Teach Now: do you think it can succeed?

[OCSockOrphanage]

Lucy Kellaway, currently an associate editor and top columnist at the Financial Times, is at 57 preparing to retrain as a maths teacher in an inner city school. She has set up Teach Now (modelled on Teach First) to attract people into teaching after successful corporate careers. She argues that she and they can afford to take the risk financially, many have good degrees in STEM subjects, and they have a lot to offer.

Having trodden a similar path and been rebuffed by every school I applied to I ask you whether school leadership teams will buy into this idea? After all, what could possibly go wrong?

The 9k pays for the PGCE, what I meant is who is paying for this new training scheme to be set up?

Oh. I think the ARK academy chain

So the DfE?

I luffs Lucy Kellaway & wish her best of luck in the new endeavour. I will miss her broadcast commentaries, I hope she can bring the same wry stoic humour to dealing with teenagers.

Could it work? Yes
Will it work? Depends on the attitude of those that are accepted in to the program.

If they come in willing to learn from those with experience, are prepared to put the hours in, learn how to teach, control classes, respect colleagues, and treat them as equals, then it will work for some of them.

If they come in believing that they know it all because they have run a business, the kids will destroy them and the teachers won't respect them.

or If they come in thinking that they can kill time until they retire then it won't work.

ps @ Noble: if you tweet or otherwise message LK, I'm sure she'll explain whatever funding model there is. You may not approve, obv. LK is not some kind of arrogant pampered hotshot, btw. She always sounds tough as nails to me, but genuine.

I was an NQT with an older man who was a bug success in finance and is loaded and has now become a maths teacher. He's pretty good by all accounts and is happy to take a pay cut to work a few less hours.
He's really enthusiastic and the kids like him. He has no career aspirations particularly.
This is fine, but why can't these people just use the routes into teaching that are already there?

Or better still, why not treat teachers a bit better so that they don't leave in droves?

lljkk I'm sure she's great, but I'm not sure she's that great that she needs her own teacher training program. On the website her complaint was that she couldn't find her GCSE certificates and so on when applying for a PGCE, and apparently all the pictures in the teaching brochures were of young people.

If the DfE is paying money to set up a website, brochure and special part time training program for career changers, then shouldn't questions be asked about value for money when school budgets are being cut left right and centre?

Is this training programme intended to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Is this a bit like the accelerated leadership thing a few years back where people from business were fast tracked through training? We had three at my school. All quit teaching within two years.

I knew a fast track trainee - she was in her late 30s, absolutely lovely, v modest and is now a primary HT.

But in all honesty I don't think the fast track thing made a difference as she didn't seem to do much that was specifically part of the scheme, just the normal induction and CPD.

What I suspect some of these trainees might find difficult is the loss of those things that go with having status in the corporate world.

Surely anyone, with initiative, who wants to be a teacher can just sign up for a PGCE. You don't have to be 21.
It makes sense for a PGCE to be an academic year long so that the newbie can experience how the system works. Do ex-bankers and corporate leaders really need snowflake treatment?

I've been interested to read all your comments. The point I think has slipped out of the original article is that if young teachers leave the profession within five years of qualifying anyway, then why not train older people who "want the luxury" of being useful, even if they don't teach for very long?

I think the other pinch points will be that teaching is hugely ageist these days and school leaders in their 30s are likely to resist taking on people who have had very high flying careers because the nit picking administrative folly of classroom micro-management will be ruthlessly ridiculed as time wasting. Moreover, few of the folk who enter by this route are going to be pushovers and they may well present a better challenge to the bully boy tactics of which many of the educational managers talked about on here are guilty than very young teachers.

If it spotlights the sheer grinding hard work that working full time in a classroom is, then there may be a recognition that four days a week ought to be enough. My local GP surgery simply refuses to have anyone working more than 0.8 hours, saying it's too stressful; we all know teaching involves more interactions per week than medicine, so would this not be a step forward? If 0.8 was adequately paid (and clearly money is not going to be the obstacle for this cadre) maybe it's a glimmer of hope. Sits back to watch the porcine flypast

She'll probably be heading straight to management... not have to teach at all, but can tell us all how to do it

Good point about management being intimidated by people like this, though...

putting up with the crap that goes with teaching
All the better if they don't! The crap needs to be eliminated, rather than just accepted.
It was totally predictable that the consensus on here would be negative.
And also that people in their 50s are assumed to be doddery and just waiting for 'retirement'. And form those who have only ever taught, and who have no knowledge of the corporate world, that no other job can be as difficult as teaching
Many 50+ (and certainly those targeted here are energetic and enthusiastic and not remotely thinking about retirement, slippers and comfy cardis.

OCSockOrphanage

Honest question

Wouldn't it be better to sort out the issues of why young teachers leave the profession?

To not do so just means that this is yet another sticking plaster.

I don't think the response has been negative, perhaps 'cautiously optimistic' in the light of other, unsuccessful schemes.

My own theory has long been that teaching should be divided into two tracks or streams:

'Lifers' who have a long-term tenure and slightly lower pay, but reduced contact time. The idea would be nurturing longevity, experience and sustainability.

'Short termers' similar to teach-first, with higher pay and more demands, similar to UPS, but a fixed term contract expiring in five years.

The entry requirements and eligibility for promotion would be the same.

People could pick their stream after induction.

MaybeDoctor

Why would/should the "lifers" get reduced pay, surely having and training the up and coming should be worth more than reduced money?

gisbo's response is not surprising as she has never done the work of a full time teacher.

noble I don't think it's the dfe like teach first because it's clearly stated then

Gisbo I had a high pressured job before teaching ... trained at 39 to be a teacher as had burn out from the job. Looking back I didn't know I was born!

30 not 39

I don't mean significantly lower, just a little. But without the expectation to involve themselves in every initiative going, just focus on good teaching and pastoral care.

Per more or less more or less
Fewer than 1 in 10 teachers leave in first year, the majority remain in for over 13 years.
Primary school teachers are in the top 5% of jobs satisfaction and secondary school teachers are also highly satisfied.