Teach First/School Direct are just mad, right?

[noblegiraffe]

I did a PGCE and it was a difficult year with an intense workload. The periods at uni were a blessed respite from the school placements with the teaching/lesson planning/marking requirements.

My department has always taken PGCE students. They often seem exhausted by the end of their placement and work long hours. They are teaching about ten hours by Christmas, so a gentle but ramped introduction. They have a teacher in with them every lesson.

Which got me thinking about Teach First - they start on a 60-80% timetable, despite probably having as much teaching experience as my PGCE students. They own their own classes so no teacher in with them, only feedback is from proper observations. If the TF student quits, the school is then left with a hole in their staffing.

I’m not sure about School Direct timetabling but it’s also a ‘drop in at the deep end’ approach (more or less supportive depending on whether salaried).

How are they not seen as a bonkers training route? How can you hone your craft when you’re pinging from one lesson to the next from the start? And you don’t have a class teacher on hand to provide guidance and take over if things go badly?

And yet I’ve seen people on here say ‘I’d prefer to do School Direct to a PGCE because I’d prefer to learn on the job’ like a PGCE is an entire year spent in a lecture theatre.

I get that some people need the salary and don’t have a choice, but that’s not always the case.

Surely a PGCE is better for the trainee, the school, and for the classes they teach?

As a current Teach First participant I found this thread really interesting- and certainly agree with all points raised. However I will say the application process was difficult, with lots of skills tested and there is quite an intense 6 week study period (often 11 hour days) both inside and outside of a classroom prior to September which is helpful to prepare. We are also very supported with a mentor within school as well as Teach First who would intervene if they felt necessary

I just don't feel like TF is honest about what it's like to work in their most challenging schools.

This. In our coastal comprehensive it’s impossible to recruit. We have 2 TFers in our core department. Ones ok. The other has zero idea of how hard they should be working. And refuses to take marking home. Which would be fine if the books actually got marked at school... but they don’t. There’s a lot of entitlement there too.
As others have said, I’d be really unhappy if they were my DS’ teachers and taking sole responsibility for classes with so few hours in the classroom u see their belts.

under

@noblegiraffe I teach all of the time except for the (currently) 5-6 lessons a week that the student teaches. I am in the classroom when this is happening, working with individuals who need extra support or an extra push.

When I am teaching, student does the same as well as observations of me, the class or other teachers in school.

By the end of the year, she will be teaching 80% of the timetable with supervision as she would be in her NQT year.

Have read the rest of the thread now...

My student and I have daily meetings/discussions where we are both reflecting on our teaching. It's ongoing all the time.

In this case, it really isn't that the student has been dropped into the classroom unsupervised. She has constant supervision and discussion/reflection on her teaching.

From this thread, it sounds like there are significant differences between SD placements. I can honestly say that I was never dropped into a classroom and told to get on with it. I too was supervised. I think I got the mentoring role as I have been through the process fairly recently. I also agree that it's a bit early in my own teaching career to do so, but that is what SLT have asked me to do and I want to keep my job!

But that’s 80% of your timetable she’ll be teaching! How bonkers is that to take you out of the classroom when you need to be improving your own practice? NQT+1s are still learning massively, that’s why there’s been talk of extending it to two years.

By the end of the year, she will be teaching 80% of the timetable with supervision as she would be in her NQT year.

Parts of what you've described sound very good, @LucyLastik, but can I also ask- do students rotate through the stages or are they with the same class for a year?

It is 80% of my timetable but she is not unsupervised at any point. I am in class too working with individuals.

She was with me for the whole autumn term, I have a different student for spring 1 from the same course as the trainees have to have half a term gaining experience in another school. In spring 2, my trainee returns to our school but does a half term placement in an alternative key stage (she will be doing KS1) then it is back to my class for the whole of the summer term.

We are also very supported with a mentor within school
This is partly what would concern me if I were a trainee- you are totally dependent on that mentor being really good at teaching and mentoring because you need to learn so much from them.
On my pgce I had 4 or 5 experienced teachers as college tutors and 3 or 4 teachers in each of 2 placements observing and giving feedback. That’s lots of varied feedback from different perspectives. If you train in one school you could well find yourself in a shit department (really good schools tend not to want TF trainees) and only those, possibly not brilliant, teachers to learn from.

That’s my point, Lucy, the school is screwing over your experience as a learning teacher by giving away your class to students.

This is not good for you, you should be pissed off. Not to mention the massive workload burden of trainee admin.

I've changed my mind again. This thread is like a rollercoaster

I would be quite unhappy if my child was in that class. Maybe it is a case of knowing too much, but it must be incredibly disruptive, both in terms of academics and in behaviour.

I've been very lucky to have good to excellent students, but even then, it takes a good couple of weeks to get my class back to my routine and my expectations. Even the youngest of children play up when they can sense someone less experienced. One student per academic year is quite enough for a class imo.

Is that not 80% of the time you won't be planning for etc? It may sound like an easy ride for you but you are still learning too.

Schools Direct and Teach First are very different, I think.

Schools Direct Unsalaried works in a similar way to a PGCE - students can have input from a uni or from a teaching school hub. They spend more time in their "home" school but they ramp up their teaching hours at a similar rate as a PGCE student. They also get guaranteed interviews in their own MAT. Personally I'd recommend it to people thinking of training over a PGCE (I did a PGCE).

