Tag Archives: teachers

Teacher Conduct: maintaining high standards

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With little by way of statistics to consider, I thought that I would pay a return visit to the Teacher Regulation Agency site, and see whether they were being kept busy dealing with cases of teacher misconduct. So far, in 2021, there have been 21 judgements reported by panels appointed by the Agency, of which 6 resulted in ‘No Oder’ being made, and the remainder in ‘Prohibition Notices’ being served on teachers.

Despite the huge imbalance between men and women in the teaching profession, almost exactly the same number of men and women have been the subject of hearing so far in 2021. However, four men compared with two women have had ‘No Order’ outcomes. Although many of these involved behaviour deemed unacceptable, in relation to the teacher standards, the level of infringement and the past history of the teacher seemed to justify the panel making a ‘No Order’ decision that was supported by the Secretary of State.

Teachers need to be aware that their private life, and who they live with matters in maintaining appropriate professional standards. There were a number of ‘Prohibition Orders’ made this year as a result of a teacher having a sex offender at their premises, and not reporting the fact to the school authorities.

A number of teachers also failed to either keep up their safeguarding training or to report incidents where a vulnerable child might have been at risk and as a result these teachers incurred a ban from teaching, including a headteacher.

A criminal conviction for an offence including a ‘Class A’ drug also lead to a ‘Prohibition Order’ against a teacher. Teachers also need to ensure that they don’t conceal incidents in their employment record when applying for a teaching post.

Sadly, the most common reason for banning a person from the teaching profession remains the development by a teacher of a relationship with a pupil or former pupil.  This has been the most common reason so far in 2021 for male teachers being banned. In one case, the incident was ‘historic’ and related to events more than a decade ago and at a different school to where the teacher was working when the incident came to light.

Interestingly, there seem to be fewer contested hearings this year. It may well be that the length of time since the commission of the behaviour cited plus the weight of evidence makes it no longer worth a teacher contesting a hearing where case law would suggest the outcome was a ‘Prohibition Order’. Indeed, one suspects that many of these teachers will have left the profession for other work after being dismissed by their school.

I have long maintained that, if there are going to be these exacting standards for professional life that a teacher must adhere to, then the quid pro quo should be that the term ‘teacher’ is a reserved occupation. The fact that anyone can call themselves a teacher, presumably even if banned by the Teacher Regulation Agency, is an anomaly that needs correcting.

Undergraduate applications for Education courses

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UCAS has published a Statistical Release about the number of applications received for undergraduate courses by the January 2021 deadline. The deadline was extended by two weeks this year because of the unusual circumstances created by the covid pandemic. https://www.ucas.com/data-and-analysis/undergraduate-statistics-and-reports/ucas-undergraduate-releases/applicant-releases-2021/2021-cycle-applicant-figures-january-deadline

Normally, I don’t take account of undergraduate numbers, but I thought it worth looking at the JACS3 code for Group X that covers both teacher education and the teaching of the academic discipline of education. The numbers are for applications from applicants domiciled in England.

Overall applications for the X code area have fallen over the past decade, presumably as teacher training places have reduced in number at the undergraduate level.

2012       65,610

2019       41,250

2020       38,130

20121    42,310

The majority of applications come from women. Applications from males were:

2012       11,260

2019         4,960

2020         3,930

20121      4,820

So, although overall applications in 2021 are higher than in 2019, those from men have not recovered to the level of 2019 by deadline day.

The majority of applications come from school-leavers. For men aged 18-19 the number of applications was 3,270 of the 4,820, with only around 1,230 from all he age groups over 21.

Should there still be vocational training at undergraduate level for teachers? It is interesting that UCAS have pointed out the large increase in applications for Nursing courses. “Total applications for nursing courses have risen by almost a third (32%) to reach 60,130, with increases seen in each age group – from UK 18 year old school leavers (a record 16,560 applicants, up 27% on 2020) to mature students aged 35 and over, where for the first time over 10,000 (10,770, a 39% rise) have applied.”

