Batshit new PGCE requirements being dumped on schools

[noblegiraffe]

Just been reading the DfE ITT training document for next year and it looks like they've decided to deal with the extreme shortage of trainees by making the training more onerous?

15 hours per week in the classroom on both placements? (Not all teaching, but still, when are they going to do their planning?)

Something called Intensive Training and Practice that I don't quite understand what it is but looks like it will also happen in schools in addition to placements.

And the big kicker - a requirement for mentors (just normal teacher ones) to do 20 hours of training before mentoring, and then 6 hours every year after.

They are going to struggle to find mentors for this. I already mentor, it's unpaid, I give up a PPA a week for meetings and now they want me to do 20 hours training? I might well tell them where to stick it.

I hear now that some unis have been starting to introduce the new batshit requirements already for extra mentor training etc, and are struggling to find placements as a result.

This sort of thing is also not helping https://x.com/missns_eng/status/1705251271358267802?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

Oh bloody hell.

I’m mentoring a student & an ect this year and it’s almost finished me off already. The paperwork and meetings and casual ‘3hr mentor training videos’…I don’t have time!!!

Yeah, I've got to read a bloody shedload of documents before an online training session next week and it seems even more onerous than usual. I'm seriously reconsidering taking a student for the second placement.

I won’t be doing it again. Fine if you’re in a huge academy chain with 1 person whose sole job is mentoring ects / students (& I guess this is what they want hey?) but in a small LA primary everyone’s doing stuff on goodwill and juggling a million other roles too. I can run good PD & deliver good tailored support but really don’t have time or energy for the hoops these programmes want us to jump through.

I’m not subject mentoring if this is the case! Another case for ‘voting with our feet’. Those of us in NAS are on ASOSA anyway so it’s not feasible without time or money. The DfE need to visit some schools and see what’s actually going on out there!

My DH just qualified (doing ECT1 this year). He went through NowTeach and last year nearly did him in. One and only time I have seen him have a mental-health wobble/time off for stress.

Despite 25 years in high stress banking.

He said he just about go through it all (and is coping this year) because he has the 25 years experience.

If they had chucked any more at him in his training year he would not have made it.

ECT1 is worse, in my experience. Being condescended to gets old very quickly.

I am no\t telling him that!! He is having enough issues having joined a school where the department has imploded - decent head of subject left suddenly under a bit of a cloud and 2 teachers left seem intent on playing politics....which involves not sharing any resources or schemes of work with him. He is literally doing everything from scratch,

He was at an ECT conference on Friday and was quite downhearted to hear everyone else was given all the resources/schemes of work (yes, they may want to amend them...but they had something to start from). So the lack of consistency about what an ECT can expect is unreal.

I will be very impressed with him if he makes it through. And if he doesn't I will be gutted for him - because largely he loves it.

Has he informed his ECT mentor that he isn't being provided with dept resources? That's bloody ridiculous.

What @noblegiraffe says.

He needs to speak to the induction tutor in school about that tomorrow.

I did two years of the new and very structured ECT mentoring at subject level having done a few years of unofficial handholding of NQTs before. I won’t be doing it again- the scheme is not written by anyone who knows how a school actually runs- there is an assumption that there is bags of spare time to wash in and out of each others lessons. It is so prescriptive that it meant I was often rushing through it in half the meeting so I could take the rest of the time to really dig into the issues the ECTs were struggling with that week. The relief on her face when I said ‘we are supposed to role play this bit. We will not be roleplaying.’ The after school zoom meetings where a very competent teacher from another school read out the PowerPoints with the required scripts- occasionally stopping to apologise.

I understand the impulse to standardise the offering so that schools have to give the support needed to new teachers - but the programmes HAVE to be designed from the bottom up by teachers. The current programmes seem to have been written by people with no idea how schools work- and sometime how humans work.

@MrsHamlet
He could try posting on here for subject specific stuff- I’m sure people who help point him at resources?

I assume you meant to direct that to @DreadingTheSalon

I am the induction tutor in my school and I'd want to already be on top of this.

I told TeachFirst that it was insulting that their training assumed that the ECTs were stupid. They were "surprised" by my feedback.

Yes sorry-@MrsHamlet , wasn’t reading carefully.

I also gave some bracing feedback for the ECT course provider.

As soon as the mentoring system becomes in itself a source of stress - you know the system is wrong.

This is mental.

I am still in touch with my NQT mentor from several years ago. He is an experienced teacher, and was a great mentor. He used to successfully mentor a NQT and a trainee each year, and was genuinely good.

When the ECT program came in, he said he could only do one or the other- and the school chose for him to mentor ECTs. I believe the 2nd in department took on mentoring trainees, but knowing her workload at the time, she wouldn't have time for this!

20 hours is either multiple days out of of school (which the school has to organise cover for, impacts kids etc) or lots of work from the teacher in their own time- which most people just won't sign up for.

I'm guessing this is part of the reason a lot of unis didn't get their PGCEs re-acreddited. They knew schools just wouldn't have capacity for this.

At my current school, I don't think we have any student teachers this year- there was no formal announcement but it hasn't happened. I wonder if this is why- I don't think SLT would want this kind of drain on their staff for potentially no benefit. At least with an ECT, you're developing your own employee.

I don't think SLT would want this kind of drain on their staff for potentially no benefit.

Not sure about this. My dept is v keen to get trainees because then we can try to recruit them. We've recruited quite a few of our trainees over the years, and even if you don't get your trainee, the fact that your school is a known name to the PGCE students and they can ask classmates what it's like working there is quite valuable. Given that trainees are now so thin on the ground we need all the recruitment advantages we can get.

Schools that don't offer placements may then find recruitment even more of a struggle. That said, I do know several local schools have stopped offering placements because they don't have the capacity - if your maths dept has a load of supply/random teachers in to fill gaps in the timetable as a lot of maths departments do these days, or a lot of ECTs, you're not going to be able to create a timetable for a trainee who needs classes with experienced, permanent teachers.

I know some schools really try to recruit their trainees, so I guess it does depend on the school. At my current school, we don't have such a huge staff turnover compared to a lot of schools, so we're not necessarily recruiting in every subject every year. As I say, we don't seem to have any student teachers this year (last year we had several, from a few different ITT providers)- I do wonder if management have made a decision that hosting trainees isn't a priority.

To some extent our management are good in that they genuinely want to retain experienced staff- it's not the sort of school that feels they can replace someone on UPS with an ECT.

I can see schools prioritising e.g. taking trainees in maths or similar over e.g. history or other subjects where they need to recruit less.

I think also with the ECT program being so intense for mentors, schools also have less capacity to take on trainees and ECTs at once. When I left my previous school, there were two ECTs, and they didn't really want to recruit any more until both had finished, as mentors didn't have as much capacity to support them.

Although ECTs are cheaper, what they really wanted were people on M3/M4 who are still comparatively cheap but don't need mentor support.

If it ends up with schools mainly hosting placements to recruit trainees, then arguably that means more placements will be in high staff turnover schools, which may not be such a supportive environment.