I know salaried routes are different but the only people I know who have been able to get on these were already working in the school/MAT as cover supervisors/HLTAs etc.

However, the people I know who did Teach First were definitely thrown in at the deep end and basically left to either sink or swim, often in very difficult schools. It is definitely used by some schools to fill jobs they can't recruit for. The numbers who stay in teaching long term seem very low anecdotally.

@IndecentFeminist we will plan together and I will intervene as/when necessary.

I did Teach First. I am still in the profession fourteen years later. I loved it and probably wouldn’t have trained to teach if an employment-based route hadn’t been available. I am happy to admit that the two year commitment appealed and I didn’t know if I would stay in the profession long-term when I started.

The crucial element for me was being in a school with excellent support for trainees on a range of training programmes and particularly a superb coaching team of ASTs.

I did SD but via a university with a PGCE, the only difference between that and traditional uni led was I knew the group of schools I would be in.

I had a very gradual ramped up approach (though it was still hard work due to so much to learn) plus essays etc. I taught/ observed in many different classes which was really useful. The experience was very much affected by the mentor, 2 were very good and 1 was absolutely awful, this is where there was the big benefit of the university backup and support.

Having a 1st in Physics I got more in the bursary that I would in any salaried scheme.

I did a different vocational qualification and in some ways I think it would have been better to have had more time unsupervised to hone my craft. If you’re reasonably reflective and have a good grasp of your subject matter you can learn more quickly when you don’t feel scrutinised by a mentor all the time.

I did Teach First and had a pretty terrible experience, which I think contributed towards me leaving teaching in my third year. Yes to the above re: no support and development, plus I was put in a faith school without any consultation ( you don’t get to choose your school) and then punished for refusing to pray as an atheist! No issue with faith schools at all, entirely Teach First’s fault for refusing to think about it.

Absolutely wouldn’t recommend it as a route into teaching and Definitely wasn’t as good a teacher as I could have been on a PGCE that took the uni route.

We get SD students every year. The reason in my area that SD is more popular than a pgce is that there aren't any secondary pgce providers nearby (there is a primary pgce available at the local uni), whereas there are 3 SD hubs within commuting distance. They do pretty much the same timetable as the pgce students we used to get, the same sort of ramping up of teaching hours etc. But they do the same number of teaching days in 4 days a week, so the placements last longer, so the disruption to the pupils lasts longer too.

I hate having students taking my classes, some are better than others, but they're all still learning so the pupils get a worse experience than they would if I was teaching them all year. I put up with it because we obviously need new teachers coming in, and somebody put that time and effort into training me when I did my pgce.

Lucy, what you aren't getting is the ability to settle yourself into your own classes, as the only teacher in there, refining your methods and developing for yourself.

No way should a student teacher only have the direction of a RQT. You and they deserve better.

And you aren't learning yourself how to manage a class by yourself it there's always another teacher in there to intervene/work with a group. A vast majority of classes do not have additional adults and you won't have learned methods to deal with a class like that if you always have other people in with you.

Locally to where I teach now, a lot of people train via Schools Direct/SCITT as the nearest PGCE provider is about 90mins away and you could be sent anywhere in this county or the next one on placement. Knowing the group of schools you'll be in/their rough locations helps people plan their year a lot more and is probably essential if you've got children or any kind of caring responsibility.

I would prefer to do a university based PGCE with school placements (like nursing students do) but my local area is all schools based. Where I used to live, two universities did PGCEs.

It really is worrying that an RQT is mentoring another teachee. I am sure that @LucyLastik is a great teacher and will give some great advice but really at this early stage of your career you should be focused on your own development. By all means be a buddy as somebody who has recently been through the process but a mentorship requires much more experience.

I have been teaching between 15 and 20 years and am still learning every day. I can't imagine that I would have been able to meaningfully mentor somebody at a few years in whilst still developing myseld

RQTs mentoring tells you all you need to know about the current state of affairs... Our poor SCITT student’s “mentoring” is a complete joke. I am not a mentor, but if I didn’t offer a weekly joint planning session they wouldn’t have a bloody clue.
I did my own training via the SD salaried route and had full responsibility and no supervision for a Year 7 class from day 1. I thought that was absolutely careless and beyond bonkers as I had never worked in a school before. I was also given sole responsibility for a form half way through my training year. They were definitely using me as cheap labour.

I did a GTP (pretty similar course) 11 years ago now.

I actually think it's a pretty good route for some people, especially the way our school ran it.

I started in Easter, and had from then until the summer term paid as the lowest level of unqualified teacher , where I was working with another teacher , getting experience in the class room and slowly moving onto planning and teaching, understanding the school systems and such like. Doing lots of stuff similar to what a PGCE might do without any of the paperwork etc.

Then I started teaching a 50% timetable when I cam back in September, which was the official start of my GTP. I was observed once per week formally and plenty of drop ins and stuff offering feedback on recent stuff we have talked about in the meetings.

I think this left me more prepared to teach the higher workload of an NQT that the rest of the NQTs I worked with who had taught vastly fewer lessons. I also think it's a benefit that the students didn't realise I was still training and when other people weren't there I could try out different stuff without the risk of someone being there!

Teaching maths I am not sure how much use there is for a lot of the theory that PGCE students learn, at that time in their development, since they don't really have the skills to implement it with all the other stuff.