands to reason that there is more competition for jobs at schools that have a fantastic reputation?

Hamish, I would still prefer a teacher to be well trained in teaching - excellent pedagogy vs occasional slips in spoken grammar? I know which one I would go for for a teacher for my (very able) children...

Ok, there are occasional slips and I am probably a terrible snob but 'when we was out today with the children', 'haitch', 'he's doing excellent' etc I could live without. Having said that excellent pedagogy and training do trump these personal bugbears. What are less forgivable IMO are general spelling errors, written grammatical mistakes, poor spelling and errors in workbooks corrected incorrectly. Ideally a teacher has strong core qualifications - A* in maths and english GCSE, etc.

Just for balance, I've had a look at the teaching staff at Shrewsbury.

There is one from Liverpool Polytechnic, one from Sunderland College of Further Education, one from Leeds Metropolitan, and one from UWE

I hope the parents are aware, so that they can withdraw their children immediately.

Maybe at secondary it matters, but at my children's prep school there's no correlation at all between the best teachers and where they went to school. Soft skills are as important.

Hopefully, just for interest - would you feel the same if your children struggled with some aspects of their learning? I understand your aggressive stance better IF you have children who are highly academic - would you have the same stance if your children needed someone who could understand the barriers to their learning and overcome them so that they made better-than-expected progress?

Individuals with smarts just don't go to Gloucester University

Not true. I teach in Gloucestershire. Every year kids go to that university from us because of all sorts of reasons. The year before last, one girl with AAAA went because complex family reasons meant she couldn't go away from home.

sorry, not 'made': 'could be enabled to make'

Gloucester Uni is essentially an ex teacher training college ( College of HE ) from the old days.

Back in the old days ( I am old enough to remember this) when you applied to university/college it went something as follows:

Oxbridge - for the very best

Durham and the LSE for those who failed to get into Oxbridge or who felt they may not make it

York, Nottingham and the "Red Bricks ( Birmingham, Sheffield , Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool) and London Colleges

The Plate glass Universities - included Exeter and Aston and a borad range of others. All universites were pre 1964 charter.

Polytechnics - for those a little better than teacher training college but who couldnt get high enough A levels for the above

Teacher Training College .

If you didnt do that, you got a job.

Hope that helps ( and I'll get flamed for sure but that is as it was ..... and still is to a large extent)

Jabed that's roughly how I saw things when I was looking to apply to university. Just to add that was an awfully long time ago so things may well have changed.

I think it is utterly demoralising for a child who is only slightly above average to be placed in an academically selective school. This does happen - often with siblings where places can be given on a slightly more elastic basis.

The schools do weed children out, but this mainly happens at prep level, and often with shattering impact on a child's self-esteem. I have seen this happen. In fairness to the schools they are very good at selection - they have to be - it's not in the school's interest to make mistakes in selection.

Are the academic requirements different for the teachers? I don't know. It's difficult to say, isn't it? For sure a less able child requires more nurturing and less stretching. But then the question arises for parents as to precisely how they are to assess the quality of the teachers? There is no barometer for nurturing skills. Just because a teacher has lots of academic qualifications does not mean that they are not capable of nurturing the children.

How is my stance aggressive, btw? I'm just applying the same sort of standards to my DC's teachers as I would to my new graduates. It seems to me to be a reasonable sort of standard to set.

I should also add, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland had their own pecking order. English students who chose them often did so for many reasons - usually family connections. Wales in those days was a " Collegiate" university - several colleges , one degree.

But Jabed, people choose their university based on lots of factors. Most of my friends got easily good enough grades for Oxbridge, but only one even applied (and got in). The rest made choices based on a myriad of factors such as distances, living costs, quality of course, preference for living in much larger cities, family links.

Hamish The dreaded Russell Group has started to replace the old red brick/ plate glass divide.

Some of the old Polytechs have gone up in the world!

The HE inst now do both teacher trqaining and award subject degrees ( so you can have a BA or BSc from one ( usually awarded by another university who a bit more status) or you can have a B.Ed (which is old teacher training college for want of being mealy mouthed.)

Don't think so, Evil. Jabed's list says it how it is.

There is something adrift with the thinking processes of someone going to Gloucester University with good grades - because they'll end up with a degree that will not gain them admission to a large swathe of graduate employers and some schools too.

But Jabed, people choose their university based on lots of factors. Most of my friends got easily good enough grades for Oxbridge, but only one even applied (and got in). The rest made choices based on a myriad of factors such as distances, living costs, quality of course, preference for living in much larger cities, family links

That may be a more modern phenomenon. In my day you got a grant so Oxbridge was in reach for even the most underpriviledged of students economically - provided they could hack it academically and get in.

Having said that I have a friend from my University teaching days who wwent to a polytechnic on three grade A's because his mum needed him to look after her. But he was an exception.

Now , I accept a lot of pupils at independents may still have more flexibility because finances are not so tight for them and less econmomically advantaged students may choose to stay near home for economic reasons. But the order remains - hence the Russell Group idea that persists here.

Teacher the whole name of the game of teaching, from my perspective as a parent, is for my DCs to make better than expected progress. To outperform what they are nominally capable of.

