Would you be happy for your child's school to be used as a teacher training institution?

[Mellowfruitfulness]

Gove wants teachers to train in schools rather than in universities as at present.

Article here:

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/17/teacher-training-strike-gove-reform

Schools are already used for training purposes, and they are of course where probationers learn to teach. Teachers and pupils are prepared to put up with a certain amount of the inevitable disruption this causes, but I doubt whether they would welcome more.

The teacher training courses (based in universities) usually send their trainees out into schools, first to observe, then to teach for a few weeks, under very careful supervision. Before that and afterwards, the trainee teachers have to read up on educational research into how children's bodies and brains grow and develop; which methods are most suitable for certain learning styles and needs, as so on. They also have to continue broadening and practising their own subject speciality, or in the case of junior schools, they have to know a lot about several different subjects.

Imo, teachers need both sorts of input. The system isn't broken and doesn't need fixing. If possible, maybe they could spend more time observing, but to remove the theoretical aspect of the course - why?

I hope this isn't a knee-jerk response, and will be interested to see what Gove is going to reveal in June. So far, I've learnt to dread anything he says ...

This idea (from the Donaldson review) has been floating round for a while now: more background here, here, here, and summary of all the proposed reforms here.

The "teaching schools" is just one of the proposed reforms and, from the above, it looks as if the pilot will be well-funded (ie likely to succeed); but this may all look very different if subsequent roll-out does not have the same level of resources.

Thanks for the links, Meditrina. You always seem to know where to find the information!

This is the first time I had heard of this plan, and I have mixed feelings. Here are some of them:

'Funding only for 2.2 degrees or above
Graduates who do not have at least a 2:2 degree will no longer be eligible for DfE funding for initial teacher training from September 2012'. Agree.

BUT

'Teach First, the scheme that recruits graduates who would not otherwise have considered teaching to work in some of the country?s most challenging schools, will be expanded'.

Is this code for 'Less well-qualified graduates will be sent to more challenging schools'?

Teach First will also develop Teach Next, a new employment-based route to attract high-fliers from other professions. Teach Next will provide an accelerated route to leadership and will begin recruiting in 2011. Sounds good.

Troops to Teachers - interesting idea - could be good; reserve judgement.

Review basic skills tests - yes, good idea.

Financial incentives for shortage subjects - yes, agree.

Expand school-centred training
The plan is to increase the proportion of time trainees spend in the classroom, focusing on core teaching skills, especially in reading and mathematics and managing behaviour. Yes, good idea.

But this is what bothers me:
A network of Teaching Schools based on the model of teaching hospitals will lead the training and professional development of teachers and headteachers. Teaching schools will be outstanding schools which will take a leading responsibility for providing and quality assuring initial teacher training in their area.

1 What I said in my first post. If it ain't broken, why fix it?
2 It's being sold as something schools could aspire to, as if it's going to benefit them. Imo although it might raise their status in the community, the children who are being practised on by trainee teachers might suffer as a result.
3 Why only the 'outstanding' schools? By definition, the 'outstanding' schools don't need any more help (I'm accepting for now that this could be good for a school and assuming money will be poured into this). Also, again by definition, most schools aren't outstanding and teachers have to learn to cope with all sorts of children, not just the most fortunate.

Would be interested to read any other views on this.

Is this where we get all those fit squaddies who have left the forces to come and give us all a bit of rigour and discipline?

at Goblin. I think they're supposed to provide disciplined role models for unruly kids ... Also to even up the male:female balance in schools.

Mellowfruitfulness: it's only because I remembered this from the Troops to Teachers thread a while back, and also remembered where to look for info (TES always goid on edu-policy).

I think we need some of the teachers on MN to comment - especially on Teach First as it's been going a while (IIRC, it's aimed at Oxbridge type graduates). I had thought that the idea behind teaching schools (horrid phrase - all schools teach!) was to expose trainees to good schools early on in the hope it'll magically rub off. But I might be all wrong about that.

the most popular state school in Glasgow is the one affiliated to Jordanhill teacher training college,it has great standards in both the primary and secondary school.

yes

ah yes, troops to teachers
what could possibly go wrong?

