Stories + Views
Why are outstanding “specialist” teachers losing their jobs and untrained ones being promoted?
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the cuts that are going on in schools and in universities are actually an assault on good teaching.
Let’s itemise this attack on good teaching:
- There are the cuts to the Specialist Schools Funding. At the moment, many schools are bolstered by high quality teaching in certain specialist areas. In particular, the Specialist Sports’ Colleges have spread good teaching practice throughout our schools, especially in primary schools in many sporting areas. Many thousands of pupils have benefitted from expert teaching in all sporting areas, including football, tennis, swimming, cricket, as well as learning more specialised sports such as fencing, sports that were once the province only of private school pupils. All this amazing work will be very shortly shut down; specialist teachers will no longer be spreading great practice throughout schools and the wider community as they have been doing for the last ten years; children of all ages will no longer be playing competitive sport at the levels they have been until now. How tragic that our poorest and neediest children will not have access to all of these amazing sporting opportunities. Furthermore, hundreds of teachers will lose their jobs. So much for the government’s claim that they want to “bring back” competitive sports into schools! They’ve axed the existing provision!
- Advanced Skills Teachers (AST) are being cut out of the system. ASTs were great for disseminating good teaching practice throughout schools: they were all practising teachers who would work with less experienced colleagues in improving attainment throughout a range of schools. They were relatively cost-effective because they would work with a cluster of schools on the whole. This programme has been removed and redundancies have been made.
- Individual one-to-one tuition for maths and English is being scaled back drastically; some would argue, with good reason, that it’s been abolished completely. Children who are falling behind in these vital areas will no longer get individual help. Headteachers will apparently be given the money, but I’ve seen in my son’s primary school the programme has appeared to have petered out. The money has gone into a central pot which is dwindling in other areas and been used to plug other holes no doubt. So much for the government’s promise to improve teaching in the 3Rs!
- All teacher training in universities is being more or less terminated. This was a cost-effective way of delivering high quality teacher training. I have noticed in recent years that the calibre of teachers has significantly improved because universities have really got their act together on delivering great value-for-money training. Putting all teacher-training in schools won’t work and won’t be cost-effective: a school cannot, by definition, offer the range of experts in one place that a university can. I have been doing a PhD in Education and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths; I have definitely improved a great deal as a teacher in the classroom since studying at Goldsmiths. Tragically, the whole education department there looks like it might shut down unless some drastic action is taken. The government clearly is not serious about giving good training to teachers.
- Teachers’ TV will disappear next year. This was a very cost-effective way of delivering training to all the nation’s teachers. I notice that Gove in an interview in the TES today says that he wants to have teachers watch great lessons over the internet. What does he think Teachers’ TV have been doing for the past few years? This was a very cheap way of delivering great training to all the teachers in the country in a highly approachable, watchable fashion. Getting rid of it will definitely impact upon standards in the classroom because teachers won’t have access to the latest developments that are happening in research, in pedagogy, in lesson and curriculum planning.
This is a very serious assault on standards of teaching in our schools. If Gove wants to support good teaching, why, then, is he cutting so many programmes that promote it?
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With the education budget being cut back on these ancillary services let’s hope the gov’t ceases any further payments made to the consultants promoting the agenda of free schools.
In these austere times, if the sponsors of free schools don’t want to use the existing state provision in the area by setting up their own schools it should be done from their own resources.
Yes, it seems shocking that the taxpayer is funding the expansion of free schools, where untrained teachers are allowed, and cutting back on training. As the McKinsey report shows, it’s well trained teachers that make all the difference.
I know some fantastic specialist teachers who have enthused and motivated thousands of children at local schools to take part in sports, theatre, learn languages, use maths and conduct scientific investigations. The effect that these highly trained teachers have had on our children over the last decade has been incalculable. We desperately need great teachers in our schools, why are getting rid of our best ones? It makes a nonsense of Gove’s claim that he supports good teaching.
Francis, I agree with some of your points here but we there is a danger of refusing to accept ANY change where some changes might bring benefits.
I am with you entirely on ASTs and one-to-one tuitition. ASTs contribute to making teaching better in all classrooms and one-to-one is easily the best way to improve the literacy holding back students who don’t develop those skills at home. These are battles that most definitely should be fought.