UCAS also note that” the largest proportional increase in UK applicants by their declared ethnic group has come from black and mixed race students, both up 15% to 40,690 and 25,830 respectively. Applicants from the Asian ethnic group have increased by 10% to 70,140, while 11% more white students (to a total of 352,170) have applied.” There is also good news on the social mix of students, “more than a quarter of 18 year old students from the most disadvantaged areas (26.4% from quintile 1 of the UK using the POLAR4 measure, 33,960 students) have applied, up from 24.5% at the same point in 2020.”, but there is still from for more participation from students from these areas.

UCAS report that “overall, a total of 616,360 people had applied, an increase of 8.5% and a new record for this point in the application cycle.” However, perhaps not surprisingly, applications for the EU (excluding the Irish Republic) have declined this year.

Higher education still appears an attractive proposition for school leavers, this despite the tales about on-line learning and a lack of social life students have faced this year.

However, the future of undergraduate teacher training must be the focus of debate. Perhaps a generic degree working with young people might be a better option leading to an appropriate postgraduate teacher preparation course?

Teaching School Hubs: will schools be forced to use them?

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Has anyone noticed the DfE vacancy site padding out the number of jobs on the site by repeating entries? It doesn’t happen with the search facility, but if you scroll through the pages, some jobs appear more than once. Today, it happened to me with the Head of Sixth Form at Burford School and the Principal at Phoenix College: there may be other examples as well.

Why was I scrolling through the DfE site? Two reasons, I wanted to see if the new Teaching School Hubs were advertising posts yet: at least one is, and I am always interested to know how TeachVac fares compared with the DfE in offering a free site to schools for their teaching posts.

After stripping out non-teaching posts from the DfE site – these include a maternity leave replacement for a cleaner and a school matron – that TeachVac doesn’t handle, the DfE comes in around 40% of TeachVac’s vacancies still within closing date. Both sites offer school a way to save cash for many ‘easy to fill’ vacancies.

The news on Teaching School Hubs https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-teaching-school-hubs-to-be-rolled-out-across-the-country was announced on Wednesday and reminds me of the Teachers’ Professional Development Centre where I worked for two years in the 1970s. Those centres had the advantage of being neutral spaces not associated with particular schools, but the disadvantage of not having pupils on site for demonstration lessons.

The DfE said in the announcement that “Each hub, all of which will be operational and helping schools from this September, will have its own defined geographical patch and will be expected to be accessible to all schools within that area, serving on average around 250 schools each.”

Now this takes me even further back to McNair and his Report, and the development of what were known as Area Training Organisations. This approach, so contrary to the Conservative’s market model approach, suggests a more controlling approach. Will schools be able to buy professional development either where they want or will they be forced to support their local Teaching School Hub? 

Will the pupils in the schools benefit from the employment of the best teachers by the Hubs or will the staff of the Hub be fully employed on professional development and initial teacher preparation?

To whom will the Hubs be responsible and will they be inspected by Ofsted or some other body set up especially for that purpose?

What is clear is that the government has so emasculated professional development in the past that some sort of national programme, backed by research, is badly needed to help support the teachers working in our schools. I hope the Hubs will also offer support to those taking a career break that want to return in the future.

The Hubs must also address the conflict between the needs around the professional development of an individual teacher and those of the schools where they work. They may not be the same.

Finally, the government must be sensitive to the fact that next year many teachers will want to recover from the effects of the pandemic and Ministers must not be surprised if teachers want a quiet year to rest and recuperate even if that means avoiding after-school professional development activities.

Schooling also needs a shake up

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The news, in a leaked document, stating that the government is considering the way that the NHS operates, prompts me to remind readers that I have long felt that the arrangements devised under Labour for schools that were enthusiastically espoused by Michael Gove in 2010, in terms of how schooling is arranged, also need urgent review.

Some, including myself, have always maintained the importance of ‘place’ in our education system, and especially the school system. A sense of location is often weakest in relation to higher education and the university sector. However, even there, a place name, such as Oxford, has always worked well, grounding a university in a particular location. For schools, the link to a locality is generally much stronger than for higher education, and parents normally want their children to attend a good local school.

The academy programme dealt a severe blow to the locality based school system that was already under threat as local government fell out of favour at Westminster and institution level decision-making became the favoured approach. The 1988 Education Reform Act, with the move to local financial management and placing power in the hands of head teachers and governors, wrecked any chance of creating a locally managed system across England.

