Peddling Myths about Teaching won’t Solve the Recruitment and Retention Crisis
Hands up who wants to teach…as long as you ignore £9,000-plus fees to get a qualification, teacher bashing by DfE ministers, Ofsted, stagnant wages…
A survey, commissioned by the Department for Education as part of its Get Into Teaching campaign (GIT) found that 44% of the general public think they would make a great teacher.
Of these, 44% said it was because they were good at explaining things, 40% thought they could make learning fun and 39% believed they could relate to others. I’m guessing at least 35% completed the questionnaire in crayon because they’re not allowed sharp objects.
Pardon me for thinking the survey is a heap of offal. I’m only surprised no one mentioned ‘having long holidays’ or ‘a day that ends at 3.30pm’. GIT is an apposite acronym.
The vacuity of understanding of what it takes to have the right stuff for teaching is appalling.
Being good at explaining things – what sort of things? Explaining probability to Y6? Explaining to four-year-olds that those black squiggles on white paper can be read?
Make learning fun? Nothing is more likely to induce me to reject an application than the applicant blithely asserting what fun they are.
Reader, they are always the least fun people possible!
Maybe if you once lit a sparkler on Bonfire Night you might make a good rocket scientist? Ever applied a cold compress to a bumped head – have you considered becoming a brain surgeon?
Had they replied about excellent subject knowledge, stamina in engaging in hundreds of one-to-one interactions in a working week, the ability to pose questions that enable understanding, I’d have been impressed.
Instead, the DfE simply collude in perpetuating the fallacy that teaching is about explaining things in a fun way while relating to the kids. How teachers roared with laughter in the nation’s staff rooms!
As teaching unions noted, the DfE, not for the first time, have asked the wrong questions. How about, ‘What puts you off training to be a teacher?’ The £9,000-plus fees for a teaching qualification might be a teensy bit of a barrier.
The teacher bashing that goes on by DfE ministers another.
Ofsted, stagnant wages – I could go on, but actually I love the job despite the downsides.
A spokeswoman said the survey results had been published to launch the DfE’s teacher recruitment and retention strategy and that it hoped to encourage more of those who think they have what it takes to be a teacher to give it a try.
It is this sort of misrepresentation of the job – all fluffy rewards, no stubborn reality – that leads to people forking out £9,000 plus a year’s missed wages to train, only to leave the profession after five years because they had been sold a false prospectus.
Recruitment, of course, involves PR and I can see the DfE’s logic, but it is misleading. If they were selling baked beans the Advertising Standards Authority would be having stern words.
To boost recruitment, how about 50% fee bursaries for all teacher training and 100% for shortage subjects for suitably qualified applicants, with 0% interest on any associated loans?
Maybe a golden hello after successful completion of the probationary year or, better still, an across-the-board pay rise to make teaching, if not a financially attractive prospect, at least financially viable?
Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always make sense, but trying to solve it with a pound-shop mentality sure as hell won’t do the job.
If you value education and the skilled professionals who provide it, put your money where your mouth is. Alternatively, do nothing or next to nothing and watch as the problem gets even worse.
For the right person – clear-sighted as opposed to misty-eyed, well qualified to teach their subject rather than simply possessing a tedious and exhausting capacity to have fun – teaching is an immensely gratifying career.
Giving people the impression that it is merely explaining things and being good at relationships is not going to attract the right stuff. It is all those things but also much, much more.
How about this tweet, posted at the start of the new term by someone called Mr Primary Data: ‘I love my job. I am not an NQT or fresh out of uni. I have taught for ten years and I genuinely enjoy every day.
Yes, it can be rubbish at times and the workload is high but I love it. Sadly I know this is not true for everyone but wanted to share some positivity.’ DfE – recruit that tweeter.
Kevin Harcombe is a Teaching Awards winner and headteacher at Redlands Primary School, Fareham. Follow him on Twitter at @kevharcombe.
