Unqualified Teachers

[everychildmatters]

Why is there not complete outrage re the above? I'd rather my daughter not be "taught" full-time by someone who potentially does not need one formal qualification to their name.
I'm glad I walked out of teaching profession last year after 20 years in.
Enough is enough.

@noblegiraffe I worded my post carefully. I found Zygotsky quite interesting (although I don't know why he's the only theorist of learning that training decided to reference - he was born in the 19th century!)

The A level content, assessment and required skills of my course do not relate very closely to the degree I did 15 years before, despite being nominally the same subject.

It would be considered very odd indeed in other professions for "training" to not include the actual subject matter.

I mean what I did was sat through a load of mostly irrelevant training more or less patiently and then taught myself what I needed from textbooks at night.

It still seems a very odd way to carry on to me.

It would have been fantastic if there had been a module on motivating teenagers in different ways actually+

My friend was an unqualified teacher last year. She was given the role because a qualified teacher was so bad they had to advise her leave or be fired. They'd observed my friend teaching the class as a higher TA and the difference in behaviour was stark. It was fully supported by parents who saw a huge change in their children for the better. The school are now paying for her degree and PGCE.

I think it's incredibly shortsighted for there not to be a route to primary school teaching without a degree. I'm doing my MSc at the moment without having a BSc based off of professional experience, there should be a similar route for TA's. I'd far rather have my friend in that role than someone that did a random degree and then a PGCE with no experience with children.

The teaching profession is haemorrhaging staff. It not right pupils being taught by unqualified teachers, however a body is needed. We need to looking at why so many people are leaving and make it more attractive. If more parents were working with schools rather than against them, if indiscipline was less of an issue, if pupils' attitudes to learning were more positive, if workload was less onerous, if SLT remembered what it was like to have a full day without any real break it would help and finally if inexperienced staff were not promoted before they are ready staff might be tempted to stay. I'm leaving early after 30 years- I like teaching but can't stand the pace and BS any longer

It would be considered very odd indeed in other professions for "training" to not include the actual subject matter.

You are learning how to teach, you are not learning your subject, which is why you were taught Vygotsky and not GCSE history or whatever.

If I'd had to sit through lectures on GCSE maths it would have been an exceptional waste of time. If you need to improve your subject knowledge, that's what subject knowledge enhancement courses are for, not PGCEs.

Your degree is the actual training for the subject. The PGCE is the training to be a teacher. Contrary to popular belief it's a lot more than just being a warm body in front of children.

I can always tell from your posts you don't teach one of the post-16 subjects @noblegiraffe.

No subject enhancement courses (not from official sources anyway).

No funding to train.

I think there might be one PGCE course left in the whole country and that's with it bracketed with another subject.

It's one of the top 10 most popular A-levels too. What a mad system it is.

I don't disagree with teacher training obviously nor do I think it's a bad idea in itself for teachers to be qualified. But the training courses do need to be fit for purpose otherwise the qualification's just a piece of paper. My experience with teacher training and CPD has been so disappointing apart from the stuff I've paid for and organised myself.

I'm unqualified (though school is paying for me to have QTS by the end of the year).

I am a ruddy good teacher. My results are outstanding. I have three degrees in my subject and I have read every book on behaviour management, cognitive theory and teaching practice. I do as much extra training as I can. I observe lessons from experienced practitioners as often as possible. I ask to be observed and take feedback. I spend my time reflecting, evaluating and improving my practice. None of my students or their parents know I'm unqualified and I'm pretty sure they'd be shocked to know.

Unqualified does not necessarily mean unable. Several of my friend's child's teachers are unqualified in a desirable and selective private school.

You'll find that the science teacher forced to teach geography to ks3 due to a teacher shortage is having more of an impact on attainment than I am.

OK so let's take a different industry.

I do a degree in applied Chemistry.

I take a graduate post with a solar PV manufacturer.

I don't need any training in the actual PV side do I? My degree covers it? However old it is? Whatever the modules were?

@Alwaysanotherwine Do there tend to be plenty of vacancies in prison education? It is an area that interests me for the future.

I'm doing a PGCE right now. I have three degrees but still do subject tutorials fortnightly. They're surprisingly useful because they focus on how to translate the specific subject knowledge into good teaching practice.

I volunteered with this charity for a while.

theaccessproject.org.uk/

Their subject training courses for their volunteers are exceptionally good. Exactly what I would have liked 15 years ago from teacher training. They made them from scratch.

(I didn't need to do them by that stage which was just as well as the volunteering took up my only spare hour each week!)

That sounds fab @ShowOfHands. More of that please!