Sounds a great idea.

I'm a teacher in a 'good' school. I consider that I'm paid to teach children, not adults. Call that selfish or unprofessional, as I'm sure Michael Gove will, but whenever we have students in, which I accept is part of our duty, it's a hell of a lot of extra work for the class teacher directly involved, for no extra money.
So the cynic in me sees much of this as a money-saver for the government, to be 'paid for' by already over-worked teachers.

Mmm I think if they want more good teachers, they need to offer better wages. Or the brightest and best will get better paid jobs elsewhere, it's a no-brainer really.

Don't know enough about it.

If it's just observing maybe but if they're be taking the class more than definitely not.My dd just had the most dire back to teaching student in her class,she dreaded going to school.I was helping and saw her teaching-appalling . Thankfully she didn't have the class all the time,wouldn't have been happy with her being let loose more to be frank.

I'm a teacher myself so know students need practice but not at the expense of my dc's education. Sorry but more 'teaching" will I believe not benefit the children. Observing great teachers at work more very useful though. Having said that if it involves more paperwork which results in yet more PPA time away from the class again no.

Also an awful lot of the cabinet seem to have privately educated kids. Their kids get the benefit of students taught in the state system but not the disruption. State kids getting even more disruption to benefit private not on..Are Gov's kids educated in the state sector?Getting a bit fed up with Tory policy of risky meddling with the NHS,education etc.They clearly don't give a shiit if it goes tots up as they'll just go private.

I think it is a bad idea.

Teachers trained to teach children (within their designated age group)... most do not have the expertise to teach trainee teachers - either because it is outside their age group, or because they do not have the expertise of the most recent educational theory and so on.

Some of the best things from my teacher training (although this was almost 15 years ago now) were the lessons on voice training/ coaching, educational theory, differentiation etc etc... These things are best taught to large groups of students, where they can bring their different experiences together and talk about how it works in their different schools.

Also, when I did my teacher training I went into different schools - a private boarding school, a tough state under achieving school and a state girls school. From these different experiences, I very much learnt what type of school I work best in and what suits me. I quickly realised that I preferred teaching in the more academic schools, where I was expected to work long hours but that classroom management was not my forte and I really struggled in the tough school. Since then, I have used this information wisely and only applied to schools where I have been able to play to my strengths and certainly in my latest institution I have been graded outstanding for the past four years (including Ofsted and private company inspections). But I know if I had to go and teach at some tough inner city school I would really struggle. That sort of school is not for me, and I would not be good at it. My concern for Gove's proposal is that the current system allows students to try out different schools and to find what's right for them (or not as the case may be), but under the new system they wouldn't have this flexibility. One size does not fit all.

I also think that we must take care not to lose the academic rigour that underpins teacher training. A few years ago, I did a masters degree in Education. I feel this really improved my teaching and I know my inspections went from 'good' to 'outstanding'. But it really was gaining a deeper understanding of the theory and exploring how to apply that to my classroom practice that was great. I fear if schools were to take over the training, then the grounding in the theory would be lost.

My final objection is that students will lose out if they are at one of these training schools. I've just had a student teacher, and whilst her teaching was okay, she was still making mistakes and doing things my years of experience have taught me not to. When I take on student teachers, I am very careful that it is not the same students who are affected each time, so we do not have many student teachers as a result. I wouldn't want to have too many student teachers as it really could affect student learning if they can't do too much.

I say all this as a teacher and as a mentor of student teachers over the past eight years. I really fear that if we do move over to all teacher training in schools, then the academic rigour will be lost.

That said, I do agree that most teachers should have good quality degrees, and I do agree that teachers should complete the masters in teaching and learning.

Just my thoughts though.

There's also this article, which echoes teh concerns of Cla and YoungJoly - and mine: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/17/teacher-training-education-university

Isn't this essentially removing the PGCE and making all teachers train via the GTP?

The PGCE has flaws but I agree both theoretical and practical input is needed and this will completely devalue UK teachers in the eyes of the rest of the world as they will, or so it seems, no longer be getting a postgraduate qualification.

