Should teachers have to take tougher tests before they qualify?

[Solopower1]

What do you think?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20083249

Yes some of the classes were chaotic with poor behaviour ... I clearly recall one boy bouncing a cricket ball off the chalk board (narrowly missing the teacher's head) as the teacher turned his back to write for example

Now that is interesting because it opens up another aspect of the behaviour issue.

Was that boy in your grammar school class misplaced? Had he received my education would he have been so disruptive? I do believe that a lot of problems we have in classrooms are at root a result of the NC . Too often teachers are blamed for not teaching appropriate to the students needs but it isnt the teachers who are at fault its the actual prescription of what has to be taught.

An academic curriculum such as that of the NC is probably not suitable for the majoriity of students and force feeding it can explain a lot of things including the high levels of low level ( if you follow that) disruption these days.

In my school ( common with most semi selective independents) we do not follow the NC unless it suits us and the pupils. There is no low level disruption. Similarly my old SM did not have to follow a NC - yeachers taught what they felt appropriate to the classes. Again no low level disruption. Now it is only a correlation but I do feel its part of the issue.

No he wasn't misplaced jabed and certainly he wasn't alone in his behaviour.
He is now a successful lawyer.

so why was he so disruptive then mrz? If you know that is?

He saw some teachers as weak and he was a bully

LaVolcan - the issue of teacher training has long been a mess and I think still is.

When I was a lad there was a distinct divide in many grammar schools ( and to an extent this still exists in education now). Those who were most able would go to university. Those who were not were allocated teacher training. That was after the bunch who left at 16 with little or no O levels were off scene. Of course there wereexceptions - some left with good clutches of O levels. Others came from SM and wereautomatically lumped intoteacher training groups ( I was one and it was the only time in my life I rebelled).

Equally for many years teacher training was not graduate. Again when I was taking A levels it was a certificate course and those who did it needed one A level usually but 5 O levels was still the entry requirement.

Then there were graduates who could enter teaching without any further qualifications. Those graduates and the cert eds were all given QTS if they were working in schools in 1989 and had started teaching before that.

Strange as it may seem 5 O levels including maths and English language is still on the statute books as the entry qualification for teaching. Variations in statutory instruments have not changed it despite the "all graduate" thing. .

It is a muggers buddle . Quite how you sort it out, I dont know. Those teachers who have a cert ed these days would have to be around my age or maybe a couple of years younger or possibly even more .... I am not sure exactly when Cert Ed was were phased out. It was phased and that is the problem. In some colleges it may have carried on longer than in others. I will take a guess - some of those old cogers who should have been " weeded out" according to you may be around 54+ now.

There was a programme to upgrade them to degrees in the 1980's but it was a further course and many didnt bother to take it. Some got OU degrees. Latterly some of the old teaching colleges have actually awarded without further ado a degree to those with that old cert ed - so if you have hung around long enough your cert has become a degree and you can apply for the bit of paper.

Over the years things didnt improve.I have net a number of teachers whotell me they never took O levels or GCSE or A levels but they are trained and qualified teachers ( BEd or subject degree and PGCE - QTS). How they did it I dont know. Most were mature entrants to teaching . I guess some kind of access to HE course?

I dont want to generalise about standards though. Some of those old cert eds might knock spots off the more recently graduated! I know several older teachers (around my age) who are not to be tangled with academically or in terms of classroom management.

But it still remains that you can enter ITT at 18 for a B Ed or a BA ( QTS) with lower grades than you can a subject degree.

Actually jabed if you look at entry requirements for some BEd courses you need 300 UCAS points as opposed to 260 on BA courses

Ofcourse it very much depends on the college ( university ) involved. RG univerity are asking AAB for subject degrees. They ask 260 UCAS points for their education schools ( generally) or sometimes they asked for BBC Thats what my students told me last year. They were the ones applying. I havent bothered to look to be honest.

The fact is there are colleges out there for every one in every sub ject if you just take a look around and some even ask 2 E entry.

Should a bully have really been in a grammar school? Was he , as the 1944 act said " would benefit from a grammar school education"?

So he became a lawyer - says it all really.

whispers

Don't be silly, jabed - an innate sense of one's own superiority can be a characteristic of a bully and a characteristic of a typoical grammar school child.....

ron I can't see any reason why being a bully should disqualify a child from benefiting from a grammar school education. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with academic abiity.

Nor do I believe that being a bully is a necessary prerequisite for becoming a lawyer.

I thought you previously said that you were a victim of your mother's politics with regard to education? I thought that was the reason you didn't go to the grammar?

Going back to the original subject of this thread - I think it's a matter of the right idea for the wrong motive IYSWIM.

All teachers need to have good functional English and Maths skills (not perhaps represented by formal qualifications, but via a straightforward functional test). This is not necesarily just for their in-class teaching - as others have said, an ICT teacher may not need outstanding written English to be a great teacher of programming, equally an inspiring History teacher can, in the class, get away with poor maths. HOWEVER, key 'out of class' activities of teachers - data collection and analysis, report writing etc - DO require high level literacy and maths skills.