I've mentored a couple of trainees from a prestigious university PGCE over the last two years. They weren't getting any subject content either despite both having been educated overseas and only one of them in an an English speaking country.

I'm unqualified (though school is paying for me to have QTS by the end of the year).

Schools can't buy QTS for a teacher, they have to assess a teacher as meeting the standards.

You are complaining that a course designed to teach you how to teach, teaches you how to teach.

@noble I suppose I don't see the binary division between knowledge and skills that you seem to?

Certainly with my students, I find they're very intertwined.

You said by the way that you wouldn't have benefitted from "lectures in GCSE Maths". Wouldn't you have liked some lectures on further maths or recent developments in maths though? Or did you go straight from a maths degree into teaching? You feel you knew everything you needed to know already? Do you still?

I've had several Heads try to give me a significant KS3 Maths timetable. I would most definitely have benefitted from those GCSE lectures! I have an A in A level Maths in old money but it's over 30 years old. I doubt I could pass a modern GCSE paper (I said no every time, don't worry).

Wouldn't you have liked some lectures on further maths or recent developments in maths though?

No?

And when I did start teaching further maths A-level a long time after my degree, I got a bunch of textbooks and stuff from the exam board and taught myself. When I talk about learning subject content yourself, I have actually done it.

How much content are you going to be able to cover in some lectures while taking a PGCE anyway? An A-level takes 2 years of study so it's not like they're going to be able to cover much of it, and they'd have to take out some of the education content to fit it in.

Well me too. That's exactly what I did (the textbooks). I'd just rather have not been doing it on top of being forced to travel to entire days of boring and mostly quite irrelevant training AND teaching a bunch of A-level and IB students solo. I think I'm in a good position after 15 years of successful teaching to say it was mostly quite irrelevant.

I was also forced to teach a totally different subject at KS4 while training, which I never taught again. Including the crappest subject knowledge course ever!

I do find it really useful to listen to expert practitioners teaching the more challenging topics from my subject, whether that's during a school visit, at student events, YouTube, online CPD or whatever.

I just expected (not unreasonably?) that that would be included in teacher training. I got one week on placement at a school for my subject. One week.

I mean I'm glad you had a positive experience of being trained. I didn't, and I haven't met many people who have, but anecdote is not data and all that.

You can't extrapolate what sounds like a very odd training experience 15 years ago to all teacher training today.

My teacher training involved a lot of bobbins, it was learning styles and brain gym and endless card sorts. But I can't use that to say that teacher training is worthless because I know that my current trainees aren't learning that shit.

I think you'd find people teaching Sociology, Psychology and Economics (for example) have often had and continue to have "odd training experiences" due to the baffling way the teacher training system is set up (as though post 16 education doesn't exist).

That covers about 20% of annual A-level entries and the subjects are becoming extremely challenging to staff at all, never mind with subject specialists.

I reckon most parents have no idea and only find out if they start looking for a tutor.

How do you know the current trendy stuff won't be considered bobbins in a decade or so though?

It's hard to tell whether things will last.

I mean I think 6 Sigma (not that schools really noticed that) and cognitive science based insights (more popular in some educational settings than others) are probably here to stay, but maybe people thought that about brain gym and learning styles back in the day.

I have found the Doug Lemov stuff quite useful and applicable in a number of settings.

Subject knowledge evolves more slowly. Maybe too slowly in some cases!

I don't think it's that bizarre for a post graduate certificate in education to teach you about education rather than A-level Economics though.

Maybe those courses need some sort of separate teacher training where you take the A-level then learn how to teach, like the SKEs. Or where they take teachers trained in another subject and teach them A-level economics (I know Physics has this set-up for A-level).

How do you know the current trendy stuff won't be considered bobbins in a decade or so though?

Because it works, where learning styles, brain gym and card sorts definitely didn't.

Which is why, btw, Vygotsky is still relevant, with his zones of proximal development...because it works.

Hopefully you know that "unqualified" in this context means they don't have a teaching qualification, not that they don't have any qualifications?

I work in a school that is part of a MAT. One if the primary schools has two classes being where the “class teachers” are actually HLTAs being paid cover supervisor rate. Their highest “qualification” is GCSEs. One studied for a childcare qualification but left part way through. The other left school after GCSEs, worked in a care home then became a TA at her childrens’ school (she’s never done any formal training but has worked in the school for 20 years)

I am glad I don’t work in that school as I don’t think the parents realise that the “teachers” simply aren’t teachers!

Ah OK. Slight cross purposes then as my training programme wasn't PGCE (that's common nowadays I think?) I do have a PGDE now though. Will you concede that on the job training might include subject/syllabus focused content?

Also what is it that works in your opinion/experience? Cognitive science based stuff? Something else?