The arrival of multi-academy trusts in 2010, sometimes with headquarters many miles away for the location of the school for which it had responsibility failed to build upon the experience of the diocesan school model, where large diocese, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, often had responsibility for schools in several different local authority areas. Sometimes this worked well, but not always.

Crippling the funding for local authorities wrecked features such as staff development across a local area and the ability to talent spot future leaders, especially middle leaders, where most teachers don’t want to move house for promotion. It may be no coincidence that wastage rates for teachers of five to seven years of experience have increased as local frameworks for teacher support have been eroded.

You only have to read the recent post on this blog about Jacob’s Law, to see the important role local authorities play in the admission and management of pupils across a local area. To allow individual schools to frustrate the ability to find a place for a pupil is poor government, as anyone reading that Serious Case Review can easily understand.

The recent problems with the supply of laptops and internet access to those without, would have been better handled locally, with strategic support from government. Managing it from Westminster showed how this central model for operation rather than strategy just didn’t really work.

One question remains, should schooling, like the NHS, be largely run by professionals, with little local democratic involvement or should schooling have a strong local democratic element in the way it operates, in view of both the number of families involved and its role in the local economy. I have made my view known on this blog over the past eight years.

When I started in education, two phrases were in regular use: ‘a local service nationally administered’ or a ‘partnership’. Is it now time to work out what type of school system we want for the rest of the twenty first century?

ITT applications looking good for September

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Compared with January 2020, applications for postgraduate teaching courses through UCAS have increased by almost a quarter based on my analysis of the published January 2021 data.

 Interestingly, the lowest growth rate has been in applications from those potential new graduates aged 21 or less, where the percentage increase has been just 14%. However, this age group still comprises a significant proportion of the overall total. The biggest increase has been in the group aged 24, where the increase on 2020 is some 32%. It was almost as high, at 29%, in the 30-39 age group. This suggest that new graduates are not yet seeing teaching as a safe haven in a stormy sea, whereas older graduates, perhaps either furloughed or even made redundant, are considering teaching as a career choice in greater numbers than in recent years.

There are regional differences in the increase in applications, with the North East, where teaching jobs are always in short supply, witnessing an increase of only nine percent in applicants. London, with the most active graduate labour market, has seen an increase on 2020 of 39%, from 2,320 in January 2020 to 3,220 in January 2021.

 Compared with previous upturns in applications to train to teach, this year has seen a different trend to that in the past, with a 27% increase in the number of applications for secondary courses compared with just a 24% increase in applications for primary courses. In the past, the growth in the number of applications for primary courses has often exceeded that for secondary courses.

There remains far more interest in postgraduate apprenticeships in the primary sector than in the secondary sector, although even here numbers are low, and have not offset the decline in applications for School Direct Salaried places in the primary sector.

The higher education sector has seen a smaller increase in applications in the primary sector than either SCITT or School Direct fee courses, although overall there are still more applications for higher education based primary courses than for any other route.

In the secondary sector, there is less of a gap between the increases seen by the different routes, with higher education applications up by a quarter; SCITT applications increasing by 30% and School Direct Salaried courses increasing by 47% on January 2020, albeit from a very low base. School Direct fee courses experienced the smallest increase in applications, at only 24%. To some extent, these changes in applications in the secondary sector are driven by the mix of subjects applicants are seeking to teach and the availability of courses with place still available.

Among the main secondary subjects the number of applications shown as ‘placed’, ‘conditional placed’ or ‘holding offer’ is up on last January in most subjects. Exceptions are biology and geography, where for both subjects the total is down on the January 2020 number. For geography, this may be due to very high levels of offers in recent years leading to over-supply. In biology, with more applications for chemistry and physics, providers may not see the need to be as generous as in past years with offers to biology courses in order to ensure a sufficient supply of science teachers.

In physics, mathematics, design and technology, chemistry and business studies, the offers are at high levels than for any January since before January 2014. However, in design and technology, it is doubtful, even at this level, whether the required number of trainees will be recruited to satisfy the labour market in 2022. There must also be a doubt about the final outcome for physics numbers

Next month marks the point in the annual cycle where predications about the outcome can be made, based upon past trends, can normally be made with some degree of accuracy. Whether that will be the case this year, I am not sure, but check back in a month’s time to see what I say.

