Six Month Teacher training plan

[AtheneNoctua]

People could qualify as a teacher in England in six months rather than the usual year, under new government plans.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7933690.stm

Is this good or bad? Discuss please.

But ravenAK while those kids putting up with a teacher who does not know their job are getting a poor education.

I may not be payed what a banker is but I dont think we get lousy pay. And if we were working 16 weeks a year and be paid accordingly it would be an even better wage,

paid sorry have just been making a resource about payslips for my tutor group and have PAYE on the brain.

I really don't get the disapproval here.

a) this course is 26 weeks vs about 30 weeks for the PGCE and it is supposed to cover the same material and competancies.

b) teaching is really learnt on the job

c) schools are full of GTP students who never do university based training.

I support the PGCE (it's what I did and it worked for me), but I wouldn't have minded shaving off 4 weeks. Those last weeks were not particularly valuable, and a lot of my fellow students (not me) played hooky for the last couple of weeks anyway.

It's a Noo Labour gimmick and not worth feeding the government troll.

I so agree with an earlier poster who said that teaching is basically a skill which can be improved upon but not necessarily taught. You must have the right disposition for teaching in the first place. There are many things I cannot do but knowing how to talk to children and help them to learn is something I have always been pretty good at. I don't see how taking on 'fast track' students makes any difference at all.

Having said that, I think the weirdest teacher training of all is correspondence course teaching, where you can gain a teaching diploma without actually doing teaching practice. Very theoretical but useless when faced with real kids!

Surely you wouldn't get QTS with that though?

A friend of mine is doing this and will have QTS - not to teach in UK perhaps (I don't live there, although I am British and trained and have worked in UK) but she will be a qualified teacher. My friend is currently a TA which obviously counts as experience but is not the same as doing a teaching practice and running a class IMO

Twinset, let's be honest, there's no shortage of lousy teachers coming through a PGCE. I know a few who've been doing it for 30 years come to that...

I've worked with a number of people who've done a PGCE after being in industry. Those with no aptitude for classroom management have tended to cut their losses pretty quickly.

& agree with Science Teacher - it's probably not much less experience, in real terms, than a PGCE.

There are poor students coming through on the PGCE we have one at the moment, we also have two outstanding ones though who are definetly gaining from their course. I dont know why the poor one was even accepted on the course tbh as it is quite clear he wont cut it. We have a no nonsense attitude with our students if you work hard and improve we will support you but the students come first. It is highly unlikely he will pass his placement with us as it would not be fair to inflict him on other students. Even if he passed I doubt he would get a job.

I personally found my PGCE to be inspirational and it has made me the teacher I am today. I know most other people who were on my course felt the same. Maybe I just had a very good course.

In my school there are very very few weak teachers and we are the product on the whole of the PGCE. Even our weaker teachers would be seen as good in other schools.

I am trying to remember how long I spent in a school on my PGCE.

I started in college in Sept and I had one long placement and a short one as well as a few weeks in a primary school.

So first two weeks in Sept in primary, then to college and I think I went into my first official placement in October. I stayed at my school until May from memory. Then back into college for a few weeks and then I had to choose my own second placement. I was supposed to be there for about three weeks but the invited me to stay until the end of the year.

So I had probably six months when you take the holiday out in my first school and just under a month in my second. Plus my voluntary bit at the end. My PGCE course was 10 months long I am sure so six months is quite a big chunk to remove especially as when you allow for time in college it will only be a few months in a classroom.

The good thing about having students in school in the summer term is that because years 11, 12, 13 have study leave colleagues have more time to support their student teachers.

Tell you waht twinset, the worst student I ever saw was dire. She literally ended every lesson in tears in front of the pupils; badgered us all for advice on how to improve and that did not take the advice offered.Our HoD resorted to spending the lessons student was "taking" working in the stock cupboard behind the classroom so she could pop out and shock the pupils into behaving. And she still passed the PGCE - her subject knowledge was amazing.

Last heard of having failed to retain a job in a local Public school so the school sussed her out PDQ.

But it didn't exactly inspire confidence in the PGCE!

That is awful sassy I am not in charge of our students so it is not my decision to make but I would not pass our student. I work bloody hard and am good at what I do and tend to be quite intolerant of people who do not show the same commitment as me or do not act on advice given to improve. We can always go and get another job, kids cant just go and get another education.

My subject does tend to attract either very good or completely hopeless students. I have seen a fair few failed over the years.

