Money For Old Rope.....

The teacher training routes in the UK are currently fraught with danger for new teachers wanting to enter the profession. Since the advent of the mandatory grant of 24K that enables a school to pay a new teacher to work and train in their school, the reality is far from rosy. Whilst it allows a school to negate having to find supply staff due to teacher shortages for whatever reason whoever thought that teacher training in schools would work in this respect is sadly mistaken. The feedback from new teachers and especially those who giving up in the first six months is that whilst it does get them a job in a school as a trainee teacher the expectations on them is too high. To take someone with an interest in teaching and then expect them to get up to speed in the first six months as a full time teacher is ludicrous. So retention is obviously very low due to this and the fact that new teachers are being used as actual teachers not being trained to be teachers as such.

At PCT2U we would rather advocate that a TA or HTLA engages on our Diploma in Education and Training course on the basis that the school supports them with their practice teaching sessions, eight hours in total. And that the rest of the time they have as teaching assistants less pressure with a more supportive role and more time can be applied to our theory assignments at level five. These theory assignments can be taxing as new teachers are required to produce nine of them for the course over twelve months. The fact that some teachers paid 24K by schools and colleges can have contact time up to twenty seven hours a week is crazy. New teachers need mentoring and therefore they need space to learn at least the basics of lesson planning, scheme of works writing and production and to immerse themselves in theoretical concepts related to education. To throw new teachers in at the deep end and expect them to survive is absolute nonsense and it is doing a disservice to teaching and the profession. We should be nurturing potential new teaching talent in schools not scaring the hell out of them by getting them to run full thirty cohort classes and across a curriculum and subjects they have no prior knowledge of? Such is the desperation of the UK government to lessen the financial burden on the supply chain by allowing new teachers to be used in the same respect who are then getting put off by the onslaught of education proper at week one.

At PCT2U this is why we would rather work with TA level people in schools to mentor them up to the teaching post rather than throwing them to the lions so to speak. In our students experiences this has worked really well for all concerned including the schools. We have had some resistance from head teachers to TA’s becoming teachers but once they have seen how it benefits the TA’s and the school they are usually on board very quickly and work with us to get that staff member through the course. I think this is a more holistic approach to training than what is currently expected across the current SBITT Hubs in the UK. I think we have to consider the training of teachers more carefully in future so that they want to develop their teaching abilities and career in a way that benefits them long term. This should also be a consideration for government and the fact that the teaching profession should be seen as something that is worth entering not something that is fraught with obstacles and danger for new teachers. Our system of training new teachers works and is a low cost alternative to the government run programs. To learn more about our courses please register at pct2u.com for more information on how we can make you a better teacher.