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?

I don't think it will work particularly well. I doubt that headteachers will want to hire people who have vastly superior management experience to them. I once had a teaching interview turn very frosty when I asked the question "what do you do as an employer to make your staff feel valued and happy in their jobs?" during the 'do you have any questions' part of the interview! People who are used to being treated as a valuable resource in their previous careers are likely to find the 'we will work you to the bone, give you fuck all in return but expect you to do it for the good of the kids' ethos of teaching unpalatable.

BossWitch

Its not all schools that do that and its not only education that treats its employees like dirt.

OCSockOrphanage

Do you think that someone going on about how well they did in banking (etc.) because of maths (or whatever) is going to inspire low ability pupils?

Some are going to be more impressed by the person that can make parts for their 25 year old car using the schools outdated equipment.

Or the person that comes in from the local garage and can make a potato cannon out of drain pipe tubing.

I know not all schools are like that (and many other sectors treat employees badly) but you only have to compare job adverts in teaching to pretty much any private sector business to notice the difference. Schools have us over a barrel, and they know it. Businesses need to attract good employees, they value experience, they offer pay/incentives/perks to do so. Schools can hire the next naive young nqt at 10-15k less, and only get 3 fewer hours teaching out of them a week.

was horrified that a teacher could suggest a bright child would do the IT GCSE (the old one, not computer science) as a route to an IT job.

Rubbish. I have plenty of ex students who are in the IT industry having done the old ICT GCSE and A Level. The IT industry is a big place....

And to measure success in monetary terms only is an absolute insult to the majority of adults and does the students a great disservice. I now know where some of them get their 'get rich quick/reality star' aspirations from

I have mentored a wide range of trainees over the years,so I can only give an anecdotal point of view but many older trainees hated being mentored by someone younger than them and I can only see Teach Now (I hate that term) making this worse if they come in with a 'program' behind them.

I value trainees from diverse backgrounds and all ages. However, these initiatives never give true value for money to the actual stakeholders: the children

Tricky one. Dp has Masters in Physics and Medical Electronics....cant train at lical place as hasnt a first degree. Although has equivalent ...as in ONDs and HNDs. If they will train ex service people to teach why not people who have worked in various industries?

What sort of pay grade will these experienced highflighers expect?

I'm sure they won't settle for NQT pay with their experience, yet I can't see schools paying them on UPS3 either...

Teachers tend to be quite idealistic IME which can make them come across as dismissive of anything less high-minded.

I'm not sure the idealism last beyond the first few years really. Anyway, I don't think the best way of encouraging pupils to do well in school or in one's subject is to tell them it might lead to a job that would make them able to buy an Aston Martin.

I'm far from idealistic. Many pupils I've taught would find it fairly hard to motivate themselves to do their homework if you told them that doing it would get them an Aston Martin in 2 years' time, never mind 'You might be able to have that kind of money in 20 years if you pass these exams, do this work experience, go to this university, do that degree and happen to meet the right people. Maybe. If you're one in a hundred thousand'.

I actually don't particularly agree that experience in other jobs makes for better or more inspiring teachers. I've worked with quite a lot of people who have worked outside teaching first. Some of them were good, some not so good (just like other teachers). Where they do differ from career teachers is that teaching wasn't their first choice of job.

An Aston in a school car park would bring a lot more than admiring glances. I would give it a week until they started coming in a different car!

I think OP you live in a different world - not many of the kids I teach will ever reach the dizzy heights of lawyer or doctor or dentist. They will be mechanics and shop workers and brick layers. If they are lucky enough to get a job.

All children have a right to reach as far as they can, but not all have the luck, money or support to go that far. You know what though, I am as proud as the pupil who appeared at my house to plaster my bathroom as the one who is now an English teacher ...

Yes, pieceofpurplesky - I've definitely worked in schools where I wouldn't date park an Aston Martin if I had one! Not that I would have one even if I could afford it. To me a car is pretty much just a thing that gets me from A to B.

IME kids like teachers who can actually teach. Aston Martins are no guarantee of that.

Noble giraffe, I like the cut of your jib and the tone of your posts. Have a on me. Guaranteed untouched by child.

People think teaching is well paid, well that maybe the case for those who gave been around for a number of years and had the benefits of automatic progression through the payscales. Unfortunately for new teachers their starting salary of less than £23K, everywhere except London, is unlikely to rise much due to a combination of removing automatic progression, 1% pay awards and schools fighting with reduced budgets. The Dfe advertise the average teaching salary as £37400. For most recent NQTS that increasingly looks like a pipe dream.

