Views & Opinion How to stop NQTs from leaving the profession
Close career support for new teachers is crucial if we are to stem the tide of NQTs quitting the profession, say headteachers Chris Wheatley and Paul Stone.
An estimated 40 per cent of new teachers leave the profession within five years of qualifying.
It’s a startling statistic, quoted by Ofsted’s Sir Michael Wilshaw earlier this year, and is one of the starkest pieces of evidence of a fundamental challenge facing schools today.
The responsibilities and accountability that teachers face today have contributed to these statistics. For many new teachers the workload can be a shock to the system. Along with all the tasks focused on our priority - children’s attainment – there’s also SATs, Ofsted, performance tables and performance management.
The daily reality of a primary teacher’s job today is very different from what we experienced as primary teachers in the 1990s. Marking is a good example. The recommended approach to marking children’s work back then was ‘bubble and block’ in which a tick and a simple comment with a learning point was the norm. Today we expect a far more detailed approach, with responses from each child proving their learning. Then there is the personalisation of learning and a greater emphasis on the planning, checking and marking of homework. This is a lot of work in classes of over 30 children. When I ask my fellow heads and teacher colleagues about these responsibilities most say that nothing feels just for the sake of it. But it all adds up and, when you factor in the additional work needed to feed accountability pressures, this can make the job too big for some people. Schools can play a significant role in keeping new teachers in the profession by giving them the proper, continuous support they deserve.
Inspiring Leaders, a training partnership made up our respective East Midlands teaching school alliances, opens applications to our first School Direct teacher training programme this autumn for a September 2015 start. When recruits to the 60 place programme successfully complete the course the following summer many will start teaching careers in one of the 109 schools that make up our wider partnership.
Each NQT will get a ‘career champion’ – an experienced teacher from within the school or the wider partnership who is also on the middle or senior leadership development courses that we also offer. For the first three years of teaching the NQT will have weekly sessions with their champion in which they’ll receive help and advice on any aspect of teaching. The career champion will also benefit by getting valuable experience of developing and supporting staff - key skills for middle and senior leaders. This is a significant step on from what currently happens in most schools. In most primaries a newly qualified teacher will have a career coach or mentor. Often this will be the head because no one else has the time to take on the responsibility. Meetings are infrequent - termly or even annual - and driven by performance management demands rather than a desire to nurture an NQT’s career development.
In our partnership we will also look beyond those first three years. We’ll analyse the new teacher’s leadership potential and give them the chance to enrol on our leadership development courses, which includes NPQH. Clear career pathways motivate and build morale but you don’t see this approach nearly enough in primary schools.
If the career champion approach is to work nationally it should be a statutory part of existing PPA time for NQTs. Schools would also need to look at forming alliances or more formal partnerships with other schools so that they could accommodate the career champion role.
Career champions won't reduce workload but they will make teaching more manageable and sustainable in those early years - and that will surely help to prevent new teachers from leaving the profession.
New computer science curriculum
– what teachers need to know Comment by Helen Cunningham,
publishing director at Cambridge University Press
The teaching of computing in the UK has been dramatically overhauled in recent years as the subject has grown in popularity among students and in importance among teachers.
Computer science is now on an entirely new footing from the old ICT qualifications it replaced - focussed on programming computers rather than operating them.
As such it is now recognised as ‘the fourth science’ and an important STEM subject – sometimes described as the silent ‘c’ in STEM, as it shares many attributes with science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is also included in the science qualification options within the English Baccalaureate. The new Computer Science requirements of the National Curriculum at Key Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 started first teaching in September 2014, with the reformed A level being taught from September 2015 and the reformed GCSE from 2016.
The sequence of these changes means that Computer Science teachers will need to cater for different levels of prior experience in the same classroom.
The curriculum redevelopment means a big reduction in the ICT content of the subject and an increased focus on algorithms, computational thinking and programming skills. The mathematical and quantitative content has been strengthened and all accredited specifications include a minimum of 10 per cent maths.
Impact on teachers
Programming may be an unfamiliar topic to teachers and students alike. Many teachers are comfortable with ICT, but not computer science, and are challenged by having to learn new skills such as programming, coding and algorithms in order to teach the new curriculum. Alongside these curriculum changes, and in common with many other GCSEs, Computer Science is
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becoming a linear course, with no tiered examinations and new grading, progress tracking and accountability systems. The volume of coursework will also reduce, with controlled assessment accounting for a maximum of 20% of a student’s final grade, as opposed to the current 60%.
Predicting and understanding grades will be more difficult with new grade boundaries, especially at GCSE. Coursework will continue to play a role in assessment, but will be substantially reduced – placing a greater emphasis on the final exam. Teaching styles may have to be altered too as, instead of teaching in distinct sections for modules, there will be a cumulative build up to the final exams. The decoupling of AS and A Level also presents a timetabling challenge, with the specifications designed for co- teaching, but as AS and A Level content is integrated into each examined unit, co-teaching requires significant planning.
With the launch of the accredited A Level specifications delayed, teachers have had just one year to prepare for teaching the new curriculum, so it will be important that they choose, purchase and familiarise themselves with their new resources as quickly as possible. To help with the co-teachability of the AS Level with A Level, teachers should also make sure that any new resources include content for both qualifications.
Support
Cambridge University Press is supporting the exam reforms with a range of free resources for teachers and students, including:
• free Practise and Prepare GCSE Computing site:
www.cambridge.org/gcse-computing • free computing MOOC:
www.cambridgegcsecomputing.org
• free interactive digital samples Further resources will be available to support the newly reformed GCSEs from 2015.
January 2015
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