Something EVERY parent of a child in a UK State school should know about

[QualifiedTeacher]

The UK Government has new proposals to allow non qualified teachers to teach in UK schools. This means our children?s education may be placed in the hands of teachers without basic qualifications such as English and Maths GSCE let alone a Bachelors degree. This policy will mainly be affecting children from the lower economic backgrounds and the reasoning behind employing unqualified teachers is simply because it costs less.

I have attached an epetition which gives more information and is asking for signatures to oppose the use of unqualified teachers in UK State schools. If the numbers signing this petition is large enough, we can get the debate discussed in the UK Parliament. Please help and protect the education of all UK children in State schools.

Thanks

MTPP
the Cert ed is long gone. but was required training at the time for those that had experience in industry but not in the classroom. So they weren't just left to get on with it.

The "current" view is that all teachers must have a degree, a couple of years ago the drive was for all teachers to have a masters degree. The "current" PGCE view is that you should have a 2:1 or first to gain access to the course.

The access routes are
here
here
here
overseas here

I've started a separate thread on this as its only just occurred to me today the logistics of what the Govt's announcement actually means.

In the past, unqualified teachers have been able to get jobs in schools.
The proviso is that they prove they can reach the standards necessary within a certain time and thus that gain QTS. QTS is 'proven' with a portfolio of evidence that has to be signed off and accredited.

This is no longer necessary according to the government.

So in past, these unqualified bods who didn't have a teaching qualification (BEd, PGCE, GTP, etc.) but whose experience and other qualifications might indicate tht they'd make a good teacher, still had to prove it by gaining QTS within a certain time.

QTS, as I linked to before, gives proof that lessons have been observed, that needs of students with a wide range of abilities are being catered for, that safeguarding is of paramount importance, that pastoral experience is appropriately supported, etc. etc.

Ironically, the new teaching standards that come into effect in September are much more meaningful than ever before, and schools will have to prove to Ofsted that standards are being met by all teachers. So the minority of incompetent teachers will not be able to get away with not doing a good job ( this of course also depends on performance management being administered in a fair way by Heads, which not everyone can be sure of, but that's another story...)

Anyway, the new ruling means that unqualified teachers do not have to prove these competences AT ALL. EVER.

No wonder the announcement was made in the school holidays, on the Olympic opening ceremony day. A nasty, cynical example of burying bad news. As a parent, I'm furious.

Well Itchy

Why won't you google David Clarke and epetition and sign it. We really need a proper debate with all our representatives in Parliament stating their views. It will not happen in certain schools but will in others.

And thanks for explaining it in a way that perhaps other parents who may not have understood it, understand it now. Best wishes.

Absolutely itchy (re. QTS).

Can't agree about the new teaching standards though. I don't think the old, standards needed meddling with. The new standards are just a licence to make more work for HT and SLT, as each school's management has to set criteria within each of the standards to allow for salary progression.

The old standards did this for you, and pretty much said the same thing.

Believe me, over the past few years I've seen a lot of dodgy teachers go. There really aren't that many lazy teachers out there and the ones that are have so much bad vibes towards them.

It is SO easy to see a teacher who isn't pulling their weight and if they are not, believe me we are not giving them an easy time and SLT are on to it.

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6265653

But, flexybex, the old standards had around 30-odd strands to gather evidence on and although this worked perfectly well for ITT and the continual assessment of a trainee teacher, it assumed a continuation of the standards by all teachers throughout their careers, and performance management just did not link up with them: it would have been an administrative nightmare and therefore it became meaningless.

The new standards only have 8 points, plus the second section on professional standards. It's much easier then to link them to perf management and CPD, which should be an absolute priority in schools. It doesn't have to be extra work for middle managers with careful support from leadership team: I've been working on this myself this holiday. Not every school will manage this well but it can be done, IMHO.

Yes it does need extra work, because each of the the 8 points (maybe apart from professional standards which should apply to everyone) will have to be split into UPS threshold gradings for appraisal purposes.
We have already seen a draft which I totally disagreed with - for instance NQTs need to move children 2 sub-levels, UPS1, 3sub-levels, UPS3 4+ sub-levels. Those kind of criteria are neither fair on the children nor the teachers! I'm waiting to see the second draft......
And every school MUST manage this well to make it fair and accountable.

Fat chance.

Was that draft from your own school? I haven't seen anything nationally yet. If there is, do you have a link please? I'd be interested to see it.

Sensible schools will create their own appraisal criteria based on these standards and differentiate between NQTs, teachers with no TLRs and teachers with increasing responsibility. I agree, it's down to an effective SLT, which not every school has. Attaching these to quantitative results is bonkers though.

PGCE students will also be judged against the same criteria as the Head at that school, which is clearly a nonsense and which is why sensible differentiation needs to be made. It's entirely unreasonable to ask middle managers to come up with their own version which is why SLTs need to take that responsibility.

And UPS is being disbanded. And ASTs. And Excellent Teachers. We've all got to move towards 'Master Teacher' status now... although the Govt haven't yet decided what you need to do to achieve this status. . Not announced policy yet but it's in the pipeline.

Yes, a draft that my HT has done (with a few area heads).
How can they abolish UPS? Surely it's just a measure of pay progression? I understood that thresholds are still to be in place for pay progression (UPS1/2/3) and that teachers will be expected to produce evidence in order to move up the pay spine, based on the thresholds set by the HT/SLT within the new standards.
Understand the disbanding of ASTs, etc.( ) 'Master teacher' sounds a bit tautologous!!

FB re the standards

That's what I've heard. Re the HTs having their 'unique' or tailoring their standards makes sense because if you are in an Inner City school with loads of BESD, EAL, BMEs, FSM then the standards you need to reach need to be specific to those groups. There are some schools in Inner London where over 100 languages are spoken and over 80% of the children are EAL.

