Beleaguered teachers

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Teachers believe they are being blamed for the inadequacies of a second rate education system. Yet apparent shortcomings in some teacher training colleges and claims that a high number of teachers in schools are incompetent has begun to drain public confidence in the profession.

By Ed Stourton, presenter of BBC Radio 4's Education 2000 forum

At Anglia Polytechnic University the trainee teachers are facing anything but a peaceful Christmas. The Education Secretary, David Blunkett, has said that "the quality of applications" for courses such as theirs "is worrying" - in other words, he thinks tomorrow's teachers simply are not bright enough.

That's just one of many problems now facing the teaching profession. Bethan Marshall, an English lecturer at King's College London's School of Education, says there is special concern about those who come to primary teaching straight from school. Typical A-level qualifications for applicants to basic teacher training courses are a C and two D grades - lower than for nursing.

Although most of those going into secondary school teaching are graduates, the Teacher Training Agency, which monitors training in England, wants to raise the academic standards of applicants for both primary and secondary courses. But Rebecca Bunting, who is the Dean of the School of Education at Anglia says even those with what she politely calls "threshold competencies" can be good teachers.

"Some students will be high fliers, others will have threshold competencies but the brightest and best are not necessarily going to make the best teachers.

"It isn't just about knowing your subject - 'if you know about physics you can teach physics' - well that isn't necessarily the case."

Those who can...

But the brightest and best is what the government says it wants - John Herbert, with an A, B and C in his A-levels is the kind of person they have in mind.

In short supply: Trainee maths teachers in Manchester

"I certainly don't think you just go and teach in some last ditch effort because you haven't got the qualifications to get into anything else," he said.

"If your A-level grades or whatever aren't as good then that doesn't necessarily mean you'll make a bad teacher just because you weren't good at sitting exams."

Rebecca Bunting believes good teachers can be made by good training - even if the profession doesn't attract the top candidates.

"The real skill is in translating your own personal academic knowledge into work with children and pupils in the classroom," she said.

"That's what universities have to do. They take the knowledge that students have, they develop it, and they apply it. And it's that that is the quality of the training they deliver."

Shortage of applicants

The government has begun to take a very close interest in what goes on in such training groups. In September, the Teacher Training Agency published its first full report on the quality of teacher training colleges, universities and schools over the past three years. The results were scarcely encouraging: inspectors found that 10 courses at nine institutions failed to meet government standards.

Their future is at stake

There is a crisis in quantity as well as quality. The number of students applying to be primary school teachers is collapsing, and applications for post-graduate courses have begun to fall too.

"We might not be getting the pool from which we can choose in order to ensure standards," said Bethan Marshall. The problem is particularly acute in maths and science but subjects which have traditionally recruited extremely well, like English, are at the moment just about on break even."

"From my class at college I can't think of anyone else who actually wanted to be a teacher," said John Herbert. "It was: 'Why? Why on earth would you want to do that - go and earn some more money somewhere else.'

"But it's not the sort of thing you do for money, you do it because you want to be a teacher."

Pay for skills

Those who are teaching already feel under intense pressure. The Chief Inspector of Schools in England, Chris Woodhead, has said that as many as 13,000 of them are bad at what they do. At Golden Hillock School, a comprehensive in Birmingham, the headteacher, Thelma Probert, finds that figure hard to take.

"Clearly there are people in any profession, any job, who are less effective than others," she said. "And there is nobody who wants to lose the poor and ineffective teacher from their school more than other teachers.

After school hours the humanities department meet to plan field trips. The department has seven staff and its head, Gerry Whitehouse, has been teaching for 25 years.

Someone of his level and experience would typically be earning around £30,000 a year - the most an ordinary classroom teacher can earn is less than £23,000, no matter how long he or she has been teaching. The government plans to shake up the pay system.

Head teachers will be able to make as much as £70,000 a year, although they will soon have to have a national qualification. Classroom teachers will be able to break through that £23,000 ceiling if they are judged to be performing well, and they will be eligible for a share of bonuses paid to high performing schools. But the idea of linking performance to pay has caused controversy.

An end to sharing?

"How do you measure the performance of a teacher?" asked Mr Whitehouse. "Teachers work in many different environments. It's very difficult to measure and compare how one teacher is performing against another teacher.

"Secondly, if teachers are going to have their own individual performance measured, we here work as a department so if I prepare materials I give them to all my friends, but if I know my results and my pay is going to be based on that, well I'm keeping my bag of sweets to myself and I'm not sharing it with anybody else."

Susan O'Neill, who teaches history and geography and runs the school library, is finding talk of the need constantly to drive up standards wearisome.

"We've taken on the National Curriculum, we've improved our schools enormously over the last 10 years, and a lot of that has been done through sheer hard work - much of it in the evenings after school," she said.

"I really can't see how much more there is to give."

'Super teacher'

David Draper teaches at St Birinus School in Didcot, Oxfordshire. He is Head of English and an Advanced Skills Teacher - part of an experiment the government says it wants to encourage to keep good teachers in the classroom. As a so-called 'super teacher' he can earn up to £40,000 a year.

Critics say that will provoke resentment, but he has not been aware of any. Mr Draper thinks other staff are pleased that the school gets a share of the recognition from having three advanced skills teachers.

"I think the fact that one has responsibilities, extra work - possibly a lot of extra work - means that other staff recognise that you are not getting something for nothing," he said.

"This is not a reward for being here a long time and just as you have payments for responsibilities, I think it can be viewed in the same way."