cochrane1964

What have been the main weaknesses in implementation? The whole thing just vanished into this plethora of bureaucracy. The key mistake was not to provide central guidance and centralised schemes that would bring teachers together with appropriate experts in industry, universities, whatever, to enable them to do it. At whose feet would you lay the blame? The entire political leadership class

Okay, so basically he's parroting here what we in primary have been jumping up and down and screaming for the past four to five years.

No-one listened to us then, and no-one will listen to him now.

This is goldust, I'm printing this out!

Brilliant

CanuckGrrl

cochrane1964

What have been the main weaknesses in implementation? The whole thing just vanished into this plethora of bureaucracy. The key mistake was not to provide central guidance and centralised schemes that would bring teachers together with appropriate experts in industry, universities, whatever, to enable them to do it. At whose feet would you lay the blame? The entire political leadership class

Okay, so basically he's parroting here what we in primary have been jumping up and down and screaming for the past four to five years.

No-one listened to us then, and no-one will listen to him now.

champagnecharlie

  I actually wonder why so many of my 'senior' colleagues have been willing to follow this so blindly.  They are, after all, apparently well-educated highly qualified professionals. 

Ovaries too, of course

Hi all

Here's a link to the original article in TESS

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6289168

Best wishes

Gail

Over the years, Lindsay Paterson has made a number of interesting observations about education and his comments on a Curriculum for Excellence, and the vagueness of the aspirations, are particularly apt.

However, let's consider this comment from the article:

"What weaknesses do you see in students currently entering teacher training?

The academic standard is not high enough. You cannot teach maths or language development without having an advanced grasp of these subjects. It's a fiction, an illusion, to think you can teach primary maths and yourself only have the equivalent of Standard grade maths. I think you have to have university-level maths. And the typical entrant to an undergraduate teacher education course at the moment would struggle to do maths beyond Higher."

Okay, so what he seems to be suggesting is that primary teachers should have a university degree in Maths and English.

He suggests that the way forward is that teachers should no longer mainly be students of a faculty or school of education; they should mainly be students of some other part of the university and have a pedagogical expertise developing alongside their main substantive discipline.

So, that would mean primary teachers would have a university degree in Maths and English as their main substantive disciplines.

Oh, but wait a minute, would primary teachers also need to have university-level qualifications in the other curricular areas they are expected to teach such as Science, History, Music, PE, Art, Geography etc or would a basic Higher qualification be acceptable?

Now call me naive but, in a lifetime of teaching, I haven't met many primary teachers who have had a university degree in Maths and English. In fact, I haven't met many secondary teachers who taught both Maths and English and the ones that did had no desire to teach in the primary sector.

Whilst I would agree that having a Standard grade pass in maths is perhaps inadequate for teaching Primary 6 and 7 maths, I suspect that having a maths degree may unnecessary for the earlier stages of primary education where teachers are responsible for nursery to P7.

Indeed, I know of one well-known Maths Consultant who seems to have quite unrealistic expectations of the sort of mental calculations young children ought to be able to do. Unfortunately, being a maths expert is no guarantee that you will be able to successfully teach, or understand, young children.

Thirty or forty years ago, having Higher English and O Level Maths and Arithmetic was considered perfectly adequate for training to be a primary teacher. If the current Higher, Standard grade or National equivalent is no longer considered adequate as a qualification for primary teaching, then it perhaps says more about the way in which the school curriculum, and external qualifications, have become 'more accessible' than anything else.

There is, of course, nothing to stop the powers-that-be making the qualifications for teaching more demanding with a greater emphasis on subject knowledge. However, they may find there is a shortage of suitably qualified candidates, especially those with specialist degrees, able and interested in teaching the entire primary curriculum, along with all the other important personality attributes.

Finally, I did find Lindsays Paterson's personal profile interesting:

Education: Tain Royal Academy; MA, University of Aberdeen; PhD in statistics, University of Edinburgh.

Career: Lecturer - specialised in statistics in medical epidemiology at Heriot-Watt University -researched the effects of exposure to lead on children's development; Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, 1995-August 2012; now in School of Social and Political Science.

So, that's school to university... to university... to university... to university... to university and then, without ever having had the privilege of wiping someone else's child's nose, he reaches similar conclusions about the education system to those working in the classroom.

Never mind, I'm sure we're all up to the challenges and aspirations of the Donaldson Report.

Flyonthewall75

Now call me naive but, in a lifetime of teaching, I haven't met many primary teachers who have had a university degree in Maths and English. In fact, I haven't met many secondary teachers who taught both Maths and English and the ones that did had no desire to teach in the primary sector.

