Private schools use unqualified teachers - but are they really any good?

[Talkinpeace]

One of the justifications for Free Schools etc being allowed to use non qualified teachers is that Private schools do so and get great results.

However, are the great results because those non qualified people are really better?
or is it because they are handed heavily selected cohorts to teach?

This can be tested.

Take two schools of similar size and age range, one that is fee paying and the other that is fully comprehensive
say Eton and Wallingford school in Oxfordshire (fast search for 11-18 leafy)
and swap the whole of the teaching staff for a fortnight - to run a whole timetable cycle.
TAs and support staff would stay put so the places kept going
but the whole staff from each school would teach the other's timetable.

How would they cope?

My hypothesis
The state school teachers would be pleasantly surprised that a lot of the private school kids were pretty normal.
The state school teachers would get some good ideas about how to make extension work more useful
Some of the private school teachers would rise to the challenge and come up with new ideas
most would be eaten alive by lower ability kids.

So, could a TV company make it happen?
What are your hypotheses?

www.newarkschool.org.uk/message-from-the-principal/

Gove says that unqualified teachers will be as good as qualified ones.
Is he right?

I don't know if he did actually say this- do you? And if you can, then link to it please.

In any case this thread has covered it in some detail already.
Have you missed all those posts OP?

Straggle but on some areas children can't be found a reception place at all. In those areas a school had to be utterly dire and completely failing its pupils to have falling numbers.

Missbopeep
I know that non PGCE / BEd can work fine in fee paying schools.
I've seen nobody prove it could work in a state funded open to all in the area school

Here is the Dfe press release about the issue
www.gov.uk/government/news/academies-to-have-same-freedom-as-free-schools-over-teachers

although I can only find an article that mentions bullying among pupils.

Her name was dame Jean Else

A link to the article is here www.theguardian.com/education/2011/feb/10/super-head-damehood-revoked

I asked if you could link to Gove saying that unqualified teachers were fine...can you do that?

If you can't then I don't think your argument has a leg to stand on TBH.

No governing body of ANY school worth its salt is going to appoint- knowingly- a bad teacher. Whether they wave the requirement for QTS will be the decision of the governing body.

You keep coming back to the differences ( in your mind) between state and private schools- despite you saying you don't want this thread to be about state v private.

One point you keep reiterating is the differences between the pupils ( nice in private schools, naughty in state schools, in your view) and how a teacher cannot move successfully between sectors.

This is a myth but a common one, and one which was often asked of me at interviews when I moved from a private to a state school.

It's a very patronising attitude- a good teacher should be able to teach anywhere.

The private school I taught at took children ( as boarders) from local authority care- including at least one pupil who had been in a remand home.

I wish you would get over this notion that children in private schools are 'easier' to teach- and that private school teachers cannot cope in state schools.

Missbopeep
I went to private schools 4 till 18 - I know how nasty gels can be.
I also know full well that teachers move between sectors, often extremely successfully and saving their sanity
BUT
there is a mahoosive difference between the lower sets in a comp/sec mod and ANY class in a private school
if nothing else because all fee paying schools have a very simple sanction (the door) that state schools do not.

If a press release from Gove's department will not do for you I'd love to see what will : newspaper spin is always a PITA.

So Gove didn't actually say what you are telling us he said.

You are linking to something that discusses academies and free schools.

I posted ages back- did you miss it?- that one of my children's state schools - pass rate 85% A-C- employed an unqualified maths graduate to teach right up to GCSE and A level.

What kind of proof do you want? You'd be better off spending your energies ensuring that ALL teachers in schools do a good job because by heck there are plenty with QTS who ought not to be in the profession.

Yes there are, lots and lots.
My local school takes any kid who applies. Its still half empty though.
DCs school takes every kid in the catchment (6 miles across) and hundreds from outside as well.

State schools do not take every kid regardless of where they are in the country. The reason I know this is because I have experience of children who cannot access mainstream education. There is a clause in the education act which allows state schools to refuse to admit a pupil if his needs are such that he is likely to have a negative impact on the education of other children.
It is similar for pupils with severe behavioural problems; they are sought alternative provision.
Do you really think that your local school would admit a child who had severe autism, severe learning difficulties,no verbal language, and physical disabilities? Chances are he would be sent to a specialist school who can meet his needs, the local state school would not take him.
So in short - state schools do not take everybody.

As I said earlier it's typically nonsensical for Gove to pick on lack of qualified teachers and not following the national curriculum as the reasons for the success of private schools as opposed to the slightly more blindingly obvious reasons of selection, pots of money, parental support (obviously not exclusive to the private sector).

