[Education For Tomorrow: No 100, 2009]Teacher training — 50 per cent off!Recently the Schools Minister, Jim Knight, launched a Government paper on public service reform called Working Together. An interesting title considering its proposals hadn't been discussed within the so-called Social Partnership.This article refers to a small part of those Government proposals. But first let's go back before the announcement to a fictional Cabinet meeting at Number Ten. It might have gone something like this: (Brown) Now, chaps. And er ladies. We are facing a recession and there is likely to be increased er unemployment. Any ideas for how to relieve this? Mandelson? (Mandelson) Well last time I was sacked I went to Europe. Could we provide subsidised one-way tickets to Brussels? (Brown) What about you, McNulty? You're Minister for erm Employment? (McNulty) Courses, Prime Minister. When Harold Wilson had problems with rising unemployment he raised the school leaving age and took thousands off the unemployment register. We could put redundant bankers and such into fast-track teacher training for six months. (Brown) How does that sit with the DCSF? Balls? (Balls) I want to be Chancellor, but seeing as I'm stuck with the Department for Concocting Sheer Fantasy I think it's an admirable plan. It sits easily with the aim to get 50 per cent of school leavers into university if we can get 50 per cent of the newly unemployed into teaching. (Darling) But these are bank executives. Why train them at all? Many of them weren't trained for their last jobs. (Balls) Got to give them some training or the NUT will call for a strike vote. (Mandelson) No problem there then. But why six months? Six weeks is enough, like with Teach First in the difficult schools. After all if we're going to let them go like lambs to the slaughter into 9c on a wet Friday afternoon we might as well ... Did you want to say something, Hazel? (Blears) I think it sounds like a gap year — let people enjoy an alien environment for a time and then come home to a real job! Or even 'I'm a good graduate, get me out of here! (Darling) Are failed financiers the right people to run schools budgets? (Brown) No problem — they're used to bankruptcies ... I'm sure these people had lots of other ideas, if not more sense, but enough of these amateurs! What do professionals say? Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has called this 'very much like the back of the fag packet stuff.' David Townsend was reported by the BBC website saying 'There is absolutely no way that I could have coped with teaching after just six months training'. This is after 16 years in industry and another 16 as a Royal Navy officer. He went on to say, 'To be a graduate of a six month teacher training course would always make you the PCSO' [police community support officer} 'to the real policeman, respected but not quite there.' NQT — Newly Qualified Teacher or Not Quite There? Not Quite There — a good way of expanding the initials NQT in these circumstances but what about those who already bear that acronym? They have undertaken 1 — 3 years training at great expense to themselves and are now going to be competing for jobs with emergency trained former businessmen who have gone into teaching for entirely the wrong reason. An escape for the unemployed? Teaching is not an escape for the unemployed. It demands compassion and dedication. My final point is addressed to those who intend to follow this route, to take up Jim knight's kind offer to jump the queue of long term unemployed. You businessmen are experienced now in redundancy. Good job! Redundancies are rife in schools and colleges and an ill-trained dilettante could be first to go. But if you think you are REALLY keen to teach, take a year as a teaching assistant and find out if it really suits you before dedicating yourself to a worthwhile training course. Andy Garner ANDY GARNER — from Halifax believes that the proposals to introduce a six-month teacher training programme demean the profession, are ill-advised and are wrongly motivated. We need to do everything in our power to resist such measures. (Adapted from Andy's ATL Conference speech) |