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?

There are more exchanges between the English and the French - English people living in France and French people living in England - than among any other European countries, so I don't think that it is possible to hide behind some sort of aversion in order to excuse the poor standards of language teaching at Habs (or other schools - though the school I visited recently has excellent standards of MFL).

Teaching is very important, but it is much more important for DC to become independent learners who are not dependent on a teacher to learn about a subject.

The Teach First Teacher Training Programme takes graduates from the decent Unis with a 2:1 degree and puts them in the most challenging schools, and their aim is keep those teachers, one qualified, in those schools where good teaching can make a real difference.

"The link between low family income and poor educational attainment is greater in the UK than in almost any other developed country. It?s not right, it?s not fair and it can?t continue. But it doesn?t have to be this way......Since 2002, literally thousands of lives have been changed by Teach First?s energetic pursuit of its mission to address educational disadvantage by transforming exceptional graduates and experienced professionals into effective, inspirational teachers and leaders in all fields."

How many secondary schools in... England are part of the so-called elite tier?
How many pupils do they educate?
How many pupils do they Not educate?

It depends what you mean by Elite Tier.

There is a list by A level result for state and fee paying schools. Elite could be those in the top 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or whatever.

rankings.ft.com/secondary-schools/secondary-schools-2011

Xenia the most striking thing about the lists you link is the sheer number of staff at these independents.

Poosh only a tiny weeny number get 30% in. It's minute.

FallenMadonna,

"A primary trained PGCE with a Science degree would be fab, but they are like gold dust!"

That has raised my self esteem on a long rainy Thursday! As a primary trained PGCE with a first degree and PhD in Science, you mean I perhaps ought to be shouting about it? rather than playing it down because it makes me sound wierd and geeky and very scary

Yes indeed!!

How many do stay Milliways?

I don't know the numbers, but the website say 54% of their Ambassadors are still in teaching - those that leave teaching are asked to be Ambassadors in other fields but all with the goal of meeting the Teach First Aims (see here

Some companies release their staff to do the 2 year programme (as it also covers leadership skills) and then they return to their original company but continue as an Amnassador.

Going on personal observation, not many Oxbridge graduates seem to go into teaching; those that do are mostly from state schools, and mostly want to teach in state schools. It's a sort of "giving something back" thing, which is less likley to appeal to Etonians etc.

Sure, a teacher needs good subject knowledge but empathy & understanding how children's minds work is really the key to effective teaching. For instance, they may be impressed that their teacher is able to answer any question they ask her; but they'll be more engaged if you don't know the answer but then sit down with them and work it out together.

Yep, you've just described my dh - habs ex pupil, first class masters from st Andrews, works in an inner city school to give back. It's the best in the country for value added meaning that the difference education makes to the children's lives is huge.

I remember watching a superbly gifted mathematician teach a retake class. It was hilarious. He wrote something on the board. When they looked bewildered, he literally couldn't see what the problem was. He said something like, "Look." And they looked. And that was about it.

Teaching is an odd career because it requires thorough subjct knowledge plus a sort of empathy which helps you understand what is preventing someone else from understanding what you understand so thoroughly. Plus the imagination to work out a number of different ways to guide students to that understanding.

My accent is pretty bad. Even though a lot of what I do for a living is walking and talking (or as a colleague terms it, talking bollocks to people who don't listen). I can do posh talking but when I get enthusiastic the T's are the first thing to go. And the grammar might be next. I'm fairly confident that none of my (very good) comp teachers went to Cambridge. I know for a fact the Maths teacher who started encouraging me to think in terms of going there when I first started being taught by her in the fourth year got her degree from the OU. It didn't seem to have a negative impact on me. DD1 wants to go to a conservatoire abroad. I can't see that happening. But not because none of her teachers did, more because of the different loan structure etc. I wouldn't be broken hearted if she decided to try for Cambridge too (Choral scholarships are a Good Thing) but I can't see that happening because I think her French GCSE will let her down. But that's nothing to do with the quality of her teachers and everything to do with her lack of aptitude for French. Tant pis.