It's utterly bizarre and the chickens are coming home to roost in the free schools already.

It's also bizarre as even Clegg is now admitting that on the one hand there's huge investment and importance attached to the (state funded and promoted) national curriculum and qualifications for teachers and on the other free schools which can abandon these are held up as the way forward.

It begs the question that if it's better to have unqualified teachers and no NC then why bother with them at all?

And of course that way chaos lies.

there is a mahoosive difference between the lower sets in a comp/sec mod and ANY class in a private school

Have you been in each?

Because I have. Unlike many of the posters here. And I can tell you that 20 co-ed 'posh kids' of mixed ability ( truly mixed ability) and 30 lower set kids in a state school are not THAT different.

But this is not what the OP is arguing about. She's saying that unqualified teachers can't and shouldn't teach under any circumstances.

It's happening already and we haven't even got onto TAs who cover and take lessons all the time rather than school paying for qualified supply teachers.

Our local secondary school, which has very high sickness absences, uses cover supervisors instead of supply teachers. Three of them happen to be mums at school who I have known a long time and who have no teaching qualifications or experience whatsoever. They are covering maths lessons, PE lessons, science lessons, every lesson without a teacher. Sometimes for a whole week.

I don't know if it is just this school or whether it is a common thing. I was shocked when I heard about it.

As a teacher who has also switched sectors in the opposite direction to Missbobeep I have to agree with her that it really does depend. Some private schools are really struggling financially and are developing a reputation for being able to deal with children with SN who simply couldn't hack it in a big comp, likewise kids with behavioural difficulties. In some ways it can be harder for such a school to show parents the door because of the financial and other consequences.

Having said all that, by and large I agree with your hypothesis, Talkin and I wouldn't need a TV programme to show me what seems to me to be common sense.

Aren't most of us here agreed that there may well be odd teachers without teaching qualfications (who may nevertheless be well qualified) who get on fine in schools (could be state or private) where they can bring with them particular skills or experience and are well supported. This may be particularly the case for very specialist subjects or coaches e.g. music, physics, sport.

That's very different from saying that employing unqualified teachers on a large scale is an advantage and very different from schools which choose unqualified teachers out of necessity or because they're cheap.

It's so obvious I'm not really sure where you're going with it.

I'd also say that it takes much longer than 2 weeks to adjust (your resources and approach) to your setting so most of the 2 weeks for each set of teachers would be spent realizing how much needed to change - and again, I'm not sure that it would be remotely surprising.

I agree when.

I don't think anyone thinks this directive means that someone who currently works in a supermarket stacking shelves ( though of course they may well have a PhD now due to graduate under-employment) is dragged into a school and put in front of 30 lower set children and told to teach them.

That's just being silly. What it does mean is that schools should be free from red tape as private schools have been to employ whoever they think is best for the role. in some rare instances this will mean a teacher or specialist who has many years' experience in the classroom but for some reason does not have QTS.

This whole thread is an over-reaction to what is being proposed.

"Schools are oversubscribed - areas are not. Oversubscribed schools tend to be the ones with good Ofsted ratings and results."

That's not the full picture.

Schools with good GCSE results will be oversubscribed, period, regardless of the OFSTED ratings.

For example, Newport Free Grammar School, gets some of the best GCSE results, for a comp, in Essex. It got 575 applicants for 168 places, and nobody outside catchment was admitted.

Fully half of the cohort comes in above level 4 at age 11, and their 2012 performance of 65% good GCSEs is very mediocre considering.

www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=115352

Meanwhile Clacton County High School, which got only 425 applicants for 279 places, and comes near the bottom of Essex's GCSE league tables with around 50% getting 5 good GCSEs, actually gets objectively better results.

In particular:

CCHS - 66% made expected progress in English
NFGS - 61% made expected progress in English

The average GCSE grade was the same for all three (those with Level 3 or below at admission, those with Level 4, and those above Level 5) categories at both schools.

In many respects the 'poor school' got better results, it's just hamstrung by its intake.

And since those data were published, CCHS made a huge improvement, from 51% getting 5 good GCSEs in 2012, to 66% this year.

As for Ofsted, it was rated Grade 3 (the second-lowest) in 2009 and again in 2012, resulting in the head in 2012 resigning, and quite rightly so, because their results are plainly abject, as noted here: dashboard.ofsted.gov.uk/dash.php?urn=138734

Despite this, a former Ofsted inspector still complained about the report, saying that the outstanding GCSE results (which are actually anything but, due to the nature of the intake) are all the vindication that the school needs.

