Can 'teach first' really be doing this?

[Cathpot]

In our department at the moment is a very pleasant 21 year old who is on the teach first programme and doing some sort of research project for a week or so. She has a good degree and has signed up to the teach first programme to get into teaching. This summer she will get 6 weeks of training in how to teach, using I think at some point some summer school kids, then in September will be dropped into a difficult school (no choice of where to go) on a 2 year contract.

She is enthusiatic and bright and seems very keen and when I was talking to her I had to kept reminding myself not to look too shocked. She is going to stand up and teach her first proper class to her first proper group of probably very tricky teenagers on her first day in the job. This seems insane to me- how can this be working? How is this ok for her or the kids in her class? I am all for cutting down the college aspect of teacher training and getting students out into schools to work out how to do the job but it seem self evident that the PGCE year is essential to producing teachers who won't get eaten alive in tricky class rooms. She told me some schools have as many as 5 teachers from teach first at any one time and that if they dont stay on at the end of 2 years they just replace them with a new one. I can't really get past how insane this seems as an idea.

read through this thread with interest as I entered through a different route as my degree included QTS and I spent 2 years of my degree gathering school experience whilst also gaining my subject knowledge.

I think my route is one that should be adopted more. As I had several placements with increasing amounts of lessons to teach I was able to observe far more, learn far more in the practical environment that I have ever witnessed a PGCE student.

I was very concerned watching the programme (I do realise it was heavily edited) that these young people were basically thrown in the deep end, with huge responsibility with such little training. I can't comment on reality as we have not had any TF in the schools I have worked in.

And I would qualify with my qualifications to join TF!

Sorry, Givemeabreak but that's absolute bollocks. My fantastic PGCE student last year was worth 10 Meryls.

And get your facts right - nowhere in the TF literature does it say that it takes only Oxbridge/RG grads.

As with everything, it comes down to individuals.

NQTs are not fully qualified as your have to pass your NQT year in order to continue to teach. NQTs are given lots of support and additional CPD to an experienced teacher as well as a mentor and reduced timetables

I'd be very happy for my children to be taught by Meryl. I wish I could say that about all teachers I've encountered during my years as both a parent and a student.

Meryl was taken off "cause for concern" in the end. She made a big improvement through the intensive support she was given.

She was still batty though :-)

I work in a school which has a lot of tf students. I hate the programme:

1. it masks the problem that we can't get proper teachers in to inner london.
2. they're not more qualified than other teachers.....but have been led to believe they are. This does cause divisions.
3. They're as bad as you'd expect somebody with very little training to be, but are in charge of somebody's education. Very unfair on the kids.

The statistics are interesting. Of our many tf students, I reckon about half stay in teaching at the end of the two years (about a quarter never make it past thefirst year), but a very very large proprtion of those go into the private sector. The ones that remain are generally brilliant......but it's a tiny proprortion. Loads seem to go on to work for tf.

I think schools tend to use TF when they are struggling to recruit - i.e. the alternative might be a string of supply teachers. (This is based on 5 year old knowledge so practises may well have changed now.)

I'm not totally convinced that Oxbridge education is important, so I'm not sure why it has been so emphasised. For what its worth proportion of Oxbridge candidates in DH's year was about 25%.

Curious - your points 1 and 2 are at odds. Either you can attract well qualified/proper teachers or you can't, no? Presumably if the teachers you're getting aren't proper then TFers are more qualified?

I think it's probably a good thing that so many teachers dislike/hate the TF programme. We need the current lazy arse system to be disrupted.

I'd be very happy for my children to be taught by Meryl.

You mean the cause for concern Meryl with the utterly chaotic classroom and no control over the students? Seriously??

Or do you mean Meryl a year down the line when she hasn't just been dropped in the deep end with very little training and not very good support?

People here have mentioned the 6 weeks intensive training at the start as being very good. The issue I have there is that it is all theoretical. You can learn your Piaget and whatnot over the summer holiday, but you can't really learn how to plan an effective lesson when you aren't actually immediately teaching those lessons and reflecting on how they went. You can't learn to manage behaviour effectively until you are having to manage behaviour. On my PGCE we had a lot of lectures before we were put into schools, but once we were in schools we at least had the time to learn how to plan, mark, assess alongside teaching classes because we started off fairly gently. I can't imagine having been put straight onto an 80% timetable. There just aren't enough hours in the day on that timetable for the teaching and the learning how to teach which requires you to be on the job.

I'm not sure I would be happy with Meryl 10 years down the line!

