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?

It beggars belief that anyone could actually believe that all the bad teachers with teaching qualifications would be better teachers without them. As for those who make good teachers without a teaching qualification, it also beggars belief that anyone could think a teaching qualification would be of no help to that group, either (or that they would fail to make the grade when it came to getting themselves on a course...). I don't believe there is such a thing as a person who would be harmed by getting a teaching qualification if they want to be a teacher.

'I think the argument is that some teachers (qualified or not) are good and others are poor. '

No shit Sherlock.

Please show me a job where there are NO workers who are poor.

But please explain to me this weird jump to the fact that it's the qualification that somehow makes them poor and lack of qualification that makes them better.

Nobody would ever say that about doctors or any other profession.

And please show me these wonderful would-be teachers who are just dying to get into state schools to turn them around but for some strange reason refuse to get a PGCE in order to do so.

Where are they? Has anybody ever heard of one?

Doubt anyone has heard of one, whendidyoulast

Other than the famous example of the head of Westminster who, on retirement, was going to work in the state sector but was barred as insufficiently qualified.

I certainly wouldnt let my children participate in your social experiment, just so you can have some car crash TV to watch. My own education was messed around enough as it is by stupid social experiments from educationalists who didnt believe in streaming.

I am happy with my choice of school for my children and I can confirm that the vast majority of teachers do have teaching qualifications - there are one or two who dont but they invariably have PhDs inhighly specialist subjects.

As you appear think that generally private school teachers arent all that good, then I would expect that you are also happy with your choice for your childs education. If the only purpose of your experiment is to try and show that private school teachers aren't that great, it is a rather ethically dubious reason to disrupt the education of a group of children and put them on TV.

Missbopeep, the reason everybody is banging on about Al-Madinah is that it isn't just a school in special measures: it is a school that has been spectacularly badly run from the start and with some serious concerns about discrimination. This is rather different from a school that hits a bad spot after many years due to unforeseen circumstances and then goes downhill.

It's the difference between having your ship damaged by a storm and accepting passengers on board a ship that was never seaworthy from the start. In the second instance you would expect questions to be asked of the authority who gave you license to carry passengers.

'I'm wondering why it is that so many posters are banging on about Medinah? It's ONE free school that has run into issues,for reasons in addition to poor teaching.'

It may be one free school but it represents millions of pounds of ALL of taxpayers money which has clearly been squandered. This is a school which only caters for Islamic children.

Can you imagine saying the same thing about a failing hospital? Oh, it's only one hospital? Forget all the thousands of potential users and employers and dosh?

And can you imagine a hospital being built with taxpayers money that only caters for Islamic patients?

But, why people keep 'banging on about it' is because anyone with any common sense could see this sort of thing is bound to happen.

And it's only ONE of many problems we've already seen and the school has only just opened.

'Meanwhile there are hundreds of state schools put into special measures for failing their pupils. The UK has some of the poorest literacy and numeracy results amongst school leavers in the developed world. '

Then why not invest the millions that have been invested in specialised free schools into improving those schools and literacy?

Don't you honestly see the problem?

'No one starts a thread about this- just the usual private/state school envy.'

There is at least one thread on precisely this.

And I am a teacher currently working in the independent sector who has worked int he state sector.

Private schools are different - they use private money.

Free schools use taxpayers money and yet are often exclusive, wasteful and potentially dangerous.

We should ALL be allowed a say in how OUR money is used especially when it's squandered in this way.

Cross posted with you Cory and you put it brilliantly.

But hey, cory, what does one new, failing school matter when there are so many existing, failing schools? Why should we expect such high standards of NEW schools being set up with taxpayers' money? Why not add to the party?

You know what, the problem is all those useless teachers. I think the cure would be to employ people who aren't teachers.

And Patinpig even if it's 25% of free schools that are faith schools to me that's deeply worrying.

It's been widely documented that faith schools are socially divisive.

More faith schools represents more of a problem.

And again Al Madinah exemplifies this. There was widespread discrimination against female pupils and staff.

In case you're still missing the point this PUBLIC money was used to fund this school.

Having a choice of schools is socially divisive, when it comes down to it. Birds of a feather flock together and all that.

But it's such astounding logic. The percentage of teachers without a teaching qualification in independent schools will be tiny and they are likely to be highly qualified and experienced. So it makes no more sense to attribute the success of those schools to the fact that those teachers don't have teaching qualifications as it does to attribute it to lawns or stripy uniforms.

