Grrr - PGCE rant

Just clearing out my Bloglines account and I stumbled across a great story on the Guardian Education website.


Trainee primary teachers need more time in class. Here's an excerpt:

"Trainee primary school teachers are not getting enough experience in the classroom, the schools watchdog said today.

An investigation by Ofsted into training courses to teach at key stage two (ages seven to 11) and key stage three (11 to 14) found there was too much emphasis on teachers learning their subject. What teachers needed, particularly for primary aged pupils, was more hands on experience in the classroom.

Ofsted warned that the structure of one-year postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) courses "lacked clarity"....."

Well, duh!

Another excerpt:

"The chief inspector [of schools], David Bell, said "More thought needs to be put into whether our future teachers are getting the training in the classroom they need.""

I've said it before and I'll say it again - students on one year PGCE courses are going into schools as teachers unprepared. When there are 3 or 4 year B.A. courses out there to train students to be teachers it is puzzling how the same content can be squeezed into a 1 year course. The simple answer of course is that it can't. The 1 year course must by its very nature leave out a large proportion of what the teachers who are on 3 and 4 year courses learn. Ergo, Ipso Facto and other latin things, it produces a lower quality of teachers. I'm not saying that you can't become a good teacher on a PGCEcourse, only that more students will become good teachers on 3 or 4 year courses. I did a 4 year course and spent over 100 days in school in total. That is simply not possible on a 1 year course.

It's obvious to me that the PGCE education course was created so the Govt could push loads of students through to becoming teachers in its term in power. It's easy to work out just by doing the maths:

Govt term = 4 years.
BA (hons) course length = 4 years
PGCE course length = 1 year.

So in 4 years in govt there can be 4 times as many PGCE students as BA hons students. So the govt can say "Look at all the teachers we've got!" This has however led to job shortages as there are now more qualified teachers than there are jobs. Great stuff eh?

Rant over - x-posted to my other blog, my LJ and teaching_uk