What current lazy arse system is that then? Have you been reading The Daily Wail?

You would not believe how hard most of the teachers I know work, both TF and non-TF. Many of the staff at my school are in by 7.30 everyday and many don't leave until 6.00 (I must admit, I am always out by 5 but am often in before 7.30).

The lazyarse system where according to DfE figures, primary school teachers work on average 59 hours a week and secondary teachers work 56.

So very lazy.

I have to throw this in ...

I agree that it is crazy to pitch people in front of a class with no experience.

So why is it that this really does happen, already, on a routine basis? I'm not talking about Teach First, or the truly alarming Schools Direct (which worries me a lot more than TF). I mean the fact that graduates, still in the midst of their degrees, are paying for their courses by working as temps and covering secondary school classes. Yes, I know that they are supposed to pitch up and follow the careful plan left by the real teacher. But we know that doesn't happen all the time.

I think that situation is worse than TF.

cat - I don't have any experience of that, but if you mean that they're doing that as cover supervisors, then that's a different kettle of fish entirely. For a start, they have no direct responsibility for the class - planning, marking etc is done by the actual class teacher.

It's not ideal, but not in the same league as actually handing over responsibility for the progress of students to someone with no experience/training.

"National and international evidence tells us that teachers’ level of prior education is directly linked to standards of attainment of their pupils [Wossman (2003)]. The more knowledgeable the teacher, the better able the pupil is to learn. Degree class is also a good predictor of whether a trainee will complete their course and achieve QTS."

Not arguing with that, beautiful but I don't know what it has to do with this thread, given that it's already been mentioned a number of times that there is no reason to believe that TF teachers are automatically better educated than other teachers

Evil twins - no one said they were automatically better educated than other teachers, but I think we can agree that TF are educated to a standard well above the mean of the entire teaching profession. Give me a well-educated teacher over a teacher who is passionate about pedagogy any day of the week.

Beautiful what use is it being well-educated if you're not "passionate" enough about pedagogy to understand the most effective way to pass that education on to children?

I know some allegedly excellent teachers whose subject knowledge is shockingly poor but who get away with it by meticulous planning and by avoiding top sets. I know a couple of others with first class degrees in their subject but who really, really struggle in the classroom.

The best teachers will have good subject knowledge and be able to apply what they've learned about pedagogy and have presence too. If just one of those is missing, pupils will be short-changed.

it is disheartening that this is presented as a battle of subject knowledge vs pedagogy. both matter. too many teachers (yes, even TF) are teaching subjects that they themselves have not studied post a level.

it isn't good enough.

TheBeautiful No, I don't agree. I don't think that TF are better educated. Just because TF are the first to say that candidates have to have a 2:1 does not mean that previously PGCE courses were not selective.

This is part of the problem- the assumption that TF teachers are bound to be better educated. Rubbish.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with TF. If it didn't work then it would have been pulled by now.

The Tough Young Teachers programme made me cringe but only as I looked back with horror on my own PGCE/NQT time and thanked God nobody was filming my incompetency to air on national television.

Everyone learns. I don't think the classroom fiascos we witnessed were related to them being TF, they were related to them being young and inexperienced. Which all new teachers are. A PGCE doesn't suddenly make you wonder-teacher.

I qualified as a teacher 8 years ago. I have 5 As at A Level (in English Literature, History, Theatre Studies, Psychology and Dance if it matters) and a 2:1 from Durham University. I was required to have a 2:1 to stay on at Durham for PGCE so it isn't just TF that needs 2:1s.

My high qualifications counted for precisely nothing. I was shit, quite frankly. A class of 7 and 8 year olds ran rings round me. I dragged myself through PGCE and went on to teach Music, Drama and Dance in an inner city school where I continued to be spectacularly shit. I cried myself to sleep most nights and became more and more mentally unstable (that wasn't due to teaching, but it did make it worse). I had no class control at all. Children swore at me, shouted over me, left my lessons whenever they fancied, laughed at me and generally did as they pleased. As soon as a member of SMT walked into the room they transformed into angel children. My self esteem was in shreds. I failed my first term of NQT and then got more support to improve.

8 years on I am a good teacher. I'm not going to kid myself that I'm the best classroom practitioner in the world but I do well. The thought of having my first two terms filmed, aired and immortalised as my teaching ability forevermore makes my blood run cold.

manicinsomniac - nice post.

As a matter of interest, when teachers apply for a first teaching post, is it evident where they studied their first degree and PGCE or is it like medicine where first Foundation Years doctors apply med-school blind?