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?

I'm in total awe of the breadth of skills and knowledge that primary teachers are required to have. They have to teach kids all the maths skills that Y7s turn up with, but also all the English, science, art, history...all of it. I know how uncomfortable I've been teaching outside my specialism, even to Y7. I've seen how much progress my DC make at primary and think their teachers are miracle-workers.

People seem to think that anyone could do it by being a TA for a bit and watching the teacher.

Law is going (back) to the same way by the way too. My great uncle qualified by leaving school and doing 5 or 6 years as an articled clerk and then became a solicitor. There are new plans for solicitors to do two exams called SQE - SQE1 and SQE2 which could be done whilst working I believe. The idea is instead of having to do expensive academic courses you will study for those exams ( from about 2020) whilst you are working in a law firm. That the exam system law used to have. I believe in law we will keep both routes but both will require the two SQE sets of exams to be passed which will be common to everyone (so no differences between institutions and one standard) (many will do their SQE1 during a 3 year law degree still if they want). We also have new law apprentices too leaving school even now and going into law firms.

The risk is you divide a profession into those who are good enough for university or not put off by loans who get the better jobs and those who don't but at least the new routes give more chances to those who feel they need to get into work a lot earlier.

I think by technical I would mean something that you learn by doing, not just by reading about it. The physical act of teaching, standing in front of a classroom and delivering a lesson, needs technical training. But as every teacher knows, that's a minority of the job!

I may be wrong but I believe the apprenticeship routes have the same level of academic study, just achieved in a different format as I described below.

This is correct as i and several other has explained numerous times in this thread It's really really frustrating when you explain something like the above which is a fairly basis concept several times and people STILL argue that it must be a lesser thing because they don't get a 'proper' degree.

Just to reiterate AGAIN a degree apprenticeship leads to a degree, from a university, you know, a normal BA, BEd, BSc, with honours and classifications and gowns and mortar boards and everything. Exactly the same as it you'd gone to university and paid £9k a year. They're part time that's all - I assume I don't need to explain the concept of part time study?

titchy , if you read the link I posted earlier, there is extreme vagueness in Greening's wording; she ahs several tiems used the espression 'dgree-style apprenticeships* which are emphatically not the same thing.

Nonetheless, if they are degree apprenticeships, that brings me back to the idea that some how they ought to provide something unique or better : for example, there are degree apprenticeships 9available through clearing ; they aren't popular!) at Chester Uni for business management. they give a range of great opportunities , and also acknowledge the fact that business managing is not a predominantly degree entry professions : therefore, those graduates are making themselves MORE attractive to employers ,and standing out form the crowd...

Likewise, degree apprenticeships in sports managements which give degrees in business, alongside work placements at top golf courses etc. This adds to the portfolio of a keen golfer who wants to run a golf club.

I would say that they cannot have the same level of academic study if you are only going to uni one day a week, unless they last for way more years than most teachers stay in the job.

And that's a shit way of recruitment.

Yes, I guess that's what I am getting at.

I think it is telling that Chester is a flagship for degree apprenticeships (and you can bet would offer the education ones, as it has a reputation for education) and can't fill its places.

I genuinely believe they think they will get more high calibre maths and science teachers this way, who don't want to go to uni to 'specialise' in science and who we would therefore lose to better paid jobs. But they will have the requisite A levels .... hmmmmmm. I guess don't believe it will work that this could work. I just don't believe the higher calibre maths and science A level students will be drawn to this route.

I think those who are saying teachers have negative attitudes to apprenticeships ought to spend a day in school listening to actual students' attitudes to anything vocational! They are the worst snobs! It is their attitudes that will need to be transformed.

I don't have a problem with vocational training. I think the Bed is a a close as it can practically get though given the nature of teaching.

Without putting unqualified, untrained teenage staff in front of a class ...

It's silly though. If you have a degree and a pgce when you burn out in your first four years of teaching you have your subject degree to fall back on in addition to your teaching qualification and work experience. Even with a BEd there will be graduate routes open to you or you can go and do a masters.

If you have a teaching apprenticeship, then you have (perhaps) an equivalent qualification that other employers may or may not recognise and that may or may not be able to be used to further your own academic experience. In addition you will have been paid a pittance before you burn out and probably won't have anything to show for all your time and effort.

If there are hordes of people who are excellent at stem but don't fancy a degree for whatever reason then they would be better served going into apprenticeships in finance and engineering as it sounds from this thread these are more likely to have been thought through and those industries have the opportunity for pay progression that does not necessarily exist in teaching anymore.

