TeachFirst - anyone have TeachFirst students or did it themselves?

[CrispsForTea]

Hi everyone,
I'm in my final year of a Biology degree and I'm thinking about doing the TeachFirst scheme. For anyone who doesn't know much about it, it's basically a two year scheme (second year is an NQT year) that places graduates in schools with a lot of children from underprivileged backgrounds. You get 5 weeks' intensive training in June and July and then you're basically a teacher, as far as I can tell (the kids don't even know that you're not qualified). After the two years, you can either stay in teaching or leave, and you finish with a PGDE (basically a step closer to a masters than a PGCE), QTS and a completed NQT year.

I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with the scheme and could tell me exactly how brutal it is, if any mentors notice a difference between conventional PGCE students and TeachFirst students, how much choice you get regarding subject and location etc.

Thanks in advance!!

Wow thank you so much everyone - so valuable to get insight from actual teachers about this!!!

most got just about good enough to survive and didn’t get anywhere near as good as they would have been able to get on a conventional PGCE as they didn’t have the time or input

I just don't agree with this. Becoming a good teacher is about gaining experience and at the end of year one of TF you have 10 times more experience than a PGCE student would. I remember NQTs starting when I'd just finished my first year and they hadn't even been in a classroom unsupervised whilst teaching a class before.

I'm an ambassador, having done the programme a million years ago when it was London only. I'm still in the profession. I probably wouldn't have trained to teach if TF hadn't existed.

Someone I know who did TF was 2nd in dept of a core subject in their NQT year. I'm not entirely convinced on that

I wonder if you know me, then. I was promoted to 2ic at the end of my NQT year and was a head of faculty the year later. Not ideal by anyone's standards, I'm sure, but I worked damned hard and had a lot of support. I did a very, very good job leading a very young, inexperienced team and we got superb results. It was a school in an unfashionable part of London during the last teacher recruitment crisis (before the credit crunch hit and teaching briefly became a desirable graduate profession again) and we had terrible problems recruiting and retaining teachers.

The programme has its flaws and it is not for everyone. It has played its part in improving urban schools and in redressing some people's attitude to teachers. I would have been bored on a traditional PGCE but when I trained employment-based routes were pretty minimal and largely limited to the GTP. ITT has changed a lot since then and if there is an excellent teaching school near you with a really good SCITT then I would encourage you to consider that, too.

Yes Biscay I agree with you on that. One main area TF (and School Direct) trainees will have an advantage in is classroom hours. I guess the ethics of this are up for debate as their experience / advantage of classroom hours comes at the cost of exposing children to many hours of unqualified teaching ... I'm kind of torn on this as whilst there are many potential disadvantages to having inexperienced teachers, I have seen enthusiasm and spirit from TFers that has also had fantastic impact on kids and their learning. (Although eventually their spirit wears out and then become just as jaded as the rest of us )

yippie
Wrong area so i don't know you.

Like you, this TFer worked bloody hard and was a great teacher.
But I'm still not convinced that someone with 1 year teaching who is barely out of university has the right range of skills or experience to be a strong leader. Good for ticking things over but if a crisis happens have they got enough life experience to do it well.
My other concern is that school leaders can be pushy and corporate. Part of being a good HOD or leader is about fighting for your team and being willing to challenge to SLT. I don't think it's a cooincidence that more challenging schools tend to have younger senior leaders, passing more stuff to inexperienced teachers in HOD roles.

Maybe a career changer with some leadership experience would be better.

There's a lot to be said for having a more rounded experience before moving into leadership.

Becoming a good teacher is about gaining experience and at the end of year one of TF you have 10 times more experience than a PGCE student would.

Being a good teacher is not just about clocking up classroom hours. You could clock up quite a few hours and be just as shit as you were when you first went in if you haven’t learned from those hours.

Student teachers need time in between lessons to reflect on them and to make improvements - hard if you are rushed off your feet on a packed timetable. They also need guidance from someone who knows what they are talking about. What struck me about the Tough Young Teachers from a while back was how long the student teachers were on their own in the classroom for, with the occasional observation, and when it was going badly (as it was for Meryl on the show) how inadequate that was.