I'm doing a PGCE atm in order to teach at Primary level. I will be qualified to teach from Year 1 to Year 6. It is a 2 level PGCE - we have the option of doing a Masters level or a "traditional" level. You get 30 MA credits to take over if you pass the M level PGCE and then get 5 years to do the Masters before they become invalid.

I was told by a head teacher that although it may become popular, at present she wouldn't put a preference over a M level PGCE because it isn't a masters. It's a few credits in the bag and makes NO difference to what we're taught in uni. We sit in the same lectures and complete virtually the same assignments (there is one or two words different on the titles we've been given - that's it!)

Anyway, we get 6 weeks in school as our first placement in November/December. We teach 60% of the curriculum in this one, have a million Q standards (which are actually mostly about working in a team and being competent in classroom handling, rather than teaching subject knowledge) to reach and if we don't, we fail it. Then we have a 12 week placeement that starts in a week's time (eek!). We will be teaching 80% of the curriculum - it is basically the role of the NQT, but on the course instead. We have another massive pile of Q standards to reach. If we do not, we fail.

The course is pass or fail - there are no second chances.

It is very busy - we have lectures on the curriculum subjects. That's the core subjects AND the foundation ones. We have a few lectures on the mechanics, so to speak - but the majority of lectures are on subject material and how you could teach it creatively/inspiringly. The lectures also cover how to plan and things like that, although that is a bit "uni world" and not "real world" because each lesson plan is 4 pages long and not at all like anything I've seen in schools!

I don't think that in 6 months you would fit it all in. 18 weeks in school as a teacher is what the guidelines require at present in order to get enough experience to line us up for our first job. You'd NEVER fit all the other stuff - the mechanics, the subject knowledge bits and the trips here and there (to either KS parallel to the one you're signed on to teach - for me that's Foundation and KS3 and then the trips to local educational places and various other things)

It'd never work - there's simply not enough time to fit it all in and have competent teachers at the end of it IMO.

The only way it's possible is for the students to do all the lecture bits at home in the style of the OU distance learning, and have a few face-to-face sessions before placements..... but I still don't see that working well enough

I dearly hope your 'poor' student doesn't read Mumsnet, TSAP. Given that you have previously identified your actual school, this forum is not the right place for a performance appraisal.

Similarly, parents of the school may not be happy to hear about poor teaching.

I would jump at the chance to do teacher training in 6 months - here in NZ it would take 15 months (which is really daft given the school year...)

I only want to teach music in primary schools, but I would have to learn the whole literacy, numeracy, Maori, science etc. to be a registered teacher, and then I would have a beginning teacher classification and would have to have a proper primary job in the same school for a set time to be a properly qualified teacher.

It's madness - I am a qualified and registered music teacher but the qualifications authority don't accept my qualifications. I am much more qualified than my boss.

If I could stop all the extra paperwork and having to work in loads of different places to get around the rules about registration then I would give up my income and life for 6 months - but no way for 15 months.

Let's be clear about what the PGCE covers:

The background to the education system, building a broad and balanced curriculum, equality of opportunity, child protection, classroom management, dealing with parents, etc.

In the in-school phase, you observe lessons of other teachers, and plan/deliver your own. You learn about being a form tutor.

All parts are important (which is why I favour the PGCE over GTP), but the teaching practice can be condensed for many students. The objective is not to teach you everything about teaching, but to make sure you are safe and confident to go into a classroom alone. It's a bit like driving - you don't really learn until someone stops holding your hand.

Some student teachers prove themselves really quickly and others need the whole year. The nature of the PGCE is that it is designed for the pace of the slowest student, so it is by definition too long for most.

Learning to be a teacher is lifelong, and particularly in the first year of teaching you get a high level of support from your mentor and other colleagues. The main difference between the PGCE year and the first year is that you are in the class alone - other than that, you should have much the same level of support.

thirtypence,

When I did my PGCE, I already had two small children. I had to pay for a childminder out of no income . I could have done with staying at my previous job for another three months.

I think that it is a good thing to have people entering teaching later in life, but it can be a difficult time for many people to become students when they have mortgages and children to pay for. Cutting down on the time with no pay will be very helpful for many potential teachers.

Chastisement taken scienceteacher, I think I can be safe that they are not on here. I have never named my school on here, you could work it out but would have to dig. My school is also full to the rafters with student teachers.

Infact thinking about it it was actually you scienceteacher that has given lots of details about my school on here, as you wanted to prove your thesis that all state schools are crap when I had the audacity to suggest that I worked in a state school that was providing a very good standard of education.