Desperate DfE tells teacher trainers to take all comers onto PGCEs, plus infinite chances to pass skills tests

[noblegiraffe]

The DfE seems to be starting to take some action over the teacher recruitment crisis by telling teacher training institutions to lower their standards.

schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-confirms-itt-applicants-wont-be-assessed-on-suitability-to-teach/

I'll be honest, only accepting candidates with significant school experience does seem a bit bonkers to me, expecting applicants to work as a TA for a year or whatever (as I've seen on MN) is narrowing your pool drastically and for no good reason (says the person who had one day's school experience at interview). But I am a bit dubious about allowing infinite retakes of the skills tests. They're surely not that hard and you do get to prepare for them.

I never did skills tests because I am old

What purpose do they really have?

And I had spent no time in a school before my PGCE !!

Seems only five minutes since the attempt-limit and purdah before re-attempting was introduced.

And likewise the whole 'time spent in school before application'.

Goodness. If I re-painted my house that often, it would look so neat and gorgeous.

I seem to remember the skills tests checking you could spell words like accommodate and use apostrophes, which seems fair enough really. Can't remember the maths one except it had box and whisker diagrams in it which I'd never seen before.

Time spent in school would totally put off career changers. I got bored of my job around April so decided to apply for a PGCE. They said I needed to have some school experience so I booked a day's holiday to spend at a local secondary. If they'd asked for a week, I'd have probably said sod it and looked for a job doing something else.

When did box and whisker plots become a thing?

I had to teach my menter about them before she did her skills test.

To be fair, noble, I think the whole experience in school thing was to try and limit the numbers of trainee teachers running for the door once they found out what actually working in a school was like. And you can see how it can prepare the ground for what you learn on a PGCE.

The Skills Test should be a bit like a driving test, I think: proof you've acquired certain skills at a set standard. I can see no reason for a limitation on attempts or a time-limit: they're in no way supposed to be an indication of intelligence, aptitude, whatever. I thought the (temporary) introduction of a limit for attempts was a bit bonkers - bringing in a quite unnecessary level of stress (it's horrible sitting in a pokey cubicle, speeding your way through bizarre questions, fingers slipping on the keyboard, in a weird area of London).

As for lowering standards ... it's an interesting one, isn't it? MN has been quite a revelation for me, in that I've realised that a lot of secondary teachers seem to be teaching subjects they have no training in. That's weird, isn't it?

On another tack completely, I'm following the UCU strike with interest. It seems to me that their strike covers many of the issues that may be significant in the teaching retention crisis and it's just interesting to see how they are articulating and communicating those issues.

I am also old. No skills test. No school experience. No probationary/NQT year. No teaching standards. One and a half sides of A4 with 3 paragraphs written by my mentor: Subject Knowledge (aha...); Classroom Management and Professional Responsibilities. Then graded good or inadequate, and away you go as a fully qualified teacher.

I think the ability to read graphs and so on is (possibly) because (of course) we are all going to be super-reflective, data- and research-literate professionals - so we have to be able to read box and whisker things.

Maybe.

Or perhaps there just needed to be something/anything suitable for a computer-based test.

I was a bit bemused by it all, to be honest.

Lucky you, TheFallenMadonna.

Madonna yours possibly even sounds a bit more detailed than mine!

limit the numbers of trainee teachers running for the door once they found out what actually working in a school was like.

I was interviewed for my PGCE in a school. I had to sit in a lesson and interact with pupils as part of it. The tutor said it was because when they made it clear that this was part of the interview process, several candidates wouldn't actually show up. That struck me as bizarre, but I guess they get lots of casual applicants who don't know what to do after uni.

Now you hear about PGCE candidates being expected to teach a lesson as part of their interview, which is crackers, because that's what training is for!

Yes (re. teaching lesson in interview). It's quite odd, when you think about it.

Honestly, the whole thing's so crazy. There's a huge structural problem about recruitment and retention that is structurally discriminating against people with disabilities, people of colour, women with caring responsibilities, older women ....

That's a massive issue and actually pretty appalling when you think about what we will be, inherently, teaching children about diversity and opportunity when it comes to who they see actually teaching them.

This is so ... nothingy when it comes to those issues, it's kind of laughable.

One of mine I had to teach something to a group of 6 other applicants. Which was tbf slightly better than the one where they presented me with a random object and asked me to tell them about it.

I do remember being tested on subject knowledge endlessly. Most tested English, maths and science at interview. Where I went didn’t but tested them once we’d got there with revision classes you could attend if you didn’t pass the first time.

And that was before you got to the QTS tests.

Don’t we usually have to have a change of party in government before we have this much of a change in policy?

What this does mean is that the DfE are finally moving away from the ‘teaching remains an attractive profession’ line to actually doing something about drastically falling recruitment. Even if it’s just writing a letter.

Maybe, just maybe they might eventually get around to retention?