Anyone, but anyone with a reasonable brain can get A* in a language GCSE if properly taught. Would you really throw away your DD's chances for so little, Metabilis?

lo @ the latin teacher very old As it happens, the head of dept for lating and greek @ DC school is young and quite lush and has written text books about the romans and greeks

The best of the private schools probably do attract the best candidates for teaching jobs but not every teacher in a private school is good or even motivated teacher. Some weaker private schools struggle to recruit and have really badly qualified and unmotivated teachers as a result.

Our DSs private school has a smattering of Oxbridge educated teachers and a few PhDs too but how they are viewed as teachers by the pupils is interesting. Not all are brilliant teachers - its like any job.

That said, our view when we were choosing DSs secondary school is to avoid places that had too many teachers who did not have degrees from recognised top tier universities. I just don't get how you can teach maths or indeed any subject if you dont have a degree from a good university in that subject. I agree a lot with mnistooadictive about maths teachers though. My experience and that of DSs is osme maths teachers just don't have any empathy with people who dont 'get' maths. It isnt just about qualifications.

@bonsoir I'm not throwing away my daughters chances. She is being properly taught. she's just not very good at French, her issues are related to her SEN (I also found French about 8x as hard as all the other subjects put together at O level, although I did get an A, but I'm not as dyspraxic as her in some ways, also in my day rote learning could get you further than it can today and I have a photographic memory, so that did help). And remember - she doesn't actually want to go to Cambridge much. I'm the one who thinks it might be a useful option for a future career based on the fact that the most successful musician I know, went there (that's why I know him). She is convinced a conservatoire is the way to go.

Is she really terrible at English?

Incidentally I know for a fact that at least one of the French teachers at her school did go to Oxford. But she doesn't teach DD1 (who is top set French so maybe I'm worrying unnecessarily - although worry isn't the right word. Being fatalistic is a better description of my attitude).

I don't think Oxford and French are necessarily a very good combination for a teacher. Teaching MFL in a secondary school is a very frustrating business if you are very clever.

Surely MFL is a subject where you don't need to be very clever to be very good? Is it not more about having a facility for language? The top girls at French at my school were not particularly good at any other subjects (they were all possessed of one or more no English born parent though and they all spoke several languages - Spanish, Italian, and polish if memory serves). Myself and my best friend (who also went to Cambridge and who like me came from a different sort of immigrant background - in my case Irish in her case Indian) had to work inordinately hard compared to all our other subjects (and compared to those girls) to scrape into the bottom two A grade positions in every single French exam from the minute we started school till the minute we chucked away our French books with a cry of delight after we finished our O levels.

MFL is like mother-tongue - there are many levels at which you can perform. But Oxbridge won't take you unless you are very clever, which is why MFL teaching when you have a Oxbridge degree is probably going to be might frustrating.

There is a lot of recent research into MFL performance and maths performance and the two are apparently highly correlated. However, since for many years it was believed (now thought to be erroneously) that people were often either maths/scientific focused or verbally focused, school systems have tended to push pupils into one or the other.

@bonsoir I will bow to your knowledge of recent research but my empirical experience is that I have never seen that reflected in either myself (Cambridge Maths graduate), my DD, or my peers both at school, university and working.

I would say that my professional peers were all, without exception, stunningly mathematical and many of them were highly verbal (not all, though they weren't dunces either because they all spoke at least three languages at a professional standard). But then, they were recruited specifically for those qualities...

At school there were clearly people with very distinct preferences. But I wasn't at school in the English system and we were all required to do maths and MFL right to the end so there wasn't that rigid either/or segregation which I do think the English education system takes as a given. It's a sort of underlying assumption that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hamish According to Sutton trust only 8 schools in the country (all independant) get over 30% to oxbridge. The average for independant schools is about 5%. Poosh is talking rubbish to suggest such a school isn't near the top.