On top of the Chronicle article about the threatened PGCE closure, the matter continues to attract national attention.
“Our experience, working with head teachers who have been doing recruitment and selection with us as a school-based provider for something like 10 years, is that they are finding that those schools that do not have the experience are looking for teachers and not trainees. They are not selecting, and we are getting returned to us people who we would probably have put on the course but they do not, because they clearly do not represent the finished article. If schools have not had significant experience in ITT recruitment as opposed to teacher recruitment, they tend to miss some of the opportunities that are presented to them.”
Martin Thompson, Executive Director, The National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers speaking to the House of Commons Select Committee on Education, September 2013.
The problem outlined by Martin Thompson is one of the reasons why UCU opposes the closure of university-based teacher training courses. Many able candidates will be turned down as school heads look to admit only those candidates who can do a job of work in the classroom even before they have been trained. The question is – how good a job will they be able to do ?
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