I feel very fortunate my dc are at a school that so far has managed to retain its experienced and qualified staff. I loved that the reception teacher has 20 years experience - how can anyone look at that and say someone with A levels and no teaching experience will provide the same level of experience for the children? It's laughable.

Surely the real issues being pointed out here are the cost of higher education putting it out of reach of people who would benefit from it and the shortage of teachers and money to pay good teachers that results in any old person being put in front of our children. All shitty Tory policy decisions.

Sigh....

One day a week at university = 7 hours face to face learning. Normal for a part time student and some full time ones Do you really think that's all there is to getting a degree? Just turn up for a day and that's it? Essays have to be written, exams taken. Part time students do these in the evenings and at weekends. This is normal. Why can you not understand that degree apprentices take the same modules, share the same classroom, do the same assessments as fee paying students? Is that concept somehow really difficult to understand?

No degree Apprenticeships haven't really take off - but they're new. They also need employers to employ them as well as a university to do the teaching. And yes mostly, though not exclusively the preserve of the post 92s, again not surprising.

The levy is very new and most employers are only just beginning to think about how they'll spend it. They won't be the next big thing though I agree, there are some intrinsic difficulties with the concept and the practice. They're useful for the right people though. And that wouldn't include 18 year olds in front of a year 11 class. More fucking hyperbole.

then you have (perhaps) an equivalent qualification that other employers may or may not recognise

NO NO NO. YOU HAVE A DEGREE.

So they have a Bsc/Ba/BEd etc? In what? Teaching? If they get to the right level of course, which according to someone up thread could take years and years - longer than many new teachers last.

I'm fairly sure the careers advisors at Eton are not postitioning apprenticeships as the same or better than a University degree.

If you have a degree-equivalent in Education - or rather, a specific area of teaching - you are less well-positioned to make moves across the modern employment marketplace than, say, someone with a degree in a more widely-applicable subject + a post-degree qualification in Education.

I would guess that gives you less bargaining power.

I can see that there is a lot to love in an apprentice route into teaching. Not least a, potentially, more biddable, less uppity workforce.

Awful idea. They should be looking at increasing the minimum age of teachers! Should be 30 after they've done another career first! (I say this as a job changer myself)

The number of incredibly immature 24 yr old teachers, who have never spent a day in the real world and have no clue about people management (which yes, you also need in addition to teaching skills) is astonishing frankly.

One day a week at university = 7 hours face to face learning.

And my degree plus PGCE was 5 years of pretty much full time hours. It's not hard to understand why I might think that 1 day a week isn't going to give the same amount of study as I completed.

Is teaching an art of a science? Is it something you have a natural gift for or is it the application of a series of learned techniques?
If it is the latter, then why is there such diversity of experience when being taught in the same school, in the same department, at the same level but by different teachers?

So they have a Bsc/Ba/BEd etc? In what

Blimey they haven't even been drafted yet!!!! I'd suggest probably, for primary, a BEd in Primary, same as now. For secondary, probably a PGDip.

And yes it would make it more difficult if you quit teaching, same as your MEng would make things difficult if you quit Engineering, or your Nursing degree if you quit nursing etc etc

Has it occurred to folk that maybe the PLAN is to trap people in education with their non transferable degrees?!?

Piggy Yes.

titchy by the way you are wilfully ignoring me. I understand these are degrees and understand that you are saying they aren't for 18 year olds in front of year 11s....

However, you do seem to be ignoring the fact hat anything Greening has said suggests it is to attract STEM students to secondary teaching. Which can't NOT include year 11?!

Mmzz Tom Sherrington just wrote a blog about this. He reckons

Imagine that the quality of teaching is a product of three factors: Q=XYZ.

X= Professional knowledge: Subject knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge
Y = Personal qualities – assertiveness, presence, ability to form relationships, capacity to demand rigour, set standards.
Z = Experience: confidence; informed wisdom.

And my degree plus PGCE was 5 years of pretty much full time hours. It's not hard to understand why I might think that 1 day a week isn't going to give the same amount of study as I completed.

As I've said repeatedly, the secondary is likely to be PG only. And study will be part time over a longer period than full time. Obviously. A three year BEd as an apprenticeship might well translate into a six year apprenticeship leading to a BEd.

People seem to be under the impression that the degree teaching will be done by some new mickey mouse organisation handing out degree like sweets to everyone that turns up each Friday. They don't work like that how many times have I said this - it's the existing providers of ITT degree programmes that'll be teaching the degrees, assessing the apprentices and awarding the degrees at the end.

I guess this thread is full of people who think OU degrees are crap because you do them alongside your normal job, evenings and weekends.

and that it isn't for graduates. Not even at secondary level. Unless you know something we don't know.