Take DS. His target grades for GCSE for most subjects are A. You cannot outperform that as a target. It's no biggy, GCSEs are easy-peasy anyway, and most of the boys have A target grades. So the school has to do more than that to stretch the boys and develop their learning.

To introduce some incentive and competition, they have a quota system. The top 20% are ranked 1 in the year, the next 20% 2 and so on. DS works his cotton socks off to get into the '1' category and only manages it for the maths and sciences. The teachers assiduously work with each individual pupil to ensure that their own personal hurdles are overcome. It's a bit brutal, but it's honest. They know the score.

Hmm. I think it is more straightforwardly two-tier now. Oxbridge/RG etc for brighter. Most students live within reasonable distance of a few. And then the rest. Finances dictate overwhelmingly for most of my pupils.

Hopefully, as I expected, you have very bright children, and that explains to a very great degree the attitude you have - and why you have set up another false dichotomy, that between 'stretching' and 'nurture'.

The challenge I - as someone who was a very bright child - have in teaching is NOT with teaching clever children. As I said earlier, they learn like I did, stretching them isn't a problem.

Where actual TEACHING skill is vital is in teaching those who do not find learning easy. Such children don't just need nurture, they need real teaching - real 'get to the bottom of the problem, take it into bits, find the root of it and put everything back together' teaching. Intellectually, I find that much more challenging, and it uses every ounce of teaching skill and pedagogical knowledge I possess.

I also find it much more rewarding, which is why I have taken the more difficult (for me) job of teaching in a state school with a wide range of abilities and needs rather than the easier (for me) job of teaching in a local private school.

hopefully - I find your tone insulting.

You clearly have no idea how it is for young people in an awful lot of homes. This year, a girl in yr 13 at my school who is highly likely to get As across the board is going to Gloucester as well. It is our local university. She lives with, and cares for, her elderly grandparents. Plenty of 17 and 18 year olds simply don't have the luxury, these days, of making choices purely based on which is the top-ranking institution. You are, at best, naive, and at worst, ignorant.

Interestingly, I have finally managed to get onto the 2011 teacher training listings.

They now include school-based training (there was one very strange post earlier in the thread which dicounted treacher training 'because it was done in schools' as if someone would be less well qualified as a teacher because they had actually been in a school...).

SCITT = School Centred Initial Teacher Training:

Top 10 providers are:
Billericay Educational Consortium SCITT
646.3
1
University of Oxford
643.8
2
University of Cambridge
636.9
3
The North East Partnership SCITT
623.9
4
University of Exeter
610.7
5
Devon Primary SCITT Group
609.8
6
Southfields Community College EBITT
607.1
7
Canterbury Christ Church University EBITT
602.7
8
Suffolk and Norfolk Primary SCITT
601.0
9
Loughborough University
598.2
10

Full document here:
www.buckingham.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/GTTG2011.pdf

Top 10s vary from primary to secondary, as one might expect.

Another point worth making is that for e.g. late career changers (like me - people with good qualifications and a previous work history) then there may not be the flexibility to obtain a PGCE from 'the best' provider due to family commitments. I attended the best I could commute to - but leaving 2 children alone at home to live elsewhere in the country for a year to attend he 'best' provider was unrealistic!

There are many people who put caring for others ahead of their own career aspirations - and that can be a morally laudable thing - although I would seriously worry about the future of any 18 YO caring for elderly grandparents. Wouldn't you?

It is not insulting to recognise that Gloucester University is not a sought after institution from the perspective of employers of graduates. Anyone applying now would have fees of £9k a year to pay. Why would you pay those fees for a degree that has limited use? It only makes sense if the limited use is worthwhile.

One of the avenues that a degree from Gloucester University may not leave open is a career teaching in a good independent school. If the individual concerned is happy with that, and is making a choice where that is a known fact, then that's fine. What worries me slightly is the prospect of swathes of 17&18 YOs incurring a mountain of debt to go to Gloucester University because they think that the degree is going to open doors, when in fact it won't.

Teacher yes but that's the skill of an amazing teacher. It's not something that parents can gauge from the outside. In fact it must be a source of frustration to you as a teacher, because it must be difficult for you, as a teacher to gain recognition for your skills.

Also, given earlier remarks, worth noting that, in terms of quality of teacher training, the University of Gloucestershire comes 21st out of over 75 university providers, 5 places above Durham for example.

The type of crude ranking that Jabed has indicated does not always hold water when you look at specific courses....

Hopefully,

It seems that we are now making the same point - that looking at lists of the qualifications teachers have is NOT a good measure of their abilities and skills as a teacher, and therefore parents who use such lists as a 'proxy' for 'teaching quality' are, sadly, misled.

But Teacher, I can't believe that parents assess the quality of the institution that teachers go to for their teacher training. It's the same as an MA or MSC. The degree that's relevant is the first degree. Where you do any further degrees only really makes a difference if you're going into research.

'as teachers', apologies.

Hopefully - how utterly ridiculous. Of course I worry about an 18 year old who is her grandparents' carer. But you know what, that's her life. This is what I mean about you being naive. She is going to do a social work degree. I expect she will do very well. She needs 320 UCAS points. I expect her to get at least 360 points, but going anywhere else was simply not an option. In her case, a degree from Gloucester will open doors that not having a degree at all (her only other option) would have kept firmly closed.