2010 November
Education secretary plans to reform teacher training, establishing new chain of teaching schools in the style of teaching hospitals.
Ministers will today publish a white paper in which the government outlines plans to reform teacher training, including measures to recruit the brightest graduates into the profession and encourage teachers to develop skills by observing colleagues in the classroom.
Schools will be set tough new targets, with secondary schools considered failing if less than 35% of their pupils achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths. Failure to improve could lead to a change of management.
There will also be a new national standard for primary schools, which will need to get 60% of their pupils to benchmark literacy levels by the age of 11.
Michael Gove, the education secretary, will propose establishing a new chain of teaching schools, in the style of teaching hospitals, where new recruits can learn from the best teachers.
“I think the problem has been, over the last 13 years, teaching as a profession has had the initiative, the fun, the enjoyment squeezed out of it,” Gove told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The minister will today give further details of a new “English baccalaureate” qualification to recognise the achievements of GCSE students who complete a broad course of studies.
The “English bac” would not replace GCSEs, but would be a certificate to reward pupils who pass at least five of the exams, at grade C or above, including English, maths, one science, one foreign language and a humanities subject such as history. The national curriculum will focus on core areas of knowledge, allowing teachers more time in the school day for subjects like music.
Gove told the BBC: “We’ve had a national curriculum, which was initially intended just to specify how to impart knowledge in the core subjects.
“Its grown to occupy all the space almost during the teaching day and at the same time our league tables which measure achievement have I think driven the sort of behaviour which has led to fewer and fewer students doing stretching subjects, and more of them doing subjects which count in the league tables but employers do not value.”
Gove will also outline plans to restore respect for teachers by confirming that heads will be given the power to punish pupils who misbehave on the way to or from school.
Ministers believe that their reforms will change the balance of power in the classroom to put teachers back in charge.
Teachers who are the subject of allegations by pupils will also win the right to anonymity until they are charged with an offence.
The white paper to be published later today will cast teachers as the guardians of the country’s intellectual heritage. Under coalition plans, pupils will be marked down in exams for poor spelling, punctuation or grammar.
Gove argues that the classroom should be an “open space” for teachers to collaborate. Emulating the practice in Singapore, the government plans to encourage the filming of the best lessons, which will be put online to inspire other teachers.
“We will all be better off if we can watch a fantastic physics lesson online and other physics teachers can see how they can work more effectively,” he said at the weekend.
The government also plans to make more bursaries available to teachers to pursue masters degrees or other postgraduate qualifications to deepen knowledge of their subjects.
“I think it’s important that teachers feel part of the intellectual fabric of the country.”
Gove describes teaching as a “craft”, which should be learned in the workplace. It requires both emotional intelligence and intellectual accomplishment, he argues.
“If you look at a surgeon, the craft of surgery is allied to a real intellectual knowledge of how the body works. Teaching should be up there with surgery, where you combine the intellectual skills and the talent to produce amazing results.”
The white paper is also expected to abolish the current GCSE structure of frequent “bite-sized” modules, to be replaced with a single exam at the end of two years.
Ministers are concerned that breaking the courses into chunks means children spend more time revising rather than learning.
The wideranging white paper will outline further plans to extend academy-style independence to more schools. Academies, which are independent of local authority control, were praised in an Ofsted report published yesterday. Out of 43 that were inspected in the past academic year, 11 were outstanding, Ofsted said.
However, plans for all state schools in England to have their funding set directly by central government, bypassing local authorities, have been dropped.
Source: The Guardian