How many Personal Mentors on the PGCE are fit to teach at all?

[YetanotherPGCEdropout]

There appears to be so many people who drop out of the PGCE due to bullying from Placement Personal Mentors.
I know from experience that the University does not offer the student who is being bullied by their PM, any support whatsoever. In fact, unless the student leaves the PGCE very quickly, any requests for help from the University will be met with "we deem you unfit to teach".... which isn't very helpful.

Having read so many reports of PM's on Placements being absolute lunatics, my question is... "Who is testing whether THEY are fit to teach? Let alone train the next generation of teachers.."

This is a significant part of my job. When I trained, I had 4 shit mentors. My NQT mentors were great. I learned a lot from those people and I take my role very seriously.

I don't think people realise how little support mentors get, or how much is asked of them. And sadly some trainees do believe that they've paid for the qualification.

It's very easy for me - paid, given time - to do my job compared with colleagues who are afforded neither of those things, who are "asked" to mentor and expected to fit it round everything else.

I wonder if you should write a book Mrs H?
The fact that mentors don't want to do the job and are not paid extra to do it, is a major factor.

In teaching it's never so much the pay as the time.

I don't have time to write a book... too busy doing my job. And people wouldn't believe a lot of it anyway!

A million times this

wants to get the trainee teacher to do most of their planning, teaching and marking for them, whilst holding the threat of failure over their heads if they complain.

Just wow. I hope non of my trainees think this.
While I have had some excellent trainees in the past I am seeing the one's coming through now with the expectation that they will be told how to pass and that all resources will be available to them. I should clarify my trainees are not on uni PGCE placement they are through the ITT program.

I have found it quite upsetting in the past 2 years - the effort I put in and the expectation that I fix every issue and enable them to pass, together with having to accomodate their 'mental health' issues has been intolerable.

On a psoitive note - if you pass your training be assured as an NQT/ECT you can not be failed. I've just been down that route with an NQT and somehow agreed to support them through to the end of the academic year even though they had passed at Easter. Today (at 5pm after the 2 hourly support I give every Friday) she asked me who would help her next year.

I stopped being a mentor when the students that we had didn't plan anything and expected everything to be given to them.

Being able to plan, follow and adapt where necessary is a basic teacher skill. Those that can't or won't after many hours of discussion and guidance were passed back through my mentor leader and back to the university.

I had two terrible mentors as a PGCE student. One who intentionally made me late to pick up my son from Nursery every evening for three weeks. He’s 25 now so some time ago! However I do remember the frustration and feeling of powerlessness and vowed I would never be like that myself. And I haven’t been. I have had many trainees over the years, most of them hardworking and willing to learn. There is a real trick to accepting constructive criticism and building that resilience you need as a teacher and not everyone has it. I have failed two students in my time. One who lied and lied and lied and another who was extremely unprofessional and had several warnings. The reality is, I’m afraid, that I welcome trainees as partners with all the responsibility that entails, but as a mentor I will never ever let my children be let down or see them fail to progress. There has to be quality control. I do my absolute best to help but some trainees just don’t understand the realities of the job. Being a mentor is bloody hard work. For the most part it’s enjoyable to see the progress of your mentee and their personal growth. Other times, not so much.

Then don’t ever become a mentor or leave a profession with this attitude. I have been a teacher for 12 years and a leader for 5, and I have seen different trainees, but what I also see everyday is teachers nagging about impossibility of being a teacher, about how terrible it is not to have private life etc. and it is done in front of the trainees. I find it rude and extremely unprofessional. A lot of teachers are horrible mentors, let’s not forget this. A lot of trainees are left alone right from the start of the training because the teachers choose to overwhelm them with 90% of responsibility and the trainees are scared to report. I see this every year and I am doing my best as a leader at school to destroy this snobbery against the trainees. We are responsible for not putting a trainee off teaching. And let’s not forget that a lot of our colleagues demean the profession. Only god knows why they are at school

This message was to swallowedAfly

Exactly this. Unfortunately I don't take students anymore (I work in a primary where teachers have enough autonomy to say if they do or don't want a student that year) because I just don't have the time. I'm already on 0.8 and spend the weekend tag-teaming with my husband for who gets an hour here and there away from our very young children to do our work. Oh to have that time to actually clean the house or do something else useful! I'm also concerned because my students' lessons can be judged by Ofsted, essentially as my own, and in a tiny school that can have a big impact on the overall judgment.

I left my PGCE course due to my deeply unpleasant mentor. When I told the school I was leaving (but that i would continue to help with the nativity if they wanted it - and they did), the lady mentoring the other student at the time said she had noticed and should have done more..

Did you speak to the uni first? It would surely be on them to find an alternative placement or request a different mentor if things went that badly. They are the ones who get the fees and are primarily responsible for your training experience.

Maybe you should be exploring why teachers in your school feel this way, rather than trying to ban what they talk about in front of trainee teachers?

Maybe you should consider whether the school is in a position to take trainees at all?

A few years ago, our very experienced department mentor said one year the department was not in a fit state to take on trainees (short staffed + 3 new staff in the department, including an NQT). He said he wouldn't mentor a trainee in our subject if the school took one on.

The school took one on anyway, a member of SLT was the mentor, and they were mainly placed in old mentor's classes. You can imagine how well that went down, I'm sure.

And yes, it wasn't a good experience for the trainee!

I had a mentor who made life deliberately difficult. I later found out there was some very strange power plays going on between her (long time member of staff, who wanted out of teaching) and the new HoD. I just got caught in the crossfire. It can happen anywhere there are people!

2nd placement confirmed that it wasn’t me. Spoke to my university and found a new placement rather than going back to the 1st. Couldn’t have been better supported.

5 years in now and still loving it. But I jumped ship to independent (benefit of being in a shortage subject), so still very long hours but different issues to deal with.

I do think the mentor system is really vulnerable to issues with that one person who you are sort of relying on. If they are struggling with the workload of mentoring, or have something else going on, it can be a less good experience for the trainee. And it's often an excessive workload for the mentor.

I do wonder if placements could be run in a different way, so that it wasn't so reliant on one mentor.

I know people say the uni will step in if you have a really bad mentor, and I agree that's true, but sometimes you can end up with trainees in "not great" situations which don't quite meet the threshold for uni intervention, or the uni doesn't have anywhere to move them to, so they just have to stick things out.

And as others have said, there is a lot of pressure on people to be mentors, when it's a significant demand in terms of time spent and emotional energy.