The Literacy and EMAG problem needs to catered for that school. In many schools they don't have EMAG because there is no need etc.

You'd think a qualified teacher would know it should be were allowed to teach not was allowed, sadly though the closed shop teachers tenure for life with golden pensions are pretty useless which is why elite universities are having to drop their entry standards to let the students you lot fail to teach to the standards your fore fathers managed too rather successfully.

To not too. Was your teacher unqualified?

You might want to insert a few commas too, Novack.
Or, for a higher mark, try a wider range of the more sophisticated punctuation marks. Hth.

I am always amazed at people who go on and on about petty grammatical and spelling issues when there are bigger issues at stake. I'm actually reading and writing up a summary of the government's proposals for SEN as well as doing this and a few other academic things. We're trying to get these issues debated properly in Parliament you see.

PLUS

And I am not writing this in a professional context. This is ONLY social media.

PLUS

I did not write the epetion. David Clarke did!

PLUS

I'm supposed to be on holiday.

Sorry to hijack but if anyone has any links or more info on ups/threshold id be interested. I should have gone through threshold last yr but was pg and put it off. Seems its all changed now. I have another thread on this.
Disclaimer: poor grammar/punctuation/spellings are due to being on my phone with a wriggly baby not poor education.
Tia :)

NovackNGood

If you stopped reading the mail and did some of your own research, or even read some of the threads on here, you would see how wrong your last post is.

QT my comment was tongue in cheek and i was gloating at picking a mistake in an annoying complaint about grammar n spellings

mumnos, sorry if I misunderstood who you were speaking too but there are some people on these posts who are just nitpicking.

We, i.e. teachers or social media users have no say in what happens. There will always be an agenda in having less competition so that those with advantages stay ahead.

Equality in education often means that the disadvantaged get more support to allow them an equal footing. A concept this government does not understand.

You can not except a child born in Inner City London, to parents who can not speak English, in a school where a high percentage of children are FSM, BME, BESD, EAL to get the same A level results as someone from a middle class family whose mum is a Professor of Early European History and whose dad is a conductor/composer/concert pianist.

Sometimes the most advantaged individuals are the most accepting of the support for the disadvantaged. The child from that particularly m/c background could have higher intellectual and reasoning skills as well as musical and sporting talents most children wouldn't (providing of course s/he had no severe learning difficulties/physical disabilities). It highly likely her relatives where doctors, lawyers, actors, dancers, tennis players etc.

No prob qt and id agree

Sadly, it's what's known as 'the Matthew Effect' : the word-rich get richer while the word-poor get poorer.

The child of an educated, middle-class family is likely to be been exposed to tens of thousands of more words in their first 4 years of life - through discussion, reading aloud, access to books, etc - than the child from an socio-economically deprived background.

Therefore these children begin school at a huge disadvantage as far as vocabulary and basic reading and literacy levels go. It's hard to accept that the stereotype exists - and of course there are exceptions to the rules - but the figures bear them out and highlight why it's redundant to compare selective private schools with non-selective state schools via their results.

Figures show that free school meal students routinely under-achieve by around 30% when compared to non-FSM children (A-C passes incl. Eng & maths at GCSE). State schools are trying hard to narrow the gap but the disparities are easy to see when you look at the stats.

Novak's comment i.e.

'which is why elite universities are having to drop their entry standards to let the students you lot fail to teach to the standards your fore fathers managed too rather successfully.'

Is why we are discussing the benefits of having advantaged parents over disadvantaged one. The 'elite universities' or what we call the Russell Group of universities are realising that they and their ELITE STUDENTS are missing out on having students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have achieved astonishing results without the best educational opportunities on offer.

The question is, if a child enters England at the age of 12, not speaking a word of English, get 12 GSCEs mainly A*, As and a few Bs, does 4 A Levels and gets 2As and 2Bs that is an astonishing achievement.

If however the professor's daughter gets 12 GSCEs at A and 4 A levels at A, has performance Diplomas in Voice, Flute, Cello, Piano, Speech and Drama, Ballet, is a junior tennis and golf champion, speaks fluent French, German, Spanish etc. That's a pretty astonishing achievement too.

Yes if you have any or all of the following disadvantages

live in certain postcodes (poorer neighbourhoods)
go to a state funded school
are BME
from lower income background

The grades expected of you are much lower than if you

live in in affluent area
go to a private school
are white m/c or above.

BoneyBackJefferson Sorry but I don't take the Daily Fail and if you had read any posts of mine on here you'd find they get quiet a slating from me if I ever mention them.

As for doing research on here... really don't think I'd take the jaundiced opinion of the Guardian reading loons who have brought our education system into such a mire since they started there failed social engineering.

Funny how India manages to produce 1 million engineering graduates a year. They even teach how to properly speak English and their cursive text is quiet perfect and yet the idiots who teach in our schools struggle to produce a few A level maths candidates able to cope with first year despite the dumbing down of the exams over and over again.

Equality in education often means that the disadvantaged get more support to allow them an equal footing A concept this government does not understand
That type of thinking is what that idiot Bush and his no child left behind policy/ideocracy has lead to the rapid dropping of the US public education level in world rankings. Lets hope the Government sort out the state sector here.

Novack

Universities are not controlled by central government.

And the Russell Group of Universities are going to continue to give concessions to those students from disadvantaged backgrounds whether YOU like it or not!

Steady on, Novak, you're going to do yourself a mischief.
So much rage. So many 'idiots'.

It's probably best you leave this thread unless you want to rage yourself to death. I'm afraid I believe in inclusion and active strategies to narrow the poverty gap. I think quite a few other posters on this thread do too. Soz.