ONS comment on covid deaths and the Teaching Profession

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The Office for National Statistics has produced new data on covid related deaths by occupation groups. Their comments on the teaching profession are reproduced below. They cover the period between 9th March and 28th December 2020:

Deaths involving COVID-19 in teaching and educational professionals

Teaching and educational professionals refers to those qualified to teach in a wide range of settings from primary school through to university level education. It does not include other jobs in the teaching and educational sector such as administration.

There were 139 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) in teaching and educational professionals aged 20 to 64 years registered between 9 March and 28 December 2020 in England and Wales. For both sexes, rates of death involving COVID-19 for this group were statistically significantly  lower than the rate of death involving COVID-19 among those of the same age and sex, with 18.4 deaths per 100,000 males (66 deaths) and 9.8 deaths per 100,000 females (73 deaths), compared with 31.4 and 16.8 deaths per 100,000 in the population among males and females respectively.

Of the individual occupations, it was only possible to calculate a reliable rate for secondary education teaching professionals, who accounted for 37.4% of the total number of deaths among all teaching and educational professionals (52 deaths). With 39.2 deaths per 100,000 males (29 deaths) and 21.2 deaths per 100,000 females (23 deaths), rates of death involving COVID-19 in secondary education teaching professionals were not statistically significantly different than those of the same age and sex in the wider population.

ONS also compared the teaching occupations with all other professional occupations, allowing ONS to see how the deaths compare with professions with similar broad economic and educational backgrounds.

ONS found that rates of death involving COVID-19 in all teaching and educational professionals were not statistically significantly different to the rates seen in professional occupations (17.6 deaths per 100,000 males; 12.8 deaths per 100,000 females) as a whole, true for both sexes.

Of the specific teaching and education professions, the rate of death involving COVID-19 in male secondary education teaching professionals was statistically significantly higher than the rate of death involving COVID-19 in professional occupations in men of the same age.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregisteredbetween9marchand28december2020

The previous ONS data on teacher deaths due to the pandemic was reported by this blog on the 11th May 2020 in a post entitled ‘Give us the data’.

The ONS data file also identifies in the occupational tables that there had been recorded 42 deaths of teaching assistants; 12 deaths of nursery nurses and four school secretaries.

As in May, male secondary classroom teachers seem to be the highest risk group and to quote ONS ‘the rate of death involving COVID-19 in male secondary education teaching professionals was statistically significantly higher than the rate of death involving COVID-19 in professional occupations in men of the same age’.

Those staff in schools in the older age groups look to be more at risk, even if the risk is less than for some other occupations, and male secondary teachers in the older age groups, not in leadership positions, might benefit from working more with a school’s on-line offering than with the children still in school until they have been vaccinated.

Leadership trends in schools- 2020

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TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free to use teacher vacancy site is putting together its annual reviews of the labour market for teachers in England. The first of these is on leadership turnover in schools.

Here are some of the headlines from the draft report.

  • More leadership vacancies were recorded in the primary sector during 2020, while vacancies recorded in the secondary sector during 2020 remained at a similar level to 2019.
  • In the primary sector some 1,497 head teacher vacancies were recorded. The number for the secondary sector was 387 vacancies during 2020.
  • For schools advertising during the 2019-20 school year, there was a re-advertisement rate for primary schools of 28%: for secondary school headteacher vacancies, the re-advertisement rate was lower at 23%.
  • Schools in certain regions and with other characteristics that differentiates the school from the commonplace are more likely to experience issues with headteacher recruitment.
  • There were a similar number of vacancies for deputy heads in the secondary sector during 2020 than 2019. Fewer vacancies were recorded for the primary sector.
  • Secondary schools advertised slightly more assistant head teacher vacancies during 2020 than during 2019. There were fewer vacancies recorded in the primary sector during 2020 than in 2019. 
  • Tracking leadership vacancies has become more challenging as the means of recruitment have become more diversified in nature.
  • The covid-19 pandemic had a significant effect on the senior staff labour market from April 2020 until the end of the year.