Student teachers need time in between lessons to reflect on them and to make improvements - hard if you are rushed off your feet on a packed timetable. They also need guidance from someone who knows what they are talking about
And time to work on subject knowledge.

We have TF students in our region with only an A Level in the subject they are teaching so someone might want to be a geography teacher, they have a geography degree and apply for geography but because they have physics A Level they are doing secondary science.

There are entire core departments in my area staffed with Teach First and ex Teach First with only one member of the team being a degree level specialist in the area. A bit blind leading the blind really.

I like the idea and the intentions (and also see why it's a very useful route in the current recruitment and retention crisis), but can't help but feel like what some of the most deprived kids need are qualified subject specialists with a strong track record, not well meaning, hard working, unqualified, non specialists.

The sad thing is I'd never consider working in 50% of the TF eligible schools in my area because they have a reputation for fast track SLTs in 5th year of teaching, too much pseudo corporate crap to hide ineffective leadership, very draconian on staff and never seem to have tje capacity to improve their schools so it's a revolving door of SLT.

because they have physics A Level they are doing secondary science.

Wow, I didn’t know they did this. Do they do a subject knowledge enhancement course? You’re right that they’re going to need way more time for preparing if they don’t know their subject.

Departments really need some experienced teachers. And older teachers with kids too, I think - it gives a different perspective.

Having said that. I have a degree in my subject (Physics) but no a level. So I'm now frantically learning the syllabus ahead of teacher training. I've covered all the topics as part of my degree, but it's tricky working out a-level...er, level without having done it before

noble
No formal.subject knowledge development that I know of.
It was something that put me off that route when I did my career change.
Apparently having an A Level in Psychology meant they could place me to teach science (despite having an English degree and wanting to teach English).

At my friends school they have a Geography graduate teaching English and another has someone who applied for primary but they're doing secondary maths because they have an a level in maths and that's what school needed.

I have a DS who has gone into teaching. He has a first in a shortage subject so TF was an option. He looked at the three options. TF, a traditional university based PGCE and School Direct (or SCITT which is essentially the same thing).
He did not want the university route as he felt that he wanted to teach rather than be in lectures having just done three years at uni.
He went for the SD route which pays a tax free bursary and a student loan for the fees and living expenses. He was offered a job quite early in his training and will complete his NQT in the same school as his main placement.
From my observation of his experience I think SD has the balance roughly right. The first two months were in a challenging school and there was a slow build up of timetable. He now has about a 2/3 timetable plus a tutor group and a number of lunch / evening revision classes. He will start his NQT year in June by which time he will have moved to a 90% timetable.
TF does sound like too steep a learning curve.

One possible disadvantage with Teach First is that you only gain experience in one school. On a PGCE or SCITT you have at least two placement schools. This appealed to me, because I think there are big differences between schools with different demographics, and it's good to see how things work in more than one environment.

The academic side of the PGCE also appealed to me, which is why I chose that route.

Also, with Teach First, you are encouraged to work towards a PGDipE over the two years of the course. In your second year, you're essentially an NQT on an NQT timetable- and still working towards a Masters level qualification. To me, this seems like a much harder way of doing things than doing all your Masters level work during a year when you are not teaching full time, and have more university support.

What I don’t understand with Schools Direct placements where the student teaches an increasing timetable is who teaches the classes before the student takes them over and what happens to them once the student is in charge?
My school only takes PGCE students where the class teacher is still there in the background, so I’m not really sure how it works.

My PGCE certainly was about teaching, not sitting in lectures!

I thought it struck a good balance, actually. The uni bits were about looking at the national curriculum and deciding how to plan and what to teach-v useful. Then there was a 5/6 week part time placement in one school, a two week placement in a special school, a stint in secondary and then your two actual blocks (6w and 8w) of teaching practice.

I would have hated going straight into teaching without that time spent first learning how to plan. I also think going into a range of settings was invaluable.

Noble in my DC's School Direct placement he observed the class teacher before taking over the lessons, so similar to PGCE trainees. The teacher continues to observe throughout but is presumably freed up to some extent in that their planning and marking is reduced. No doubt trainees vary a lot but DS is now at the stage where his host teachers only look at his lesson plans for formal obs.
He started with just a few lessons a week and now has four classes in different year groups plus a tutor group. They are not allowed to teach Y11, 12 or 13 but observe / TA in those classes and run after school boosters for Y11.

