Teaching to stop being a graduate-only profession - 18 year old teachers.

[noblegiraffe]

There were rumblings about this a while ago when the apprenticeship levy was introduced, but it looks like Justine Greening is going to introduce an apprencticeship route into teaching.

schoolsweek.co.uk/greening-teaching-will-cease-to-be-only-for-university-graduates/

I'm very concerned that in secondary schools, specialist subject knowledge won't be a pre-requisite for going into the classroom, it will be seen as something that can be picked up across the years, shortchanging the classes who get the apprentice in the first few years of the training (how long is an apprenticeship?).

In primary school, the education of a class for a full year could fall to someone just out of school themselves.

This isn't just about training on-the-job, we already have that as a route into teaching. This is about deprioritising a certain level of education for teachers and devaluing the profession. It's saying you don't need to be well-educated to teach, because you could be teaching straight out of school. The 'learning how to teach' part of any teacher training programme is so intense, that acquiring degree-level subject knowledge will certainly not be a priority from the start.

The wage for apprentices means this is just another way for schools to get teachers on the cheap and hang the consequences for education.

And knowing how many parents already view young teachers, fresh out of uni and just finished their PGCE, how will they take to having their child being taught by someone who hasn't even been to university?

lia Title 1 schools are the toughest places to teach. It's insane how poor the poorest sections of society are here. These kids don't have food or proper shelter so teachers don't have a child in their class who is in a place where they can learn.

Obviously go to other parts of the country and they will make less. The paperwork isn't great but their classroom hours are 8-3 with half an hour for lunch, an hour a day for admin and half an hour after school. Certain teachers are contracted to stay in school until 6pm as they do tutoring in aftercare. Quite a few do it because they get all their admin done when they aren't tutoring.

I also love how the U.K. looks to Singapore for an example of excellent education. They pay their teachers very well. It's a big deal to be a teacher as the income is so high. Funny how when you look at schools many of the teachers are female and the leadership, which is better paid, is much more male. Instead of copying the academics they should copy the recruitment methods used to attract the best into education.

This is surely a ploy by the government to pay teachers even less, and devalue it as a profession even further? Seems blatantly obvious to me.

Sorry to disclose that there already are 18/19 year olds teaching..... undergraduates do classroom experience already......

Why do people have to have a degree to do anything these days?

In banking and finance it’s already widely known that the calibre of apprentices often outstrips graduates, it’s why grad schemes have become tighter. Grads get paid more while training, but apprentices on the whole receive more fast track promotions.

Surely until not long ago the main route into teaching was A levels then one year teacher training college with work placments.

As far as I know - never. Until about 1960 it used to be 5 O levels followed by a two year teaching certificate, which after that date became a three year teaching certificate. B. Eds started to come in in the late 60s for which you needed 2 A levels as for any other degree, but the rest could still go into teaching with 5 O levels and do a certificate. It became all graduate in 1975 (I think.) Until recent Goverments decided to tinker about.

Speaking as one who was at school in the late sixties, I think the lack then of qualifications less than A level meant that a lot of girls especially, drifted into teaching, regardless of aptitude, which IMO helped to devalue the profession leading to the 'Those who can do, those who can't teach' statements. There was an outcry, I recall, when John Patten was Education Minister in the 90s and wanted what was dubbed a Mums's Army. (Being in Education finished his political career - which so often seems to happen with Education ministers.)

Schools Direct are not all salaried. DS pays £9k tuition fees for his place. He is a Maths graduate doing secondary maths training

If he did a PGCE he would get £25K tax free bursary

When I was at primary school in the 70s it was usual for teachers to have a certificate of education rather than a degree.

Ah the good old days, 50% students leaving education with no qualifications.

I don't think so. Friend down here (amazing TA) doesn't have honours and can't get onto a training course locally or Scitt etc without it.

That may depend on the degree subject, physics and maths would be OK I would have thought.

My DH has a third class degree in maths. he got on to a PGCE in a RG university 25 years ago. To be fair, teaching was the last thing he wanted to do and most other doors were shut to him because of his degree he shouldn't have spent three years drinking then he hates his jb but it's not his academic ability that holds him back.

Long gone are the days when job advertisements used to specify a 2:1 degree or better.

I think some people have raised some interesting food for thought about why apprentices might actually in some cases be better calibre candidates . We have a pretty shitty uni near us which we have direct links with for trainees and I weep at the intellectual calibre sometimes of these people with apparent degrees...

That said, there isn't a huge interest in degree apprenticeships : none of my sixth from are remotely interested, so if we can't see that the agenda for Greening is promoting the apprenticeships rather than to do with teaching, we are being naïve. The only degree apprenticeships they find exciting are ones like Dyson offers with high cache attached to it, extreme competition to get in and a potential huge pay packet at the end.

Like so many teachers on this thread, I cannot get my head round how this will wok in practice. If rules are put in place to say these apprentices cannot actually teach for a year or so, they will essentially be extra TAs, That may well be attractive to some schools who are cutting back on TAs and worrying about future teacher recruitment, I guess.

By the way, I was 20 when I started my PGCE - which isn't hugely adrift form the 18/19 year olds we are worrying about! I did, however, have a degree!

I agree with this. Teachers having a wider breadth of life experience would benefit them and also pupils

Ah, the teaching isn't real life trope!!

We meet the very widest range of real life people in teaching. I swear I know far more about real life than anyone I know .

