Should the DfE be offering £26k bursaries to train as a Classics teacher?

[noblegiraffe]

Given the recruitment and retention crisis and the school funding crisis, is it really the best use of funds to be paying £26k for teachers to train in Classics (and then presumably sod straight off to the private sector)?

Although I doubt they're expecting many takers, it does seem to display completely messed up priorities.

I'm half wondering if Toby Young has said he needs more Latin teachers for his WLFS and the DfE has, as ever, pandered to his whims.

Piggy I wasn't saying that liking classics made you a Tory, but it is a subject that is rather the preserve of private and grammar schools. Remember they had to change how they awarded the grade 9 in the new GCSEs to a formula from a straight percentage so that loads more kids would get 9s in Latin and Greek because it's mainly taken by super-bright kids?

Chucking money at that (£26k!!! Per teacher when only £6k for primary maths) seems to be rather a case of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Yes, I do see your point indeed. We do offer it at my school. It is reasonably popular amongst a certain kind of student, not all actually able.

Unfortunately, results have sucked a bit... largely I believe because our students are being measured against huge numbers of students from ultra selective schools....and the examiners tend to teach in those establishments too.

Well, Noble is right - if you're talking numbers the classics bursary being higher than primary maths is bonkers. There are few university classics departments - many shut in the late 80s. Offering teaching bursaries isn't going to change that. Latin is an ebac subject but UCL won't accept the GCSE as part of its preference for a foreign language. (Same for Ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew). I'm sure my local head would like to offer Latin but he has no extra money to pay a teacher.
It is seen as elitist because access to it is limited - where comprehensives teach it, they offer it to their top students.
Mind you, the content of Latin literature is generally pretty unsavoury!

if you're talking numbers the classics bursary being higher than primary maths is bonkers

It seems a very sensible enticement to me - the £6,000 primary maths bursary is being offered to applicants with at least a B grade maths A level, not necessarily a maths degree. If teachers cannot access the primary maths curriculum with maths A level, what hope has a 10 year old?

Why would the government offer £26,000 bursaries for primary maths when there is a shortage of secondary maths teachers? Wouldn't that just increase the shortfall in secondary maths applicants if primary maths has a similar bursary?

The primary teacher training target was met last year (overshot by 700 trainees) - the target for classics was only 78% met.

The thing about the teacher recruitment targets is that from what I understand, they’re bollocks. Based on a teacher vacancy census done in November when most heads have managed to get warm bodies in front of classes instead of later in the year when the cracks appear, they paint a far rosier picture of the state of teaching than they should.
Over-recruiting primary teachers doesn’t mean we have a surplus.

The point of the primary maths bursary is that there are primary schools without any teachers with maths A-level. They are needed to oversee the primary maths curriculum as the other teachers only need a C at GCSE which would be not much better than a bright Y6.

I suppose what Noble is asking is why is there even a target for classics when it is (within the state sector) a minor option subject at GCSE and beyond...

Easier just to axe a subject and deploy those staff elsewhere

Typical tory economics: get rid of the golden hello which was there for these shortage subjects after 1 year of teaching and substantially increase the bursary for training. I got a bursary of 9 grand and a golden hello of 3 grand (fees: 3 grand). Obviously there is greater shortage of teachers in my subject because now I'd get at least 26 grand for training (presumably paying 9000 for fees) and no obgilation to teach.

My sil did a year's maths enhancement course then the maths pgce. Was signed off for stress during the pgce but somehow still managed to pass it. Changed to a yoga instructor and never set foot inside a classroom again after qualifying. Not a bad couple of years finianicially for her but a total waste of money for the government.

In other countries, including the one in which I now teach, the working conditions and pay are so much better that career changers will gladly pay for 2 years of training out of their own pockets. There are no shortages of teachers. I have no qualms about training in the uk and then moving abroad (after 3 years teaching in the uk).

Also a school in which I trained offered classics. Still had dreadful behaviour including a 14-year-old throwing a chair a pregnant teacher. Not really an indication of a good school.

There was someone on staffroom quite recently asking some questions about training who had no intention of stepping foot in a classroom.

Of course, in my day, many eons ago, no one paid fees to train to be a teacher but there were also no bursaries, golden hellos or anything... ( I think there was a very small sum for maths)

Going back to earlier in the thread when people were banging on about enthusiastic newbies being way better than experienced teachers, I was just reading this by Lucy Kellaway, the financial journalist who is currently training to be a maths teacher:

"I used to be rather good at my job, but now I am at best OK, and at worst dismal. Teaching turns out to be a difficult, highly skilled job, and I’m naturally feeble because I’m a novice. If I were a trainee heart surgeon, I’d be pretty ropey after my first term, too.

I suppose I expected that because teaching runs in the family, I would be a natural. I had visited too many schools to be expecting to experience the real-life equivalent of Dead Poets Society — the film where Robin Williams’s teaching is so inspirational that it quickly transforms his students’ lives — but privately I expected to be good right away.

The truth is I’m not. In every lesson I make scores of mistakes, only in teacher training they aren’t called that. They are euphemistically called ‘even better ifs’ (EBIs). My EBIs are legion. I need to learn not to talk until I have 100 per cent attention and no one is fiddling with rulers. I need to talk less altogether.

I need to do something about chaotic beginnings and endings to lessons, where I have forgotten to hand out the homework sheets and failed to bring the glue sticks. I need to do less of the heavy lifting and get the children to do more of it.

I need to master the electronic whiteboard, which still defeats me. (In each of my first four lessons I amused the children by writing on it with a felt pen, rather than the electronic one.)

More fundamentally, I need to be better at seeing what every child is up to, who is listening, who understands and who doesn’t. The best teachers know when to explain themselves and when to let the children work."

