Trainee teachers: a spot of poaching?

Relations between the government and university-based teacher educators have reached a new low amid claims that a Department for Education agency has been attempting to lure would-be students away from the traditional higher education sector towards a favoured ministerial project.

An email sent by the National College for Teaching and Leadership – which oversees both traditional, university-based provision and the new School Direct school-based route – sought to persuade prospective postgraduate certificate in education university trainees to consider its rival. It reads: “You may have already applied for a PGCE by now, but have you thought about applying for School Direct?”

It continues, under “Why you should apply for School Direct”: “School Direct is different. That’s because you’re part of a school team from day one, where you can train as a teacher with the expectation of a job once you qualify.

“It’s free to apply. Simple too.”

The Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers (Ucet) has furiously accused the government of trying to “manipulate” the teacher-education market, arguing that its members have tried to play fair by not discouraging would-be students away from School Direct, which is the favoured route of the education secretary, Michael Gove.

Just as intriguing, though, is why officials felt the need to make the appeal. Although the DfE published figures this month suggesting applications for School Direct have been very healthy, questions have been raised about the detail behind the numbers, amid persistent rumours that the total actually accepted on to School Direct is still low. Is the DfE getting desperate?

via Education in brief: Is the DfE trying to rig the teacher-education market? | Education | The Guardian.

Inset days that actually lead to better outcomes for the students are rarer than hens’ teeth

At the beginning of this term we had an inset day. I had hoped it would be a day when we all sat together in the hall, discussing strategies for improvement. The best practitioners in the room would share their wisdom while the rest of us would nod admiringly and frantically scribble notes on how to become a better teacher. Coffee and cakes would be on hand at all points in case our attention began to wane and we needed a hit of sugar or caffeine; the senior leadership team would begin the morning not with a PowerPoint presentation (gasp) but with an off-the-cuff, from-the-heart, passionate speech about what hard-working, conscientious and effective teachers we all are before segueing beautifully into telling us to have an hour to chat about our best lesson this term. No one would mention the words Ofsted or outstanding.

The focus would be entirely on the students we teach, all of them, not just the ones that Ofsted want us to be interested in, and how to improve their experience. By the end of the day, we would have forgotten the stack of marking on our desks, the reports we still had to write by the end of Friday, and our imminent monitoring visit from HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools). We would be enthused, buzzing and excited about teaching again.

Sadly, the reality was it was the same as the majority of inset days; the day consisted of a series of PowerPoint presentations, which were read to us, just in case we couldn’t do it for ourselves, that laid out in minute detail exactly what we are doing wrong. An endless repetition of jargon spewed forth from the mouths of SLT: “Outstanding lessons,” “learning outcomes and objectives,” “success criteria,” “Kagan structures” and my personal nemesis, the “mini-plenary”. Depressing sheets of sugar paper were handed out so that we could do some kinaesthetic learning. Surely, I can’t be the only one who doodles little pictures of themselves hanging from a rafter when handed the sugar paper because, ultimately, I would prefer to be doing something productive. And the focus was firmly on impressing the most important people in the equation; not the students but Ofsted.

Now, I don’t actually care whether my lessons always tick the ‘outstanding in Oftsed’s eyes’ box, as long as my students get the best education they can from me. I didn’t go into teaching to be outstanding in the eyes of a stranger who may never have even set foot inside a classroom. I went into teaching because I wanted to share my passion for my subject. I went into teaching because I wanted to improve the lives of the children I taught. I went into teaching because I genuinely believed I could make a difference. Yet our training days so rarely focus on the children themselves that you could almost believe that they were a distraction from the all-important A4 lesson plans.

Let’s be honest. Inset days that actually lead to better outcomes for the students are rarer than hens’ teeth. If we organised our lessons in the same way that these days are organised – all sit at a table for seven hours, don’t talk or in any way annoy SLT and read the slide – we’d be awarded an inadequate grading so fast that our heads would spin. If we were as consistently negative about our students as SLT are on these days: “Yes, 85% of you are now good or outstanding, but the rest of you are crap. So let’s spend the day talking about how to make you not crap even though most of you aren’t,” then we would be firmly reminded that praise is more powerful than criticism.

