All this QTS stuff - do you REALLY know what it means? Here's the truth...

[Itchyandscratchy]

Right - I'd like to think I'm a reasonably intelligent person, but until today I misunderstood what the new ruling from the Govt about unqualified teachers and QTS is actually going to mean.

Forgive me my ignorance if you have already realised this:

Schools have been employing unqualified teachers - teachers without BEds, PGCEs, GTP, etc. for years. So the ruling about academies being able to emply unqualified teachers is not new.

So, even if you were unqulaified, you would still need to work towards Qualified Teacher Status within a set amount of time. QTS is 'proved' with a folder of evidence that shows each of these standards have been met.

QTS, as linked to in one of my previous posts (on the 'What every parents needs to know' thread) makes sure standards in the stuff you can't be 'naturally good at' are met: safeguarding, quality of teaching, subject knowledge and application; all the standards outlined in the QTs framework.

The QTS have been reviewed for Sept 2012 and will, IMHO, for the first time actually attempt to ensure standards are met in a meaningful way, with evidence needed.

So in this way, even OVER-qualified crap teachers will have to prove themselves as much as under-qualified great teachers.

QTS is the link that would hopefully bridge the gap between competence and qualification. In this way, IN THEORY, we should be confident that our fears about unqualified teachers are allayed. It will also mean that - for the first time - we might be a little more confident that the minority of teachers who do not care about the learning of their students are called to account without a lengthy and mostly unsuccessful competency procedure.

The Govt's announcement actually means that QTS is no longer required.

An unqualified person can now not only secure a job teaching your child, they are no longer required to prove that they are acapable of meeting those standards at any time in the future.

I realise I have probably been extremely thick in only just fully understanding this, but I'm guessing a few other people might be as well, and this is for them.

Scary isn't it?

So it will all depend on the management.

And the staffing.

And the funding.

'The government announced in the SEN Green Paper that funding for BESD in mainstream will be cut and that there will be PRU academies and that Special schools who don't want to become academies will be persuaded to.'

By that, do they mean that EBD/SEN children will be shoved into special schools f/t and that there will no statemented children in mainstream? Isn't that what they do in Scandanavia?

What is this document QT?

The SEN Green Paper, Support and Aspriation: a new approach to special educational needs and disability

The Taylor Review of Alternative Provision

If you just goggle them, you can download and read them.

Of course the government isn't going to admit that they want to remove EBD/SEN children but as soon as I heard about the unQTs I thought, this is one way to get more problems with classroom management because how are unQTs going to manage these children who we have build up strong relationships with? Those with a mindset of, 'I'm the teacher and the child does what I say' will easily find confrontation with these children who really need, and don't take this the wrong way, a more parental approach of unconditional love i.e. forgiveness and opportunities for new starts after every bad behaviour episode rather than the 'Oh not you again,' approach which could happen.

Thank you QT :)

Your welcome FB

Gove said he wanted to challenge the 'bias' in education towards inclusive education.

Challenge, it is!

jabed
"The Ignorance of some teachers really astounds me."

yes it does expecially when they post things like this

"This is because they came into teaching as graduates before the PGCE became compulsory."

PGCE has never been complusory.

EvilSynchronisedDivers - by "you're not that old", I meant jabed wasn't exactly in his 70s or 80s, so could hardly pull the old age card, and you misquoted me when you said I said, "you haven't lived through all those changes in education..." because I actually said, "you haven't lived through all changes in education, just those since the 1970s," and jabed hasn't at any point claimed he did start teaching before 1970. So I didn't accuse him of lying at all....

I was just amused by the irony of you starting your post by telling others off then immediately contradicting the previous poster.

Well, it would be ironic if I accused him of lying, rather than suggesting that the age he has indicated that he is doesn't seem that old to me (that is a matter of opinion, not fact...), and the number of years in which he has been teaching doesn't seem that long to me (not when I have a grandmother who was a pre-2nd world war teacher). I never accused him of misrepresenting any facts whatsoever and therefore didn't break my own suggestion that people stop accusing each other of lying and stick to expressing their opinions and justifications for their opinions. So, ner....

You win.

I do not think anyone deliberately lies. I think a lot of people are misinformed or misguided, especially when it comes to times beyond their experience.

Quite often what is written down was not what went on in practice ( for example the tripartite system in education post 1944 education act - vey few LEA's had that system. Similarly the issues of PGCE. In the 1970's, practically, it was not possible to get qualified unless you were a maths graduate or you took a PGCE and even then it was a lottery).

I also think there is a considerable element of exaggeration amongst some posters. That is aside of the judicious editing of personal details that I suspect (I hope for safety reasons on the internet) most posters will engage in. Hence one should never suggest another is lying for whatever reasons - inconsistency, exaggeration, statements which may contradict another?s experience etc. Nothing can ever be quite what it seems.

This is not just on the internet. For example my DW loves those back in time history series the BBC is so fond of - where they take families and individuals and have them live out past generations lifestyles. I watch these with her and I sometimes look aghast at what it seems our modern social historians think life was like in the 1950's/60's and 70's, all of which I have lived through.

It is re writing history (although I suspect it was someone?s experience somewhere, I don?t know whose it was!). Similarly some modern history programmes have made statements about WW2 (my dad was there and my mum was a war child and my mothers experience was very different to that often depicted on TV.) and post war Britain. Again nothing like what my parents said happened.

Also things change with time. When I was a lad, the English teacher at my SM asked us to write an essay " What my Dad Did in the War" for homework. The idea was we asked our fathers and we wrote an account. My father was in the Royal Navy. He was on the Arctic Convoys (you may or many not have heard of them) however, in 1966 the Arctic Convoys were historically persona no gratia. They had been written out of existence. My teacher told me I was a liar. He wasnt so brave with my dad fortunately for him. He also dismissed an older teacher who had been a "Desert Rat". Now we all know what went on in these places. But you see, its all about what we think we know.

My teacher thought he knew about the war.

Such history, like debates here is written by the "winning" posters. Those who are most liked. Those who say what most want to hear and nothing else.

Goodnight.

Why "goodnight" at 5.45am????

As for rewriting history, I thought history was the recording of past events, so whether written down first off or rewritten, it is never going to be the actual past event, it will always be some human being's interpretation. Nobody sees the same event in exactly the same way (how could they, since they are only in their own skins, not someone else's?....). Just ask siblings to recount the same event from their past and they will frequently remember it entirely differently, or remember entirely different events from their childhoods, so individual first hand accounts are no more perfect or accurate a record of an entire era than a record of the experiences of thousands of people brought together and then edited by an historian.

And you are foolish if you think it's just about winning or losing an argument, or whether you are liked or not. Why rigidly stick with trying to win or lose an argument, as though that is actually possible, when you can share ideas and thoughts and sway opinions? It's the childish wanting to "win" that loses peoples' respect, not the argument behind all the patronising, occasionally smug, alienating comments about ignorance and inexperience, or the offensive suggestions that people are lying. You "lose" an argument because you can't put your point across without putting peoples' backs up, not because they won't listen, regardless.

Good god, from your primary school teacher to the Canadian universities to the 11+ to the jobs you got made redundant from and didn't get and the job centre that did badly by you, life has really done you wrong, hasn't it Jabed? This stuff - or your attititude to it- does contextualise your posts and attitudes somewhat.

Basically, jabed, I am interested in what you have to say, but the way that you say it is very unfortunate, sometimes. You don't have to say what people want to hear to win an argument, but you do have to say what you mean in a way that doesn't appear to be designed solely to patronise.