I think it's really interesting that she expected to be good right away and then realised it's actually harder than it looks. I think many people make that mistake. Enthusiasm only goes so far to make up for lack of skill and experience. The early bit of teacher training is also consumed with the physical act of teaching - she will find as she goes along a load more other things that she's not very good at.

I hear you.

I am so fed up of being spoken about as if I should be put out to grass. mainly on Mumsnet. I feel like Boxer in Animal Farm : occasionally I watch out for the Knacker's van!

Lucy Kellaway must be pushing 60 of course - most 'enthusiastic newbies' are somewhat younger than that, although I get your point.

Age isn't the problem, in fact she probably has it much easier than other enthusiastic newbies because the kids (and parents!) tend to play up to younger looking teachers, plus she has 4 kids which is a huge advantage.

I am so fed up of being spoken about as if I should be put out to grass

Yep. And yet it doesn't occur in other professions. 'Oh, I'd much rather the inexperienced surgeon because she has so much energy, it's really a good thing that the experienced ones are quitting'.

I'm an nqt and I am fed up with being thought of as an enthusiastic fluffy bunny!

I was previously a public sector scientist, in a reasonably senior, specialist role.
I was well paid but it took me six years of uni and more than that working my way up through the ranks. I am still mildly horrified that I am supposed to be viewed as competent in an equally demanding profession after nine months of training. I am expecting to be a bit rubbish at this for a few years yet, but hopefully not sufficientlybad to trash anyone's gcses. That's one thing which needs sorting - if it is training on the job then more consistency amongst providers and a longer support period is important. Access togood quality resources, so you can focus on learning to teach and then on adapting them would also help - me being up till midnight producing resources is utterly pointless and a huge duplication of effort.

And on the bursaries: I'm on around half my previous salary as nqt, and bursary was similar. Could not have done it for less, and I still have to pay back the sodding £9 k loan!

Sorry - not about classics but do get fed up reading all the stuff about recruitment crisis getting the same responses. I am clearly not in this for the dosh, nor am I a bright and naive young thing.

You're adding in the words fluffy bunny Goldrill. There are a great many highly qualified, incredibly promising trainee teachers who are enthusiastic without being either fluffy or bunny like. Enthusiasm is a fairly key attribute for a classroom teacher.

Plenty of my own DCs' teachers have been at once experienced and hugely dedicated and competent - lucky DC. They've also been taught by some fantastic NQTs. However the extraordinary number of threads started by a particular poster over the past twelve or eighteen months, all of which without exception are negative and berating all recent educational policy change and exam reform and the allocation of funding etc does prompt the question about whether or not that negativity - and it's on quite a grand scale - must feed down to the DC the poster teaches.

Nope, no worries there, goodbye. In fact my Y11s last year got fantastic results in their GCSE despite all my threads about how shitty the changes were. I guess posting threads on MN about education policy and teaching teenagers maths are two different things!

I did some latin at school. It is the subject that with maths I remember gave me the most satisfaction for working things out.
I have observed that generally (with some exceptions) classicists are interesting, multitalented and enthusiastic people. Classics seems to tick many boxes from what I have observed: the mathematicians enjoy and are good at Latin (and Greek) because of the logic and puzzle structure, for linguists and humanities it improves the use and understanding of syntax and vocabulary intermingled with history and roots of European culture (plus quite a bit of exciting gory stuff).
I think maths is essential but IMO classics at school when well taught provides the ingredients for a broad but rigorous approach to learning.

This project has grown and grown for the uptake of latin in poorer primary state schools so those schools must see benefits.
irisproject.org.uk/index.php/literacy-through-latin

There is n't enough money for teaching but I don't think that necessitates a reductionist view of what is important in education.

No, absolutely neither do I but I am wondering why classics needs a larger bursary than so many other subjects. The English bursary is the most shocking. It seems short sighted.

Classics is taught at my school but by two non specialists. This is not because we couldn't recruit them. It is because they asked to start the subject up out of their own enthusiasm for the subject. If they both left, I guess we would just let the subject wither away. It is done by maybe 20 students across the school.

That's good noble. Of course it did occur to me that you might vent every last ounce of your gloom on these threads and bounce into your classes full of positive energy, but it's been quite a leap to imagine. I do see that's it's possible though. Congrats on the results. Dreary teachers are the worst sort, even if they know their subject and syllabus. You can't hope to enthuse your students if you're dreary in fact dull teachers annoy me a lot because they have a very real capacity to kill subjects for their pupils; I'm thinking here of some really irritating real life examples. However, if there was an Oscar for complaining threads.... :)

The teachers who express the most concern and ire about policy are usually the most dedicated and committed. It's the ones who don't care you need to watch out for.

Piggy there's concern and then there's moaning endlessly about every last thing.

OK. well maybe don't analyse the education and staff room boards so much then? We come here to vent!

It is nothing compared with how (some) parents talk about us and our schools on Mumsnet...

It didn't take any analysing Piggy and the Education threads are not the preserve of moany classroom teachers.

Yes I'm aware of some schools being slagged off. One of our former HTs told me he'd spent the afternoon on MN horrified at the inaccuracies about our school being peddled by local parents whose DC had failed to get in. Indeed it was that comment that introduced me to MN and it was quite an eye opener.

Or rather, not purely the preserve.

You missed my point, goodbye. As teaching is viewed so negatively, choosing to come into it at this point can be put down to rose tinted glasses and naivety. This is quite offensive to nqts. Fluffy bunny is a term I have heard used - not my own invention. I was absolutely aware of what I was taking on and it is still less stressful than my previous job!

I would also venture that as someone who has just been through the recruitment process and is definitely settling in for the next few decades, I have some idea of what could change to help others get to this point.

And yes, I am off sick today.