Just for once, I would like a training day that actually serves its purpose; to make me a better teacher. I would like to know how the best teachers in the school do it differently from me and how I can make sure that little Jimmy D-grade can be little Jimmy gets into college. I would like a jargon-free, criticism-free day. And, most importantly, I would like a day that doesn’t focus on how to ensure that Ofsted like my lessons; but on how to ensure that the students like the lessons.

Is that too much to ask?

Secret Teacher is a head of English at a secondary school in the south east of England.

via Secret Teacher: why can’t training days be useful for once? | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional.

Researchers have suggested red is linked with warning, prohibition, caution, anger, embarrassment and being wrong’

Teachers have been told not to use red link to mark homework to avoid upsetting pupils.

The edict has been condemned as ‘absolutely political correctness gone wild’ which risks leaving students in the dark about where they have gone wrong.

Ministers have been forced to distance themselves from the bizarre policy, insisting no government rules exist on what colour pens teachers use.

The policy would appear to be at odds with the back to basics approach of Education Secretary Michael Gove who has insisted teachers must mark pupils down for poor spelling and grammar.

He has warned that in the past too little has been done to focus on core skills to ensure young people are confident in key writing skills.

Tory MP Bob Blackman revealed his anger after being told a secondary school in his Harrow East constituency had banned teachers from using red ink.

He told MailOnline: ‘A teacher contacted me and said I cannot believe I have been instructed by my head to mark children’s homework in particular colours and not to use certain colours.

‘It is all about not wanting to discourage youngsters if their work is marked wrong.

‘It sounds to me like some petty edict which is nonsense. It is absolutely political correctness gone wild.

‘My take on all this is to say children need to understand the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong.’

Tory MP Bob Blackman slammed the unnamed school in his Harrow East constituency for telling teachers not to use red ink, prompting education minister Liz Truss to insist the government has not issued a ban

Mr Blackman took his concerns to ministers, tabling a parliamentary question whether the government issues guidelines which ‘prohibit or discourage the use of red ink for the purposes of marking or commenting on students’ schoolwork’.

Elizabeth Truss, the ministers responsible for school attendance and cutting bureaucracy, insisted: ‘No, the Department does not issue guidelines which prohibit or discourage the use of red ink for marking student’s schoolwork.’

It is thought the policy is set by the headteacher, and not Labour-run Harrow council.

Mr Blackman refused to name the school to protect the teacher who had spoken out.

But he said he was going to take the issue up with the headteacher to ensure pupils were told when they had got things wrong.

Mr Blackman added: ‘If they have got their homework wrong they need to be told it is wrong and to understand what the right answers are. The idea that they should use this or that colour is madness.’

Earlier this year a US study suggested that teachers should stop using red pens because the colour is associated with ‘warning, prohibition, caution, anger, embarrassment and being wrong’.

Researchers showed students think they’ve been assessed more harshly when their work is covered in red ink compared to more neutral colours like blue.

Sociologists Richard Dukes and Heather Albanesi from the University of Colorado told the Journal of Social Science: ‘The red grading pen can upset students and weaken teacher-student relations and perhaps learning.’

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, slammed the findings saying: ‘In my own experience of 35 years in teaching is that children actually prefer teachers to use red ink because they can read comments more easily.

‘I think this research is misguided. The problem with using a colour like green or blue is that it’s not clear. A lot of schools seem to have a culture where they don’t like critcising children but actually this helps them.

‘It’s not intimidating children want to see where they’ve made a mistake. I think it’s a rather silly idea.’

Under the last Labour government red ink was banned in hundreds of schools because it was considered ‘confrontational’ and ‘threatening’.

via Teachers told not to use red ink in case it upsets pupils: Tory MP slams ‘political correctness gone wild¿ | Mail Online.

State schools are shut in Denmark for a second day because of a dispute between teachers and local authorities over working conditions.

