8-PAGE PULL-OUT SUPPLEMENT TABLETEducation SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES FEBRUARY 2011


should spend less time on academic theory and more gaining practical experience. Most newly qualified teachers would probably agree that the most valuable part of their training was spent in school learning how to manage, motivate and inspire their pupils. Even so, the reforms are likely to prove


controversial. One reason is that there is no clear evidence that making schools responsible for managing the training programme leads to better teaching. Indeed, the evidence suggests the opposite. HM Chief Inspector of Education, Christine Gilbert, concluded in her annual report, published in November 2010, that more outstanding initial teacher education was being delivered by universities and colleges than by programmes based in schools. The chief inspector’s verdict raises


Teaching the teachers


Church universities and colleges are centres of excellence for teacher training but their work is threatened by the Government’s plans to switch training away from colleges to schools. As Jeremy Sutcliffereports, the idea has provoked criticism from Catholic bishops and academics


once again likely to be on plans to increase the number of academies, create a new breed of parent-run free schools and introduce a pupil premium, the Liberal Democrats’ big idea to channel extra cash to support schools teaching pupils from poor families. So far, surprisingly little attention has


A


been paid to the coalition Government’s potentially equally far-reaching plans to reform teacher training. These include raising the minimum qualification for


s the Government prepares to pilot radical education reforms through Parliament, much of the attention is


trainee teachers to a 2:2 honours degree, barring students with ordinary degrees and thirds from entering the profession. They also include restructuring initial teacher training so that students spend more time learning on the job, in schools, rather than in universities and colleges. On the face of it, these proposals sound


rather modest. For 20 years, the trend has been for student teachers to spend increasing amounts of time in schools learning practical classroom management skills. Successive education ministers, both Labour and Conservative, have stepped up the rhetoric by insisting that teachers


questions about the quality of the growing number of school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) programmes that have developed over the last decade. It also raises doubts about the wisdom of Education Secretary Michael Gove’s decision to increase further the time students spend in schools rather than training college. Moreover, under Mr Gove’s plans to restructure state education, schools will increasingly be organised into clusters with a lead school or academy taking on responsibility for training students. Modelled on teaching hospitals in the


NHS, these so-called “teaching schools” could lead to university and college departments being reduced to the role of junior partners. Higher-education institutions are already becoming alarmed at the potential loss of funding, and there are fears that undergraduate courses, mainly taken by students training to become primary-school teachers, could close, with hundreds of academic posts being axed. This threat, which could spell the end of


the long-established BEd degree, will be all the greater if the Government carries out its plan to require all new entrants to the profession to have a minimum 2:2 honours degree even before they start teacher training – turning teaching into an all-postgraduate profession. The potential impact on Catholic


education is causing acute concern. In November 2010, the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales urged the Government to consider the consequences of moving responsibility for initial teacher training away from universities and colleges. The


INSIDE | Ethics at university | Meditation in primaries | School report 5 February 2011 | TABLET Education | S1


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