What might be the outcome of the new lockdown? As the majority of vacancies at all levels in education are for September starts in a new job the later the more senior vacancies are advertised the more pressure on vacancies for other posts. Normally, half the annual volume of headteacher adverts appear in the first three months of the year. Will that pattern be replicated this year? Perhaps it is too early to tell. Will headteachers, and especially headteachers in primary schools faced with more problems than normal and lacking the level of administrative support that their secondary school colleagues enjoy just decide enough is enough and take early retirement? Will the pay freeze make matters worse, especially if pensions still rise in line with RPI?

TeachVac will be watching these trends for senior staff turnover, along with others in the labour market. Often in the past, a rising level of house prices has been bad for senior staff recruitment in high cost housing areas as staff can move to lower cost areas, but it is challenging for staff to move into those areas without incentives. The Stamp Duty relaxation has pushed up housing prices, at least in the short-term. Will these increases have an impact on leadership turnover?

The current age profile of the teaching profession should be favourable to the appointment of senior leaders but, as this blog has pointed out in the past, there may not be enough deputy heads in the primary sector with sufficient experience to want to move onto headship at the present time.

All these trends will need monitoring carefully as 2021 unfolds.

If you want the full report or data for specific areas, please contact enquiries@oxteachserv.com

My guest blog for Oriel Square Publishing

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By John Howson, chair of TeachVac and County Councillor in Oxfordshire. *This blog was written before the DfE’s announcement on 2nd January 2021 of a new Institute of Teaching.

2020 didn’t prove to be a happy 150th anniversary for state education in England. Hopefully, we will be able to look back on 2021 with better memories. One clear outcome from 2020 was the need to review methods of teaching and learning as pupils were forced to interact with their teachers remotely.

Teacher preparation

The oversight of the school system might have been better managed had there been a strong middle-tier between schools and policymakers.

For many years, too much of the preparation and professional development of teachers has been focused on looking backwards at the past rather than at understanding the possibilities offered by a very different future. The Covid-19 pandemic changed that approach overnight. Parents discovered the reality of teaching and school leaders had to invent new patterns of dialogue between their staff and pupils; often with little help from the government.

Indeed, the planning and oversight of the school system, fractured as it is between local authorities, stand-alone academies and Multi Academy Trusts, might have been better managed had there been a strong middle-tier in operation between schools and policymakers at Westminster.

The role of schools in teaching training

In the course of the past fifty years, the labour market for teachers has oscillated between periods of shortage and times of oversupply.

For many years, I have been an observer of the workings of the labour market for teachers. In the course of the past 50 years that I have been involved with schools in England, the labour market for teachers has oscillated between periods of shortage – occasionally of severe shortages of teachers – and other times where there has been an oversupply.

Under the coalition government, and especially under the stewardship of Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education, schools were encouraged to be at the forefront of teacher supply. Traditional higher education routes of teacher preparation were out of favour, and narrowly missed disappearing altogether when faced with recruitment controls.

At its zenith, the ambitious School Direct salaried route into teaching accounted for 12% of postgraduate entrants into teacher training.

The ambitious School Direct salaried route into teaching reached its zenith in 2016/17 when such trainees accounted for 12% of postgraduate entrants into teacher training. By the government’s 202/21 training year census the same route only accounted for five per cent of trainees, despite a larger number of trainee places being available. …

To read the rest of the blog go to https://www.orielsquare.co.uk/blog/index.php/2021/01/05/teacher-training-putting-the-past-behind-us/

Reflections on half a century of education

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Half a century ago this week I started my teaching career at a comprehensive school in Tottenham. I have before me, as I write this blog, the actual letter, dated 4th December 1970 from the Chief Education Officer’s representative, appointing me to the unestablished staff of Haringey Council, as an assistant teacher at Tottenham School for the spring term of 1971. Interestingly, it was during the only period of the Council’s history when it was under Conservative control (1968-1972).