About 90,000 teachers were locked out after negotiations broke down and nearly 900,000 pupils have no classes.

A teachers’ union spokesman called the action “historic” for Denmark.

Gordon Madsen told BBC News that the government and teachers’ employers wanted teachers to spend more time in the classroom during the school day.

The changes would mean younger children spending about two more hours in school daily and the oldest children three more hours, he said.

Mr Madsen said the teachers’ time for preparing lessons would be reduced under the reforms. The teachers are pushing for a cap of 25 hours a week spent teaching, so that it is clear what counts as overtime.

The dispute affects children between the ages of six and 16. They are now spending their time at home with family members, or at their parents’ workplaces or at youth clubs.

“Teachers are protesting in the streets all over Denmark,” Mr Madsen said.

He accused the centre-left government of doing a deal on school reform with the local authority organisation KL, which pre-empted negotiations with the national teachers’ union.

“It’s the first time all the teachers have been locked out. It’s a threat to the Danish model,” he said, explaining that traditionally in Scandinavia workplace conditions are negotiated directly between unions and the employers without government interference.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt defended the plan to introduce longer hours in school, and said her government was not yet prepared to intervene in the dispute.

“We cannot accept that an average of three or four children in each class never learn to write at a level that enables them to go on to further education,” she said on Tuesday.

via BBC News – Denmark teacher lock-out paralyses schools.

NUT wants teachers’ classroom hours capped at 20 a week amid claims many hardly see their own children and work late

via Limit teaching to four hours a day, says union | Education | The Guardian.

Critics of coalition policies seize on survey in which majority of teachers said unqualified colleagues were taking lessons

via More schools hiring unqualified teachers ‘to save money’ | Education | The Guardian.

Pupils in England could be taught in bigger classes and by unqualified staff from next September, as a rising population puts pressure on school capacity, Labour has said.

Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg said an extra 15,000 teachers would be needed by 2014-15 as an additional 256,000 pupils start school.

Mr Twigg said this was a “real and growing threat to school standards”.


But the Department for Education said his claims were “ridiculous”.

Mr Twigg’s comments come less than two weeks after the National Audit Office warned that a quarter of a million extra school places would be needed in England by autumn 2014.

The spending watchdog said one in five primary schools in England was full or near capacity and there were signs of “real strain” on places.

‘Cutting quality’

Labour says its calculations, based on pupil population estimates, show around 14,545 teachers are needed.

When this is added to the 520 vacancies the party says are already in the system, it means that around 15,065 teachers will be required by the next election.

Addressing the ATL’s conference in Liverpool on Wednesday, Mr Twigg said: “Michael Gove is presiding over a crisis in the teaching profession – with a huge shortage of teachers, and unqualified teachers getting into the classroom.

“Pupils deserve far better. Unless this crisis is addressed head on, pupils will be in bigger class sizes or face being taught by people without teaching qualifications.

“This is a real and growing threat to school standards.

“All the international evidence shows that the quality of teaching makes the biggest difference to results. We cannot let the next generation down by cutting teacher quality.”

Teacher morale

Mr Twigg criticised the education secretary for allowing free schools and academies the freedom to employ staff who do not have qualified teacher status.

Mr Twigg also hit out at the government, saying it has “pitched itself against” the teaching profession, “against the very people it needs onside to deliver the sort of change that our education system needs”.

Mr Twigg said politicians have a duty “not to undermine the professionalism that underpins the status and morale of teachers”.

“Heads, teachers and the wider school workforce are the people who make the biggest difference to our children’s educational outcomes.

“All too often they are undermined by politicians and a media obsessed with talking down our education system.

“A minister would not instruct a surgeon on best practice in an operating theatre, yet, all too often, ministers want to prescribe methods for the delivery of teaching and learning in our classrooms.”

A Department of Education spokesperson said: “Teaching is a highly attractive profession – more top graduates and career changers than ever before are coming into teaching, and vacancy rates are at their lowest since 2005.

