By Raymond Soltysek, Former teaching lecturer at Strathclyde University and educational consultant
THE latest decline in some subject specialists in Scottish schools coupled with difficulties in teacher education recruitment are factors which have prompted the decision of two universities to offer new teacher education courses from 2019. However, this may be a sticking plaster attached to a haemorrhaging wound, and we should ask how these will survive when many existing courses cannot fill their quotas and are, in some cases, being closed.
The debate centres on the issue of the general perception of the profession – underpaid, understaffed, overworked – but the education community should not ignore teacher education courses themselves. Many issues are historic, dating from the move in the 1990s to subsume teacher education colleges into universities. While there have been many benefits, the fit has often felt forced, especially as universities begin to adopt market models for their activities, with faculties and departments being pressured to operate in profit.
In a drive for efficiency, compromises which might be deemed a “race to the bottom” have been made. Further cuts in staff, the use of short-term secondees for professional studies or casual staff for school assessment, cuts in and of courses, teaching time or academic assessment – all these and more have created an inconsistency of experience for students throughout Scotland. A postgraduate diploma from one university may look nothing like that from another, with students studying different subjects for different lengths of time and assessed in different ways. This inconsistency affects key areas of student development, such as literacy, numeracy and behaviour management.
There are a number of ways we might make initial teacher education more attractive immediately. Paying students for their training year – perhaps a proportion of the salary they are guaranteed in their subsequent induction year – would reduce dropout rates by alleviating the stress of undertaking academic study, school preparation and part time jobs. It would also be helpful if schools were paid for training placements, rather than receiving a share of the block grant authorities receive whether or not they host a student.
But perhaps more radical initiatives should be explored. Many have suggested various structural changes, including taking the professional teacher training back into the public sector.
Some local authorities covet the potential of teacher education, running local courses “accredited by” universities and staffed by teacher fellows seconded to higher education in the last few years. However, this would be a damaging step towards the Teach First-style “apprenticeship” model that is de-professionalising teaching in England.
A model of “public ownership” might take the form of a National College of Teacher Education, a central body run by the various stakeholders – the GTCS, authorities, Education Scotland, teachers’ bodies and associations – which would centralise matters such as recruitment, course design, student placement coordination and assessment.
The college would employ full-time professional teacher educators based in existing campuses, where high quality research would continue to be carried out by university academics. This would ensure the connection between professional education and the research community could be effectively exploited, and, through e-learning and streamed content, disseminated on a national basis. In addition, this consistency would end the current disconnect between university training and the first year of employment, with authorities assured that that their new staff had a common foundation on which to plan further development.
Whatever happens, a radical reimagining such as this may be required if the current slide in teacher recruitment and retention is to be reversed.
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