In the case of Teacher’s TV. It’s a nice-to-have but perhaps not necessary, and being forced to commercialise may mean it becomes a better tool. I agree that we need an online repository of filmed lessons – if you look to other countries, they are already doing this using simple technologies and there’s no reason why we can’t do the same. Remember, the Coalition are not abolishing Teacher’s TV – they just won’t keep funding it, and if there are to be cuts then I think they may be right.
Specialist funding is also something I won’t be battling to keep. Obviously I don’t want *less* money going into the system (which is what this will mean) but I do think it could be used more effectively elsewhere than having teachers write spurious ‘specialist status’ grants [which is what happens in many places].
On teacher training, we will have to wait and see what the replacement model is before drawing our swords. As someone who trained through TeachFirst I accessed amazing supplementary training alongside my (almost entirely) in-school training, and – even 5 years on – regularly attend CPD events run by TF that most other teachers don’t get. This model works really well for some people and I don’t think it should only be open to a small number of recent graduates. If the intention is replacing ITT with a more expansive, lifelong model of CPD that begins with a person getting into the classroom, then continually reflecting throughout their career then I’m in favour of the change. If it’s a simple axe-fall or the choice of a PGCE is being taken away then I agree that we should start drawing up the battle lines.
Thanks for this Laura. The key thing we mustn’t lose focus of is getting great teachers into schools, which as McKinsey and so many other research reports show, is the key to raising standards. Specialist teachers have a role to play in this: they have pushed up standards remarkably in some areas. Ditching this well-established route to excellent teaching seems counter-productive. That said, the system isn’t perfect: it does need refining, but not completely obliterating!
I whole-heartedly support Teach First, and think it’s great. Yes, let’s expand it, but let’s also get universities and teachers and Teach First trainers communicating too, spreading best practice. I do think universities have a major role to play in training teachers and co-ordinating/assessing/monitoring teacher training too. I absolutely agree that training should be on-going and there should be more synergy between universities and schools, but that doesn’t mean we should ditch the system entirely.
My huge concern about Gove and co is that they want to “rip it up and start again”; experience tells me that it’s when you work on improving existing systems, which have been proven to work, that gets results. It doesn’t make sexy headlines, but it creates properly working system. I think Gove’s reforms threaten to cause real chaos.
As a chair of governors I can’t help but feel anxious about the amount of change that is going to be forced on the system at a time of shrinking budgets. I don’t doubt that some schools can manage effective teacher training but even then, they will need to be resourced adequately. But what about the poorly led schools that don’t even manage to give their staff appropriate CPD at the moment. Will their teachers be better off in this new landscape?. And who will be accountable for the quality of teacher training – the governing body? We are volunteers and do have quite a lot to do at the moment, continuously seeking to improve our schools, facing a changing curriculum, a new Ofsted framework and having to make cuts to our budgets which may include making staff redundant.
I don’t happen to think the system is broken at the moment, although agree that more should be done to support CPD once teachers are in the job. And it maybe that the balance between vocational and academic learning for teachers could be recalibrated. However I don’t think it is the right moment to go back to Year Zero and start all over again.
In response to Laura’s comments about Teachers’ TV, I think having lots of separate websites for training may really confuse other teachers. The advantage of having it sponsored by the state was that it wasn’t subject to commercial pressures and therefore you knew that you weren’t being sold some dodgy commercial product. Its independence was a big selling point. You only have to look at what’s happened with the commercialisation of the SEN market in the US (and increasingly in the UK) to see that we’re being peddled really iniquitous quackery such as pills to cure ADHD, brain wave measuring and so on which profits companies but does absolutely no good in the classroom…
Francis, good point on Teacher’s TV. I wonder if there is some other model that could be used rather than just doling out lots of state cash though? This is where those pesky Big Societiers probably could be putting their thoughts.
I agree with everyone on not going back to Year Zero or going through the ‘ripping up’ phase. The only good news is that through all the wrangling that will happen up in the Ivory Towers of the DfE, teachers will keep turning up each day and making the best of it. Most are very used to ignoring almost all changes unless they make sense anyway.
At the start of this academic year my daughter’s primary school in Bromley announced that funding for after school clubs ran by teachers after school had been scrapped. This is a school with a large number of pupils from under priviledge background. A few weeks later we received another letter inviting parents to try Explore Learning, an ofsted registered learning centre where children can work “at a level and pace suited to their needs; stretching and challending them where appropriate” and to “boost their confidence, make academic progress, and enjoy learning”. The trial lesson is free and then it’s about £100 per month!!!