“Teacher training applications for fee-based postgraduate courses in England are up by more than 1,500 applicants on this time last year.

“We have invested £4m to help existing teachers develop their skills. Plus we are spending £5bn by 2015 on creating new school places — more than double the amount spent by the previous government in the same timeframe.

“We trust headteachers to employ the right mix of staff for their schools. That is why we have given free schools and academies the same freedoms the best independent schools enjoy to hire great linguists, computer scientists, engineers and others who can inspire their pupils.”

On Tuesday, Liberal Democrat Schools Minister David Laws praised the teaching profession, saying ministers “appreciate the job you do – genuinely and sincerely.”

via BBC News – Schools face teacher shortage crisis, claims Labour.

Ethnic minority students are less likely to get places at top universities than white pupils with the same A-level grades, according to research from Durham University.

Researchers looked at application data from 49,000 students from 1996 to 2006.

The study also found that state school pupils were less likely to get places than pupils from independent schools.

But a Russell Group spokeswoman said the difference could be the combination of other A-levels taken by pupils.


The research by Vikki Boliver, from Durham University’s School of Applied Social Sciences, examined the different outcomes for students applying for places in the Russell Group of leading universities.

Making the grade

Using data from the Ucas admissions service, the study found that white pupils and those at independent schools were more likely to be successful in their applications than black, Asian and state school pupils with the same A-level grades.

“The headline conclusion of the analysis is that access to Russell Group universities is far from ‘fair’,” said Dr Boliver in her report, which is to be presented at a Higher Education Academy conference on Tuesday.

The study found that there were different patterns of under-representation for different groups of applicants.

State school pupils “need to be better qualified than their private school counterparts on average by as much as two A-level grades before they are as likely to apply to Russell Group universities”, the researchers found.

“And when those from state schools do apply to Russell Group universities they seem to need to be better qualified than their private school counterparts on average by as much as one grade at A-level before they are as likely to receive offers of admission.”

For black and Asian applicants, the study says the barrier appeared to be in the admissions process. They were confident enough to apply to Russell Group universities, but were less likely to be offered places than similarly qualified white students.

This analysis of Ucas data cannot show why there should be a different pattern of acceptances for different groups – and Dr Boliver said there was a need to look “more deeply” into what was happening.

“This is something that cannot be ignored. We just know there is a problem, we need to know the causes.”

Predicted results

Dr Boliver says it might reflect that the applications process uses predicted grades rather than actual A-level results.

The last major government study of fair access, carried out by Steven Schwartz, concluded that an application system based on predicted grades provided an unfair advantage to better-off pupils.

There were subsequent plans to introduce an admissions system based on actual A-level grades – a so-called post-qualifications applications system – but this was abandoned last year.

The Russell Group suggests there could be other factors influencing the different outcomes.

Although A-level grades between two applicants might appear to be the same – such as grades AAB – this does not show the range of subjects they have taken.

For a subject such as economics, applicants might have an A grade in A-level economics, but some universities might also require pupils to have a high grade at maths A-level as well. Without maths as an accompanying A-level the application will be less likely to succeed.

Another factor, suggests a spokeswoman for the Russell Group, is that applications from ethnic minority pupils are disproportionately focused on some of the most over-subscribed and competitive courses, such as medicine.

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, said there was no complacency about the admissions process – but the problem reflected a lack of advice from some schools.

“Sadly many good students are simply not getting the right advice and guidance on which advanced-level subjects will qualify them for their chosen course,” said Dr Piatt.

“Neither we nor the researchers can control for individual students making poor A-level choices which lead them to fail to meet entry requirements.

“Many good students simply haven’t done the subjects needed for entry – universities need students not only to have good grades, but grades in the right subjects for the course they want to apply for.”


The span of the study – from 1996 to 2006 – covered the introduction of tuition fees and the raising of fees to £3,000 per year. But there were no clear signs of an impact on admissions and patterns of applications from these fees.

Dr Boliver has added a further update to this research – looking at 2010 to 2012 – but this continued to show a disadvantage for ethnic minority applicants.

