For the first time, the General Teaching Council for England – the profession\’s regulator – wants staff in the independent sector to be subjected to the same code as those in state schools.
It would mean all 45,000 teachers being forced to sign up to rules governing their behaviour.
At the moment, independent schools are free to hire staff without proper teaching experience directly from industry.
Some say it gives pupils more in depth tuition in certain areas which cannot be provided by teachers straight out of university.
But this is barred under GTC rules which require all teachers to carry professional qualifications – often gained on one-year postgraduate courses.
Two things: the one year post grad courses are little more than propaganda for the latest sociological idiocy. Shuggy, for example, has been known to point out that the only valuable part of it was the teaching practice which, I think, lasts 6 weeks.
The second is that this is part of the spread of the hateful credentialism of our times. Doesn\’t matter what you know, what you can do, no, it matters what pieces of paper you have.
Far from signing up to this being a mark of quality, it would be a mark of damnation on any private school stupid enough to sign up.
So the very successful private sector should learn the teaching methods of the failed state sector.
Can you imagine the abuse that private school teachers would get at a teaching college?
The GTCE should be closed down. It has no purpose. The ‘keeping of the list of teachers’ was done competently by the DFES (etc) for years. The Police handled crime by teachers via List 99. It does, literally, nothing that benefits education one jot.
One immediate problem will be there are many excellent teachers in the independent system who have no teaching qualifications at all ; merely 25 years experience.
It is a nasty pointless little quango trying to get more money. Save the country a few bob, shut it down, sack the staff.
Kit: incidentally, having recently done a teacher retraining course, was given the ‘Private Education is for snobs etc.’ line ; both myself and another person who had children in private education piled in full bore in response which rather shocked the lecturer.
I have many faults but being a snob is one thing I categorically am not ; my children go private because I thought the standards of the relevant state schools were awful – even though on the government measures they are supposedly quite good. I live in rural East Anglia ; god alone knows how bad the schools on tough city estates must be.
But if people could get jobs without a degree there’d be a lot less call for university places- we can’t have the education establishment suffering along with the rest of us can we?
If you don’t go through the teacher training course, you will bypass all the lefty propaganda and indoctrination. You might even turn into a serious educator in your chosen subject. They can’t have that!
Just imagine, you might write the derivations of mathematical formulae on the blackboard, or show the kids how to solve simultaneous equations. That’s worse than dropping your pants and baring your bum at the class.
It is also, of course, part of the creeping socialist takeover of the independent schools.
Soon, no doubt, this sort of credentialism will be linked in with them retaining their charitable status.
Go private – now – you fools!
(Hat-tip to Natalie for that last bit)
I seem to remember getting a letter a couple of years ago from the GTC – who collect 30 odd quid a year from me, independent school or no – saying they were doing a great job because they had brought x teachers to tribunals. And nothing else. I realised then that they are an arm of government, and prosecute their duty with the typical fanaticism of modern governmental organisations.
If only there was a guided missile that homes in on clip-boards….
OMG! I can’t believe this is happening!
Thank goodness I’ve only got 3 months left of school – after that we’ll be in for more and more trouble.
When will they learn that the only way to increase the supply of good teachers (and currently I’m anecdotally told that we’re in short supply of any teachers at all) is to reduce the excessive regulations piled upon them?
Take lesson plans for example – some teachers are forced to do them in astounding, painstaking detail – the analogy that springs to mind is that of policemen being kept off the streets in order to fill in the paperwork!
…I really hope the SLP comes to power one day now in order to undo this mess!
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