Six weeks training for new Liverpool teachers

Jul 30 2007 by David Higgerson, Liverpool Daily Post

UNIVERSITY graduates with just six weeks’ teacher training are to be put in charge of lessons in schools across Liverpool, the Daily Post can reveal.

The Government has confirmed its Teach First programme is to be introduced in Liverpool from next year, saying the arrival of high-flier graduates who in the past may not have considered teaching as a career will help drive up standards.

But some within the profession in Merseyside fear it will only make it harder for fully-qualified teachers who have gone through more traditional training routes to get jobs.

Unions have also expressed concern about the scheme, saying the short-term commitment required from graduates could be detrimental to the quality of children’s education.

One Liverpool-based teacher said last night: “Many teachers don’t like the idea of a graduate coming in to a school with just a two-year commitment because it doesn’t create stability, which is often what challenging schools need.

“Teaching for most is a life-long commitment.”

Liverpool’s National Union of Teachers representative Julie Lyon-Taylor said: “In principle, such a scheme as Teach First should be good news, but our members would like to see the issues of why teachers are leaving the profession, things like stress, addressed first.”

Despite making progress in recent years, Liverpool’s secondary schools still lag about 5% behind the national average for the number of pupils who get five A*-C grades, and like many areas across the country, is suffering difficulty recruiting and retaining new teachers.

Earlier this year, the Daily Post revealed that many newly-qualified teachers were ending up working for teacher agencies because schools were opting to fill full-time posts with temporary staff to save cash.

Last night, Cllr Mike Storey, a Liverpool city councillor and head teacher of Plantation Community Primary School, in Halewood, said: “This scheme is a good idea but schools also need to address the need to help newly-qualified teachers coming through traditional channels.

“There are many very good teachers out there who just aren’t getting the chance to do anything other than move from school to school on a temporary basis because the only work they can get is at teacher training agencies.

“That issue should be resolved as a priority.”

The scheme has also provoked concern from the National Association of Head Teachers, which stated in a report that it created a “risk of short-term involvement as a stepping stone to completely different career”

A spokesman said: “Teaching must be seen as a legitimate and attractive profession. Imagine this approach in medicine or law.”

Teach First is based on a similar scheme in America, and is operated as a charity in the UK. Tony Blair’s son Nicky is one of those taking part in London.

Its website states it expects participants to “make a difference” to the schools it works in, and adds: “Teach First unashamedly expects many of its participants to become the future ministers, CEOs, and serial entrepreneurs of our age.”

Piloted in London since 2002, Liverpool will be only the third city in the country to take up the Teach First scheme, also set to be introduced in Manchester this year.

The scheme gives graduates six weeks’ intense summer training before they are placed in schools where more than a third of pupils are entitled to free school meals, a statistic used by the Government to measure deprivation.

In return, the graduates have to commit to two years at their school before opting to carry on or leave the profession. Companies including Goldman Sachs, Sainsburys, Cadburys and Citigroup also provide business-related training to the Teach First participants.

Education Minister Lord Adonis said: “Teach First has helped to create a rise in applications from the leading universities, where there was little short of a collapse in recruitment during the 1980s and 1990s.

“Since 1998, there has been a welcome 54% increase in recruitment graduates of the Russell group of leading universities.

“Teach First is engaging a sense of challenge and duty among the best graduates, training them as a group in the summer after graduation rather than through a traditional year-long PGCE.

“In London, there were nearly 1,000 applications for 200 places on Teach First, an incredible result given the traditional difficulties with recruiting into teaching in the leading universities.”

Recruitment of graduates to work in Liverpool schools will begin in September.

davidhiggerson