Wrong motive - because it seems to be trying to denigrate existing teachers even more.

As a broad statement, I would say that those teachers who have come into teaching as a postgraduate via the PGCE route are 'better educated' and 'brighter' in a broad sense than those who have gone straight from school into a BEd - because they have had to have the qualifications and skills to get a degree first before then training as a teacher. However, I do know some inspirational teachers whose vocation for teaching has been so strong that they would have seen gaining a 'different' degree as a distraction and so have come through the BEd route....

[The most inspirational teacher I have had had no teaching qualifications BUT was a high level nuclear scientist before entering the profession.....]

Well he obviously benefited from a grammar school education as he went to a good university (Russell Group although they can't be too fussy as they accepted me [hwink] )

Jabed's assertions about teacher training are usually lazy and incorrect. You may have been right, several years ago, that BEd had universally lower entry requirements, but I don't believe that to be the case any more. The one student who went from my school to ITT last year needed 320 UCAS points plus experience. She had to go through the most stringent interview process of all my students, and this wasn't even for an RG university. Another girl, who was doing 5 A2s, and predicted to get A or B grades in all of them was turned down for the teaching courses she applied to because her work experience amounted to weekly volunteer work at an After School Club. They successful student had 2 year's worth of weekly volunteer work in a classroom. Primary teaching is one of the most heavily subscribed courses, according to UCAS, and so universities can afford to be picky.

(Before I get a flood of teachers saying 'but I came via the BEd route and I'm brilliant' - I should say that the above is my observation and it is of teachers who have qualified relatively recently, not of those of long standing)

Thinking more (should do it first, really) I think that one of the issues with teachers who come via the BEd route is not so much one of 'academic ability', just perhaps a very narrow set of experiences? A kind of 'never been out of school' view of the world? And that makes those who have come via the OGCE route, sometimes some years after graduating, seem 'better educated' because they have wider experiences?

BEd students aren't necessarily 18 year olds straight from school teacher, many are mature students with lots of experience behind them, just as PGCE students may have gone straight from A levels into a degree and complete their PGCE age 22 with very narrow experiences.

I think it's too simplistic to say one route into teaching is better or worse than another or even one university is better or worse than another. I believe there is much more to what makes a good (or bad teacher)

I went straight from A Levels to degree to PGCE, qualifying, because of having an August birthday, at the age of 21. Two weeks after my 22nd birthday, I was teaching students who were only 4 years younger than me. Looking back, it was a bizarre thing to have done, but I was always good at it. I can see that I have improved massively as I've got older though, but that's more due to being more relaxed, I think. I was always very diligent, but perhaps spent too much time working when I was younger. Having my own kids has made a difference- I work smarter now, otherwise I would never see my girls, or have any kind of life. I won't pretend that teaching was "all I ever wanted to do", but it suited me from day 1 of the PGCE, and it still does. I work with a variety of colleagues- some have worked in industry, some have always taught. There doesn't seem to be any direct correlation between "outside" experience and good teaching.

Mrz and EvilTwins - all good points. A little bit like 'good' schools etc, it will all come down to the individual in the end, much more than one or another route into the profession...

I fell into teaching, tbh.

I'd managed to be widowed, bankrupt & homeless within the space of a weekend, so applying for a PGCE seemed like a good idea at the time...

I had a miserable NQT year, & then somehow it all clicked in my second year.

With hindsight, of course, my head was completely f*cked that first year. I was a lousy teacher. Distinctly remember thinking 'Well, I'll give it one more year & if I still can't do it, sod it, I'll quit, sign on, & see how quickly I can drink myself to death'.

I'd've had no bother passing Numeracy & Literacy tests, though. I'm pretty bright academically. But I've never actually needed my maths skills to teach English, or for any of the data-y bits of the job. We have spreadsheets for that!

I thought you previously said that you were a victim of your mother's politics with regard to education? I thought that was the reason you didn't go to the grammar?

You think and think and think - as if there is something inconsistent in what I have said? Well think again and stop trying to play " catch out" b3ecause it wont happen. I am not inconsistent - no more than I have ever said that I came from Devon - you thought. No I said my family used to holiday in North Devon (I asked metabilis where she came from as a result)

I have always said I passed the 11+ but because of a housemove by my parents I ended up in an SM.

My mothers politics were not to do with my 11+ passing or not going to grammar school. That was to do with her refusal to enable me to go to an independent school.

Two different things. Three if you count my correction of your silly undermining comments about Devon.

ron I can't see any reason why being a bully should disqualify a child from benefiting from a grammar school education. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with academic abiity
I would have hoped that blu7llies would be disqualified on the grounds of being unsuitable material - not on academic grounds but never having gone to grammar school I cannot say. It was just my hope. Clearly bullies are most welcome.

Ronaldo - my dbs' experience of an all boys' grammar school was that bullies were most certainly welcome.

Bullies were also welcome at db1's prep school.

The problem is children don't come with labels so until they display "bullying" behaviour they blend in