One day a week is allocated to other training - subject knowledge, uni led PGCE support, compiling evidence etc.

LadyLance the academic side is the same in a School Direct. They still do a PGCE attached to a university.
disadvantage with Teach First is that you only gain experience in one school. I wonder whether this is because TF is done in challenging schools? Still it would seem to be useful to get a view of how things are done differently.

The teacher continues to observe throughout but is presumably freed up to some extent in that their planning and marking is reduced.

I assume that is only possible because your DS isn’t on the salaried route. Great for the teacher who basically loses a class for most of the year (unlike a PGCE where its nowhere near that long). But what about salaried SD? Schools can’t afford to pay two people to take the same class.

One thing I would say is that it can be a touch cult-like because it focuses very clearly on a 'start with why' approach to addressing educational disadvantage - 'the mission'.

I would not recommend it to anyone who is keen to train to teach but is ambivalent about the demographic in which they want to work. It's only really suitable for people who are pretty passionately committed to addressing educational disadvantage specifically in the context of very challenging schools. I'm currently in a leafy outstanding comp and finding it utterly stultifying.

Yes sorry noble you are right. So perhaps the salaried route must be similar to TF?
The training provider receives government funding for each trainee on SD, however looking at the figures the funding wouldn't be enough to pay for two people to take the same class unless it's Maths or Physics.
I wonder what the take up is of salaried SD in secondary teaching as it's possible to be financially much better off on a none salaried scheme with a tax free bursary or scholarship?

I did salaried SD in a school which also had TF trainees in my department (English). We were all on the same number of hours (16 per week) to begin with - i.e. we each had three classes of our own. There was no 'building up' for me- I was responsible for my classes from the start of the year. Basically, all trainees whether SD or TF were treated the same.

When it came to doing a second school placement that was tricky as of course it required three weeks of cover for my classes. But we managed to arrange it so that it occurred in late June, so my GCSE class had done their exam.

Not sure how it works in other schools.

lady
TF have to do a 2nd placement in a different school (usually high performing). It's only 1-2 weeks though and they don-% have to teach lots. Small group support, team teaching rtc also count.

I did salaried SD in a school which also had TF trainees in my department (English). We were all on the same number of hours (16 per week) to begin with - i.e. we each had three classes of our own. There was no 'building up' for me- I was responsible for my classes from the start of the year. Basically, all trainees whether SD or TF were treated the same.

That’s interesting. Were there any differences between the courses apart from your 3 week block elsewhere? Did they receive any funding? Were there course fees or bursaries for either?

That’s interesting. Were there any differences between the courses apart from your 3 week block elsewhere? Did they receive any funding? Were there course fees or bursaries for either?

There were differences in the assignments/ academic work we had to do. They had to do more essays and written assignments than I did. But then I wasn't getting a PGCE along with my QTS - if I had chosen go to that, I would have had to do more written assignments as well.

Over the course of the year we each had to attend various study days and I seem to remember that was fairly equal. They did have second school experience days, but that tended to be the odd day here and there as opposed to the three week stint that I did. We had the same amount of external observations if I recall correctly.

Generally speaking, I felt as though our training was pretty evenly matched, however I think that was largely down to our school being a big training school with long term, established training and mentorship in place so we all got filtered through the same processes internally (i.e. Observations, mentor support). I expect that TF and SD trainees in other schools could end up being treated more differently. All very school dependent.

TF trainees were paid a salary, as was I. Neither of us had to pay fees. TF people just don't have to at all. As for SD salaried, I don't know what is standard re fees, but mine were covered by my school. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. None of us had bursaries as we had salaries and I think bursaries are only for people who aren't earning.

Sorry OP- have gone off topic a bit re your original questions! But I hope some of the tangents have been vaguely useful 

Thank you for that!

Am I right in thinking that if you don’t have a PGCE, you can’t teach abroad? Or did I dream that??

Sorry, OP-I’m derailing things!