Teacher training 'not sufficient'

Trainees have the experience to handle discipline well, Ofsted says

Many of those training "on the job" to be teachers in England are not being taught well enough, Ofsted has said.

The organisations managing the Graduate Teacher Programme attracted well-qualified candidates, the second of three reports about the scheme said.

In addition, these were often in subjects with teacher shortage, and in parts of the country where recruitment could be difficult, Ofsted said.

But there had been little progress in training quality since the last report.

Discipline

The programme is aimed at more mature people, often career-changers, who already have degrees.

One in five lessons taken by trainees that were seen during inspections was unsatisfactory in some way.

Miriam Rosen, Ofsted's director of education, said: "The graduate teaching programme helps trainees develop classroom management skills quickly and those who choose this route are often more confident in dealing with discipline problems.

Trainees who taught a subject that was not well matched to the content of their degree often taught weak or poor lessons Ofsted report

"But more attention needs to be paid to developing trainees' ability to teach their subject to a high standard."

There were higher standards among primary school trainees than those working in secondary schools - where about a third of the 47 organisations inspected had weaknesses.

In secondary training half of the trainees had shortcomings in subject and professional knowledge and one in 10 was "weak".

"Secondary trainees who taught a subject that was not well matched to the content of their degree often taught weak or poor lessons because their understanding of the subject had not been developed sufficiently during the training programme," the report said.

'Best ever'

Unlike trainees following other routes into the profession, few of those on the Graduate Teacher Programme read recent classroom research or educational publications, Ofsted said.

"This hampered their ability to evaluate their teaching and pupils' learning."

And they "often demonstrated a lack of understanding of some of the key concepts in the subjects they taught and they failed to identify pupils' errors and misconceptions".

The Department for Education and Skills said there was no question of allowing under-qualified people into classrooms.

"As Ofsted have said we have the 'best ever' generation of newly qualified teachers," a spokesman said.

Ninety per cent of those coming into teaching on employment-based routes did gain Qualified Teacher Status, and they made up one in six new teachers.

"The knowledge and expertise that they have developed in their previous career is extremely valuable, especially those with a mathematics, science and modern languages background.

"We are exceeding our recruitment targets in these areas."

Since the report was written, 32 of the 47 organisations had met the department's "challenging" accreditation standards, three had stopped work and the remainder were being closely scrutinised by the Training and Development Agency for Schools.

Its executive director, Graham Holley, welcomed the Ofsted report.

"Improving the quality of initial teacher training is a key objective for the agency," he said.