Surely that's the point?   Math's at primary level should be delivered by subject specialists trained to university level.  At the very least, primary teachers who teach it should have a qualification to Higher or Advanced Higher level (AH = year 1 at uni).  So subjects such as Math's and Science and Musicin which primary teachers have traditionally been underqualified in, should be taught by well qualified subject specialists?

My reading of Professor Paterson is that we have been far too accepting of the concept of the primary teacher as a generalist.  The thinking is that because they are "only" teaching  younger children, they don't need advanced qualifications.  I'd go a little further than that and suggest that it's the last hangover of the 19th and early 20th C vision of primary education, the purpose of which was to provide fodder for the factories and domestic service and therefore required only a basic 3Rs approach.  Secondary education and university thereafterwas not for the likes of them other than a few exceptional lads o pairts ( and it was ALWAYS lads) who managed to wriggle out of the primordial ooze and fight their way to the top.

I find it bizarre that many primary colleagues are so defensive of their generalist position that so many of them sneer at  postgraduates who do the one year pg education course and also those who have high academic qualifications and consequentially have spent little time in the "real world".  As if gaining academic qualifications was not a part of the real world too and one which is vital to the future of our nation.  Don't be offended but we don't get paid to wipe the noses of our pupils: we get paid to educate them to the highest possible standard and that means we need the best qualified graduates in ALL disciplines whether they treach nursery, primary or secondary.

And for goodness sake let's not go down the "having an honours degree/ PhD does not make you a good teacher route.  The logic of that is that we return to the days of the pupil teacher.  There are plenty of highly qualified graduates who also have the humane skills needed tobe an effective teacher.  It's the poor salaries (and pensions!), poor working conditions and sneering of their potential peers that prevents them even trying.

Dominie

Surely that's the point?   Math's at primary level should be delivered by subject specialists trained to university level.

Yes, but by the same logic, English Language at primary school should be delivered by subject specialists trained to university level. What is more important to learning, in general, than the ability to read, write and understand?

How many pupils struggle with maths because they can't read, and understand, the question?

Dominie

My reading of Professor Paterson is that we have been far too accepting of the concept of the primary teacher as a generalist. 

I couldn't agree more. Although there is something to be said for the security of a single class teacher at the early stages of primary, there should be increased provision of full time, primary specialists in english, maths, science, modern foreign languages, history, geography, music, art, PE, health education and everything else the government thinks should be taught.

All we need is a massive financial investment in schools, staffing and ITE provision.

Dominie

As if gaining academic qualifications was not a part of the real world too and one which is vital to the future of our nation.

Again, I agree. I've never understood why some people in teaching, and elsewhere, believe you can't be an effective teacher if you go from school to university / ITE institution to teaching in a school and somehow first need to work in the 'real world' to gain 'experience'.

Doctors, dentists and lawyers are generally recruited into professional university courses straight from school. Why should teaching be any different?

Dominie

Don't be offended but we don't get paid to wipe the noses of our pupils: we get paid to educate them to the highest possible standard and that means we need the best qualified graduates in ALL disciplines whether they treach nursery, primary or secondary.

In theory, yes, but in practice a great deal of a primary teacher's time is spent on social, health and educational issues in addition to direct teaching. For example, there are children who are not fully toilet trained, children with special needs who do not have adequate auxiliary support, children who arrive at school ill, children who are not collected at the end of the school day, children with significant behaviour issues, children who are so emotionally disturbed they probably shouldn't even be in a mainstream class.

I'm sure there are similar, problematic pupil issues in secondary schools but the young age of the nursery and primary pupils involved does have implications for how a teacher responds to their individual needs. If only we had school janitors who worked the same hours as pupils, if only we had school nurses who visited more than a couple of hours a fortnight, if only we had full time school secretaries, clerical assistants and auxiliaries perhaps primary teachers could say, "I am professionally trained to teach - I am not employed to care for pupils' social needs" but somehow I suspect most primary teachers will find that strict separation of roles difficult in practice.

Dominie

There are plenty of highly qualified graduates who also have the humane skills needed tobe an effective teacher.  It's the poor salaries (and pensions!), poor working conditions and sneering of their potential peers that prevents them even trying.

So, provided we appoint highly qualified graduates with effective teaching skills, pay them good salaries and provide them with appropriate working conditions and pensions, our education system has the potential to be one of the best in the world.

I can't argue with that.