Some people just want to teach : it's time we got back to seeing it as a vocation. I wanted to teach fort he age of 5. Toyed with a few other life paths but it always came back to teaching. I was once told by a Dep Head that I am a 'born teacher'. Not gloating but why should those people be told / expected (by no teachers!) to fiddle faddle about doing something else for a while so they experience ' real life'??

Some of the worst teachers I know have entered the profession late having done another job first. They have decided teaching will in some ways be better and can become disillusioned very quickly. I am all for life long teaching!

I still wouldn't want to have done an apprenticeship myself though.

There isn't a week goes by where DC aren't sat in front of a video/a cover teacher/self study/a handout... and apparently taught something for a lesson, so I do actually believe an apprentice could be better
And yet none of those are intrinsically bad.

Video clips are a useful teaching resource. I don't use them mucj but showed a class one for a whole hour! We kept stopping and discussinh how it linked to our study.

Handouts - useful way to distribute information. I can't quite understand what the issue would be.

Self study - that covers about 50% of my time teaching. It requires students to use the information i have taught and master the skills. Usually in each lesson there is a chunk of time for this. It is an essential part of learning so that studenta can perform in exams. The tasks are specifically designed to support learning, are differentiated to meet the range of needs and I circulate to intervene. If you think an apprentice with zero subject knowledge can do that then you're kidding yourself.

A cover teacher - sometimes things in life happen. People are poorly, people need to go to safeguarding meetings or are at training conferences to improve outcomes for children.
Work is set for those lessons. Usually something to conaolidate understanding. Tell you what, there's always kids who decide that the cover lesson isn't a real lesson so don't bother to work as hard. That isn't a cover issue. It is an attitude to learning issue.

Put it this way, say this goes ahead. Do you think high performing schools will stop asking fir graduate routes? Of course not. The schools who will fill with unqualified and non degree specialist teachers will bw the struggling ones, the ones with behaviour problems, the ones in special measures (the sort of schools where 50% of their workforce are already TeachFirst trainees). In other words, the kids who would benefit the most from highly qualified staff will miss out.

Sorry for the rant, but as expected this announcement and the way it has been received just proves how many people actually think any Tom, Dick abd Harry could teach (and also proving how little some parents actually know about teaching despite MN being filled with lots of threads/people who know it all apparently)

Do you think high performing schools will stop asking fir graduate routes? Of course not. The schools who will fill with unqualified and non degree specialist teachers will bw the struggling ones

This thread has been an absolute eye opener as far as what teachers REALLY think of apprenticeships.

Yes, teachers think that there's no way this will be funded/staffed sufficiently to operate as a proper apprenticeship. It's very wrong of you to make any assumptions about what teachers as a whole think. Good, well funded and well run apprenticeships are fantastic, badly run ones are awful for all concerned.

This thread has been an absolute eye opener as far as what teachers REALLY think of apprenticeships.

Yes

Those posters arguing for apprenticeships into teaching are putting forward arguments for a hypothetical, well funded, well planned system.
Excellent calibre students, double staffing leading to short bursts in front of a class, high quality mentoring and support.

THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN

Those of us who have been involved in education look at recent reforms, for example the new GCSEs, and we absolutely know it will be I'll thought through and done on the cheap.

Stop arguing for a hypothetical system the government won't fund properly.

ill thought through not I'll.

It's going to be fine, mousse. We're going to Magic up some money from the Magic money tree.

Absolutely nobody is going to be exploited for cheap labour.

This thread has been an absolute eye opener as far as what teachers REALLY think of apprenticeships
I have ZERO issue with apprenticeships. I think vocational education should be expanded.

I question whether someone with zero subject knowledge could teach my subject in a way comparable with a subject specialist. I don't think they can. Most people who have ever had to teach out of specialism would say the same.

At the end of the day, there's a reason why private schools want highly educated teachers (even if they don't have QTS). There's a reason why higher performing schools demand highly qualified staff. It's because it is better for children.

There are work based and placement based routes to qualifying as a teacher: GTP (mainly for people with experience), assessment only for experiences unqualified teachers, SCITT, PGCE (which in my area has a similar amount of time in school to SCITT), Teach First, School direct.

There ade also some courses at universities where the subject and the QTS are in one so students spend a couple of yeara doing subject stuff thrn a couple of years in schools.

If the apprenriceship route was for experienced school staff only, had a reasonable chunk of degree level subject knowledge, phased in teaching towarss the end (think 3-4 year course) and properly funded/resourced then I'd be interested.

But government's track record and policy says that's probably not going to be the case. It will be most likely thowing inexperienced non-specialists into a classroom for a fraction of thr cost of a teacher, expect other members of the team to support thrm through with no additional time.

It would be interesting to hear how many people who think this is a great ideal would happily have all 12 years of their child's schooling taught by someone mid-apprenticeship who has no subject specialism.

Pengggwn which apprenticeships do you think are brilliant?

Now my eyes have been opened as to how little some teachers know or care about apprenticeships.

So you don't believe any of the points made on this thread are valid then?

Another thought : don;t most young people who embark on apprenticeships do so because they think future job prospects are more attractive or enhance (for example, engineering apprentices see their training as a fast track). What is the aim at the end of a teaching apprenticeship? Surely more than just being stuck at the bottom of the pay scale? Hmmmm....

I also can't really see the difference between this and the degrees (particularly in things like sport) which are already offered 'with QTS' : are those going to morph into degree apprenticeships, perhaps?

I think we may be imagining the schools will be in charge of the apprentices? Won't they apply to a uni and actually spend 3 -4 days a week there and do a couple of days at a selected school at first, perhaps?

I am very confused! But then so is the government. And I'm not in charge...