I actually don't think teaching is particularly badly paid, certainly once you're a few years in. Most teachers I know would take a reduction in workload over a payrise by miles. It's not that the pay's bad per se, it's that the job is too hard for the pay to compensate for the downsides of the job.

I'd be earning much more if I went back to being a permanent teacher on my Upper Pay Scale salary, but I'd much rather stay being a supply teacher. Flexible hours, no stress, no marking, no planning, no performance management, no responsibility for exam results, no duties, no meetings. Some would say no job satisfaction either, but the current state of the education system has removed most of that anyway.

Eolian I agree completely about the downsides of the job but at least being on UPS would give some compensation in the form of a decent salary. Unfortunately newer teachers are having to put up with all those same downsides but with little prospect of any significant improvement in their pay.

Yes, very true. The only reason I have the luxury of continuing to do supply is that poor dh is bringing home the bacon as a deputy head.

Which is why I suspect many of these ex-big-shots may well go into teaching thinking that the pay (which is insignificant to them as they are already wealthy) is the downside that teachers constantly bemoan, only to find that the real downsides are entirely different and much much worse.

Yesterday's Times, sadly behind the paywall, has Lucy Kellaway giving an update on her first term as an NQT. "Thrilling, if tough" seems to be her view. It's interesting to read about the things she finds come naturally, and those that don't.

Is it any different to this one about her first half term from a few weeks back?

amp.ft.com/content/dcd2e834-b32d-11e7-a398-73d59db9e399

Thanks, Noble, I had not seen that earlier article. It's in similar vein, but the FT gives a better insight into her workload (seven! hours a week for the first half of term, but building up after half term), the school she's teaching in and its culture (flagship establishment, not your average inner-city challenge). However, I thought she acknowledged her shortcomings and the difficulties most trainees and NQTs face. I can't get past seven hours teaching a week though; as a trainee I had about 60% of the timetable.

I am so offended. I have always taught. Always wanted to teach. Proper vocation for me. And I am bloody good at it (most of the time).

I do not see how 5 years faffing about in - say - journalism would make me better. In fact, I knew a teacher who came via Teach first and journalism to teaching and rapid leadership. of course we did wonder why she had left journalism.

She was highly intelligent but couldn't run a team, she was thin skinned and she could not shake off her stiff, formal corporate air. the kids ate her alive. She is not teaching at the moment.

Now this may well not be true of all career changers - of course it isn't! Conversely, it is certainly not true that 'career teachers' are somehow sheltered and weaker.

I have been teaching a long time. Without exception, the best teachers I see are those who have always done it.

Teaching is the real world for goodness' sake. There are real people in schools!

My head (sorry principal) has two Mercs by the way...

I do agree by the way OP that there is massive ageism in teaching.

My DC have been lucky to have been taught by some excellent older teachers coming to it new from business/law, etc. They have also had some excellent young teachers on Teach First as well as NQTs.
I am a career teacher as is my DH.

I think we need a mixture of all in our schools, together with a mixture of ages/gender/ethnicity, etc. But for a school to be successful they need a stable staff with a majority of experienced teachers to support newcomers.

London schools, and particularly academies, are hemoraging staff and struggling to recruit Head Teachers. The government need to address this. It is not about pay IMHO, but about working conditions.

7 hours a week, for schools direct at this point in the year seems low - I think it is supposed to be a 0.8 part time route, has anyone got a Schools Direct trainee for comparison? I’m wondering if she’s getting an easy ride so the scheme gets a good write-up.

School direct are supposed to be on 7 hours a week by the end of this term.

Piggy, LK was a columnist on the FT for many years at least 25 and she's 57.

Teaching is incredibly hard to do well, and more demanding than most jobs. I really don't think she is being patronising, in any way. Her experience is perhaps only going to be invaluable to a small handful of Mossbourne students each year, but heavens above, to those who can use her insights, what a bonanza!

Of course, I get that it isn't going to help anyone who wants to go into the construction trade, and that we need more builders than FT columnists; I would like educators to be more receptive to offers of well-meant help than simply retreating into "not invented here" and "not universally accessible" rants. Lots of occupations require particular talents and aptitudes. Some children don't have the interest in acquiring skills, for whatever host of reasons. Such individuals work to earn a living. In the old phrase, they work to live whereas others live to work. For whatever reason, people who live to work are shunned as elitist (and they often are) and the rest are the salt of the earth. Bonkers, but society needs both ends of the spectrum (IMVHO).