And how does this square up with the idea that our teachers should be trained to Masters level? Are we looking at a 1 year MEd and then an in-service year training in schools?!

Don't forget that the GTP has been running for years (not sure of its current acronym), so there are training teachers in most schools.

The system is not broken, but it does need tweaking IMO. PGCE students are given minimal behaviour management training, although the subject training is (usually) excellent.

However, this idea is going in the completely opposite direction, IMO. The best way to learn to teach is to observe a range of other teachers and develop your own practice, supported by professionals who haven't got to teach double Y9 in five minutes. Agree completely with youngjoly WRT academic rigour and learning educational theory.

Also, all this will do is produce replica teachers of the ones already in school, mistakes and all (I count myself in that!); If Gove wants change, he is going about it in the most bizarre fashion by effectively maintaining the status quo.

x post frak

Yes, it does devalue teachers, I think. You can't learn just from observing, imo. You have to know what to look for: why did a teacher choose a particular method of dealing with something; also what other methods could she have used; and why didn't she do it another way, etc ...

Plus everything the other teachers on here have said.

I sound like I meant that observing other teachers alone was enough- I didnt, sorry!

I mean that observing a range of teachers (as opposed to one or two within the same school) is of far greater value in developing your own practice.

Observing a limited number of teachers within the same institution will not develop critical skills or engender creativity and risk taking (which I think is essential) within your own practice. My fear is that training teachers will become poor copycats of established practitioners rather than becoming an excellent teacher in their own right.

• an excellent teachers

Observing without a theoretical underpinning is worse than useless IMO. At the very least there needs to be rigorous discussion afterwards about what was seem and it needs to be related to a framework which explains what is happening and why, or at least attempts to!

You learn, you observe, you discuss, you observe some more, you put into action, you discuss, you put into action again whilst being observed, you discuss.....

In fact the more I think about this the more I compare it to the scrapping of NVQs for childcare workers to be replaced by a qualification with a higher theoretical component.

The GTP is, IMO and IME, a great course. The trainees don't teach all the time - ours go for lectures on Fridays. They get involved in teaching small groups and whole classes, just in the same way any other trainee teacher would. They also swap schools to vary their experience, and to observe across year groups and teach different age groups and abilities. (Our GTP student is working within 4 classes in Y4/5 and has recently done 8 weeks at a challenging school in Y3.) They also have to plan and evaluate and write long, long essays.

There is a school mentor, who attends meetings with the student, and a classroom mentor, who has the student in his/her class and observes lessons, team teaches, etc. The classroom mentor, will, of course, monitor the teaching of the children during the student's placement.

The great advantage of 'training on the job' is that it gives a greater practical opportunities to learn classroom organisation and behaviour strategies, and to evaluate how they would change things. It also allows them to get to know the children within the school properly, become invovled in clubs, and to become a member of staff.

It is so much better than the PGCE. I did one, and I knew nothing about teaching a class of children at the end of it. I wasn't given the opportunity to become a clone of any teacher on my teaching experiences as they only wanted me so that there was an extra body in the classroom.

AND this is completely removing peer support and an academic discussion environment from trainee teachers. I have friends who did the GTP and they've been very isolated from other people training as teachers at the same time. You're missing out on all that interaction in seminars and shared learning experiences, as well as sharing your experience of being in schools and crowd-sourcing potential solutions/ways to handle different situations. Infrequent seminars aren't enough and it's really not on to overload a school with trainees so there would only be a couple at best.

Do you think different training models suit different key stages?

I did a secondary PGCE which was very subject-focused. My criticism was that there was NO behaviour management training bar a Powerpoint slideshow and very little educational theory taught- not enough learning about children; yet it needed to be subject focused, so I would not like to see this academic rigour replaced by behaviour management/educational theory/child development training, but taught alongside it, both in college and on placement.

I now deliver behaviour management training and am stunned that very little is taught on teacher training- it seems to be a 'sink or swim' approach which seems bizarre to me.

I should add, I think these new proposals will exacerbate the problem.