The letter from the council also contained the phrase ‘or such other school maintained by the Council to which you may be called upon to serve’. In practice, I remained at the school until December 1977, when my journey to Oxford and a very different future began. I also have the letter detailing my starting salary of £1,325 per year including a London Allowance payment of £85 per year and the grant of one increment for post-18 study! As I marvelled at the level of my father’s starting salary in 1936, so readers of this blog just starting out may wonder at such an apparent paltry sum of little over £100 a month before stoppages.

At least one regular reader of this blog will recall, Tottenham School had a reputation for music and drama that continued from the selective school from which the comprehensive school had emerged. The comprehensive school was a tough baptism for a new and untrained teacher, because many of the staff had never before taught those that had not passed the 11+ examination and had previously been educated in secondary modern schools, where the class teacher model rather than the subject teacher approach had been the norm. Both pupils and teachers found it difficult to adapt to the new situation.

My appointment had come about as a result of a staffing crisis facing schools as pupil numbers were on the increase, as now, and insufficient people were being trained as teachers. I joined as an untrained graduate, expecting to stay until the summer and then to undertake a higher degree course, perhaps at a Canadian university. The departure of the Head of Geography for a deputy headship at the end of May changed all that, especially as the other full-time geography teacher was expecting to emigrate to Australia the following December. Suddenly, I became acting head of department after two terms of teaching. Not a promotion that I would now encourage, but one that I was happy to take at the time.

The highlight of my six years at the school was seeing the first comprehensive sixth from students win a prestigious adult drama festival with a production of The Bald Prima Donna by Eugene Ionesco. The low point, probably the classroom stabbing in January 1977.

There were many great colleagues and pupils that I came into contact with during those years. Some, sadly no longer with us. There were many things that happened that would be more than frowned upon today, but a happy accident of chance set me on a road I still enjoy travelling.

DfE announcement on a Saturday!

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The decision to announce both a new Institute of Teaching and the recommencement of the review of the ITT market, following a pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic, wasn’t something I expected to read this afternoon.

DfE announcements on a Saturday afternoon are rarer than hen’s teeth. So rushed seems the announcement on the recommencement of the ITT Review that it is unclear whether the statement that ‘The review is expected to report in summer 2020.’ Should have read summer 2021?

Anyway the announcement of,

‘A new Institute of Teaching is set to be established in England to provide teachers and school leaders with prestigious training and development throughout their career.

… with the Institute being the first of its kind in the world.’

DfE https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-institute-of-teaching-set-to-be-established

May raise some eyebrows and questions about hyperbole in places as far apart as Singapore and Ontario.

This idea for this new Institute doesn’t seem yet to have the structure of the Area Training Organisations that existed across the country in the post-war period or even of the short-lived regional structure for leadership training in the days before GRIST and its derivatives.

Indeed, what of the wonderful National College created under the Blair government only to be axed by the Conservatives?  Admittedly that started with senior leadership and then expanded into other areas? Has it been air-brushed out of history?

To claim that the new Institute ‘will revolutionise teacher training and make England the best place in the world to train and become a great teacher’ will raise the question in many minds of what have the Tories been doing for the past ten years of trying to create a school-led training system. Is this an acknowledgement of failure?

There is no way that I believe the present system of ITT, or ITE depending on your point of view, is anything but high quality, but there is room for innovation, not least around technology and learning, as I have written in a recent blog.

The numbers quoted in the announcement also seem suspect. There are around 40,000 trainees teachers each year, so 1,000 represents about three per cent of the total. A higher percentage, of course, if targets for recruitment are not met. 2,000 early career teachers is an even smaller percentage and no figures are provided for the essential development of middle leaders where a national programme has been sadly lacking.

Where will the existing Teaching Schools fit into this new order, and how will geographical gaps be filled? Who will have oversight, and will there be a National Director of Training and Development with the ear of the Secretary of State?

A cynic might say this was an attempt to end a run of bad news for the DfE and its Ministers, and an attempt to regain the initiative. If so, I hope what emerges really does help develop the teaching profession.

Perhaps the Secretary of State can start by changing the rules about employing unqualified people as teachers. There is, after all, no point in an Institute focusing on initial teacher programmes if academies are free to employ anyone as a teacher.

A better announcement would have been that the term ‘teacher’ had become a reserved occupation term only allowed to be used by those with QTS.