In my school there are 2/100+ teachers without teaching qualifications. One is highly qualified and experienced with years working in an important role working with children in the school in a different capacity and has moved sideways. Similar position for the other who steps in and out of a PRACTICAL subject.

They do a great job and this was well understood when they were employed and they have a unique blend of experience and other qualifications well known to the school. The school's results are in no way dependent on these people. If they left the school would almost certainly recruit people with teaching qualificaitons to replace them.

But there is no way either teacher would want to work in the state sector. They have a particular history with the particular school.

'I think the cure would be to employ people who aren't teachers'

You see, you and I would think that illogical and laughable rabbit but there are several free schools in the offing being run by ex army personnel.

The one I know about is highly dubious. Their website makes the point that they don't really believe in special needs!

And the standard of literacy is truly shocking.

It's such a recipe for disaster.

I'd still like state schools to have the option to use unqualified teachers where the governing body has reason to believe they'd make a superlative teacher.

For example, the head of MFL at a local indpendent school told me she is moving (to live closer to her husband's aging mother). She is French. She has successfully taught French for over fifteen years in the UK.

Yet she cannot get a position in state school. Even when we know the current issues with MFL teaching!!!!!

That's just daft!

I think that's fair enough, word, but as I understood it, state schools CAN employ people in this situation as long as they work towards getting a teaching qualification.

As I said earlier, it's in the interest of teachers to have a qualification anyway.

It's a piece of paper that proves your competency even if you honestly don't need the training.

Like a driving licence.

You wouldn't want someone on the road without a driving licence even if they'd been driving from the age of 5.

Same thing.

As someone else said above in a school of 100 teachers may be 1% might not have a PGCE but they may have taught for years and be very good. That will be the typical percentage without a PGCE in the leading academic private schools.

There may well also be less good private schools out there with too many untrained teachers but the big good selective private schools in every town from Manchester Grammar to Dulwich College etc will all have most teachers with PGCEs and better qualifications in their subject than most state schools on the whole too.

Anyway those with children at state schools who are happy and those with children at private schools who are content can just sit there content. We do not have to criticise each other's sector.

It is also really important that parents retain a right to educate at home too and that freedom which is denied parents in places like Germany.

whendidyoulast - well, you see, some children don't need teaching, they need army discipline! We need to get the next generation of squaddies from somewhere. I'm sure they will be taught enough to get by as a private in the army by the time they leave.

Why should a qualified foreign teacher with years of experience not be allowed to teach in the state sector in the UK? It is insulting to discount their experience and expect them to do a PGCE.

We dont ask qualified doctors to go back to med school, do we?

We do ask people who have been working as doctors without qualifications to go back to med school, elastamum.

I think, elastamum, you are confusing someone with no teaching qualifications with someone who has an overseas teaching qualification. Since our schools are actually stuffed full of foreign qualified teachers (it's quite popular with Aussies and Kiwis, for example), I don't think the state sector has a huge issue, there. Also, a long-experienced teacher without qualifications can apply for Qualified Teacher Status (what you need to teach in a State School) via an Assessment Only route, where they can provide evidence that they already meet the standards required to be given Qualified Teacher Status.

The best teacher my children ever had was completely unqualified, she didn't even had a degree. She was by a mile the best teacher I've come across, and my children do have very good teachers in (state) school, I'm not saying they're not good. She taught French and ran French clubs both in schools and privately, she was brilliant and they learnt loads with her.

Teaching seems a difficult thing to measure to me and I think all the qualifications in the world don't mean you'll be very good at it, it seems to be something you either have or don't have. I'm not saying training doesn't matter, I'm sure anyone can get better at it with training. Maybe the amazing teacher I came across would be ever better if she did the training.

Kendodd - being utterly honest, in a cash strapped school, do you really think the majority of non-teacher appointments will be because they were truly outstanding candidates, head and shoulders above the qualified candidates, or because they were cheaper?

There is also a marked difference between teaching French clubs and preparing children for public exams. Did the teacher you are talking about actually have a full-time position in a school as a teacher, or had she managed to avoid a large part of the teacher's job by being unqualified? (ie was she not, in reality, working as a "proper" class teacher, with all the extra responsibilities which go with this? And would she have been any good at the "extra" stuff required of a "proper teacher" rather than a tutor, or person who runs a club?).