Teachers reflect on the current state of teacher training and recruitment in England in 2017.
it has been Confirmed This month the NAO reported that the UK is in a teacher recruitment crisis. The Department for Education has missed its recruitment targets for the last four years in a row, and plans to fill the gap by training ex-combatants as teachers have also failed. I believe the two biggest contributing factors to this crisis are teacher training and recruitment.
One of the big issues that has had a decisive impact on this issue is the fundamental change in teacher training. When I was in teacher training, a bright 18-year-old like me chose the great calling of becoming a teacher and studied for four years for a Bachelor of Education (BEd), a degree course in teacher training. Teacher training was what universities were supposed to do and they played a major role in preparing future educators. Lecturers, academically qualified and experienced teachers who passed on a vast amount of knowledge, are now literally out of work overnight. The foundation of teacher training has changed from academia to big business, profits and profit margins.
In 2012, the then Education Secretary Michael Gove changed all the rules and introduced what is now known as the School Direct Teacher Training Programme, which did away with the long-standing tradition of centres of academic excellence which trained teachers with education theory and regular exposure to teaching practice in schools.
Schools Direct trainee teachers who take part in the scheme often complete the scheme simply out of necessity, as they are tied down for two years to a school they did not choose and receive a full-time salary from the scheme. An ever-increasing number of UK children are being taught by trainee teachers, often resulting in a decline in the quality of the education children receive. As a parent, when I was considering secondary schools for my daughter, I was very wary of schools that boasted of their involvement in “educating the next generation of teachers”, because I know what that actually means: “Great, we have trainee teachers!”Sadly, such schemes are often most frequently used to plug teacher shortages in the schools that need good, experienced teachers the most – those where educating young children is most challenging.
Another concern is that for the first time, some parts of the UK are seeing record low applications for teaching roles. Some schools are seeing very few applicants for full-time subject-specific roles – we have even seen cases where such roles have only one applicant. This is not just true for historically scarce subjects such as maths and physics, which have historically seen low recruitment and have received significant financial incentives to recruit teachers for these subjects. Some academy chains are actively recruiting school staff directly from overseas. Australian accents are now a common sight in classrooms across the country.
Ignoring a crisis like this serves no purpose. Our children are too important to receive a substandard education. There is a role for teacher training, which requires trainee teachers to be exposed first-hand to the harsh reality in black and white. But the current system is out of control and a mass exodus of schools and the UK education system is on the horizon.