The skills tests were originally introduced just for those people who didn't have a C grade equivalent in maths iirc (you always needed English). I must be missing something, having never done one, but why on earth if people meet requirements, do we even need skills tests? Why not just scarp them?

I just had an interview for my PGCE - at a proper uni and everything- and away I went. No silly task , no tests. It would have plainly been silly to make me and many others do them

And here I am, nearly 30 years later!

I must say in my years, I have encountered a few trainees who can't pass these skills test : none of them should ever have been teachers, and none of them are. But their level of academic qualification did, in the first place, suggest they shouldn't have been doing a graduate job...

Do not get me started on the silliness of giving a science test to BEd Primary science applicants who you are insisting not only have CC at GCSE but also at least 2 science A levels.

Can only be a tick box everybody must sit it policy.

You know what would deal with the recruitment and the retention issue? Actually making teaching an attractive profession. Some things obviously are outside the remit of the DfE but there are some places they could start other than with the skills tests.

I had to sit the numeracy test with a maths degree, and show my GCSE maths certificate! I guess rules are rules.

The thing is, they are not taking all comers.

I have a place on a Physics PGCE. But lots of providers (mainly school based ones) have asked for A level Biology. One even suggested I take a year out to get that A level. My A levels were yonks ago, but it was highly unusual to do three sciences at A level. Even at O level it was unusual.

Oh I'd love to have the luxury of endless time and cash to collect A levels in everything.

Then there's the skills test. It's a four hour round trip to take it. It's booked up for all of eternity so unlimited resits is not really the fantastic change it's advertised as.

The whole process is complete anti-career changer to be honest. But maybe that's the plan, just a rapid turnover of young grads

If anyone is interested, you can try a practice skills test on this website sta.education.gov.uk/

They're not especially difficult imo, and if you have passed GCSE Maths and English you should more than cope, and the pass mark is around 66%- so room for the odd error, especially on the timed sections. However, some prospective teachers do really struggle with them, especially the maths- and if you are going to teach, say secondary art, do you really need to be able to do mental maths?

The big hindrance imo is that it isn't always easy to book dates- especially if you need a Saturday date because you are working or at uni. Some test centers do get busier than others, as well.

WRT the school experience, I think it's good, in the sense that it's good to go into a school (or multiple schools) before applying, so you have some idea of what is going on. When I went for mine, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the standards of behaviour, and I got a lot out of it in terms of seeing different teaching elements and listened in on some fascinating discussions about GCSE mocks in the staff room.

I applied for a shortage subject- so I expect it's different for PE or primary where there still seems to be plenty of applicants- but I had a week's experience (plus experience working with teenagers in a non-school setting) and that was plenty for everywhere I applied.

I do think it can be difficult for career changers, I took a week of annual leave to do my experience, which not everyone can manage.

It's also hard to find schools willing to have you- I was lucky to have relatives with contacts as no-one was willing to take me as an "unknown". Ironically, some schools were unwilling to take me because they didn't have enough permanent staff in the department I wanted to observe.

I think, to be honest, they don't need to make applying easier. The bursaries are very attractive, and do encourage people to apply. It should be a competitive process- if you can't manage the application, then you're surely not going to cope with the PGCE?

I think the most off-putting part of the application process for me was at interview, when we were told everybody would need a car, and we'd be expected to deal with 1hr+ commutes to placement (at Exeter the placements could literally be be uncommutable from the uni).

A lot of people my age (mid-late twenties) just won't consider teaching though- because of their perception of the behaviour in schools and perception of the workload. Until that changes, a lot of people won't apply.

The thing is, they are not taking all comers

That's it, the DfE has just written them a letter telling them to stop rejecting people for silly reasons.

What you say about people being rejected from school-based training because they didn't have all the sciences echoes the suggestion in the original article that school-based providers are leading the way with unreasonable expectations - they want people who can teach straight away and not really need training at all.
I wonder if the DfE are regretting the big push to make schools-based training the preferred route. Gove was doing it to try to get around The Blob, so it would be quite funny if that didn't turn out to be the best move.

I met a secondary DT teacher at the weekend who said he loved his job and loved his long holidays. 12 weeks he told us. Great for his family. He had changed career and didn’t regret it for a second.

Other Teachers can be so negative about the job it’s putting people off. Speaking to this guy who was in his 40s, it was clear it can be a great job. If teachers keep complaining then it’s no surprise people will find something else to do. Who wants to do a job when all you hear are the negatives?

Are there are any Conservative teachers? The left leaning credentials of many teachers would stop me feeling at ease with them. It might stop others too.

Oh if it were just people complaining about nothing then the £30k tax free bribe would be working, wouldn't it?

I’m a teacher and I also love my job. I’m also aware that I work in a tiny SEN school (40 boys), in an English department of two, the students leave at 2:30 (1:30 on a Friday), the deputy head thinks it odd if the teachers stay beyond 4:30 and almost freakish if they are in during the holidays. And I get paid more due to the SEN allowance.

Context is everything: I know my experience does not reflect 99% of teachers at the moment.