CCHS btw was rated 'Good with Oustanding Features'.

The point is this: first and foremost parents want good GCSE results. They pick the schools with the highest % of GCSE passes and that's pretty much it.

In most cases they are simply selecting the school with the most exclusive intake.

You get exceptions, such as Mossbourne in Hackney, where schools have managed to transcend their intakes and achieve well, and subsequently become sought after, but this is much less likely to happen in the shires.

The top comprehensive in Hampshire, Thornden has 56% of its intake at Level 5 or above on admission, and only 5% below Level 4. The worst, Mill Chase, has 25% and 22% respectively.

In Surrey it's the same, the top comp (which is actually a private school in disguise), Gordon's took in 58% at Level 5 and above, 3% below Level 4, the worst, a few miles away, Bishop David Brown, comparatively 19% and 28% respectively.

The problem is that 'good' schools create bad schools.

In the case of Newport Free Grammar above, it is one of four schools in Uttlesford:

Mountitchet, which is undersubscribed and gets 'poor' results, gets 23% high achievers, 25% low achievers.
Newport Free Grammar, which is heavily oversubscribed and gets 'good' results (but are actually well below par for its intake) gets 49% high achievers, 8% low achivers
Helena Romanes, which is full but not massively oversubscribed, and gets 'good' results, though historically not as good as NFGS', gets 38% high achievers, 12% low achievers.
Saffron Walden, which tops the Essex league tables every year, and is oversubscribed, gets 55% high achievers, 5% low achievers.

The top 3 schools take 311 high achievers and only 52 low achievers, while the bottom school had just 17 high achievers and 19 low achievers.

A small number of low achieving students will get into the 'best' 'comprehensives', but the 'worst' comprehensives will get very few high achievers, because those high achievers are, at elast in part a product of their home environment, which in most cases will do whatever is necessary to avoid a bad school.

Sorry, typo, not 'As for Ofsted', as for 'Newport'.

That whining ex-Ofsted inspector: www.conservativehome.com/localgovernment/2012/07/head-resigns-after-damning-ofsted.html

In any given area you will end up with 'good' schools with most of the area's naice children and as a result this creates 'bad' ones where the naice kids do not go at any cost (except for a tiny number of Guardian journalist types, and probably not even them, when it comes down to it).

Well, Missbobeep, personally I think unqualified teachers should continue to be exceptional (in every sense) regardless of sector.

The Al Madinah school and the headteacher who resigned in the other free school show what happens when it is assumed that unqualified teachers are better although in both cases there are obviously more systemic failings than the teachers. But I would argue that this will happen with free schools. The NC and teaching qualifications exists for a reason. Yes, you might get talent and experimentation if you can be a bit flexible but you'll also get disasters.

So, I don't think it's an overreaction. I think free schools are a ridiculous idea and that's becoming obvious now. Even the ones that are successful will be at the expense of other schools in the area.

well if they are successful at the expense of other schools in the area that to me = a result!
Nothing like poor schools closing due to competition from better schools. Just like the private sector- the bad ones go to the wall.

Al Madinah is nothing to do with unqualified teachers, it is about this (from their website.

"One of Al-Madinah Schools’ distinct features is the offering of an Islamic Studies program, which will include Quran reading with pronunciations (Tajweed), translation of the Quran (Tafseer) and Quran memorisation (Hifz). We will also teach Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), biography (Seerah) of the Prophet Mohammed (SAW), History of Islam, the Oneness of God (Tauheed) and Islamic Beliefs (Aqeedah). Daily prayers and weekly religious assemblies will also take place at the School. "

Parents wanted to send their kids to a madrasah, simple as. Islam is higher on those parents priority list than GCSEs. There are tens of thousands of similar schools in Pakistan and given that all or almost all the student body was Pakistani, that's what they were going for. They set up a Pakistani school in the UK.

It's a result of continued immigration and lack of assimilation within British society among the Pakistani community, and doesn't really shed any light on the merits or otherwise of unqualified teachers.

Ofsted did not rate Al Madinah as dire because it was islamic.
They rated it dire because it was shambolic and the unqualified teachers were dire
www.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/138776

Talk- if David Beckham applied to a school to teach footy would you turn him down as he didn't have QTS?
Or Tracy Emin to teach art ( well...)
Or Carol Anne Duffy to teach English?

You see this is the nonsense behind insisting on QTS.

And the Al Madinah school is not proof that free schools don't work- it's proof that there is a system in place to monitor them, just as there is a system for putting state schools into special measures when they are failing ( despite being full of qualified teachers.)

So your argument doesn't really hold water.