However this later data showed that, even though independent school pupils were still more likely to be offered a place than similarly-qualified state school pupils, the gap was narrowing.

BBC News – ‘Unfair’ university admissions claim.

Teachers in England and Wales are calling on the government to reconsider plans to link pay to their performance.

Performance-related pay (PRP) will have a “catastrophic effect” on teacher recruitment and retention, says Mary Bousted, head of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

She said the move would also divert head teachers’ attention from teaching.

Ministers say PRP will give schools greater freedom over teachers’ pay and help them recruit the best staff.

Under the changes, which are expected to come fully into effect in 2014, teachers will no longer receive automatic annual pay rises, but will get annual appraisals with schools deciding on salary levels.

“Schools spectre”

In a priority resolution to be debated on Tuesday, the ATL is expected to say it opposes and deplores the destruction of the teachers’ national pay structure.


ATL general secretary Mary Bousted said: “We have the coalition government’s policy to dismantle national pay structures for teachers which will have a catastrophic effect on recruitment and retention of teachers.

“We’re going to have the spectre of 23,500 schools creating their own pay structures.

“School leaders, rather than concentrating on teaching and learning, will be concentrating on pay structures.”

Dr Bousted said the changes would make it more difficult for “the brightest and best to enter the profession because they don’t know how much they’re going to be paid”.

“And they will have no idea how much they’re going to earn in the future.”

Teachers would also find it more difficult to get mortgages or to move to more expensive parts of the country, she added.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We want to make it easier for schools to reward good performance and attract and retain those teachers who have the greatest impact on their pupils’ achievements.

“This will be much fairer than the current arrangements which see the vast majority of teachers automatically getting a pay rise each year.

“We do not think it is fair that a highly effective new entrant, for example, should be paid less than their long-serving but less effective peer.”

The debate by the ATL comes after the two largest teaching unions, the National Union of Teachers and NASUWT announced a series of strikes over pay and pensions.

The industrial action is due to begin on 27 June in the north-west of England.

via BBC News – Teachers call for performance pay back-down.

Washington — When it comes to judging teacher effectiveness, value-added models—statistical models that a number of states and districts have adopted to rate teachers based on student test scores—are too problematic to be of practical use and could unfairly hurt teachers who get assignments in struggling schools.

That was the heart of the message that one of the nation’s leading experts on educational testing and assessment delivered during a recent lecture on the pros and cons of value-added models, or VAMs.

“Teacher VAM scores should emphatically not be included as a substantial factor with a fixed weight in consequential teacher personnel decisions,” said Edward Haertel, Jacks Family Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University. “The information they provide is simply not good enough to use in that way.”

One major reason it is difficult to compare teachers fairly based on VAM scores is because of social stratification within America’s schools, Haertel said.

Some teachers, he said, may teach all low-achieving students from poor families while others may teach almost exclusively high-achieving students from affluent families.

“In the real world of schooling, students are sorted by background and achievement through patterns of residential segregation, and they may also be grouped or tracked within schools,” Haertel said, noting that achievement levels vary greatly among students from different schools. “Ignoring this fact is likely to result in penalizing teachers of low-performing students and favoring teachers of high-performing students, just because the teachers of low-performing students cannot go as fast.”

To bolster his point, Haertel noted how research has found that students from affluent families tend to make reading gains over summer vacation whereas students from low-income families tend to experience what is known as “summer loss.”

Those and other non-school factors that impact student achievement far more than the teacher in front of the class render VAMs incapable of being fair measures of teacher effectiveness, Haertel said.

“No statistical manipulation can ensure a fair comparison of teachers working in very different schools with very different students under very different conditions,” Haertel said. “We cannot do a good enough job of isolating the signal of teacher effects from the massive influence of students’ individual aptitudes, prior educational histories, out-of-school experiences, peer influences, and differential summer learning loss nor can we adequately adjust away the varying academic climates of different schools.”

Haertel made his remarks Friday at the National Press Club at ETS’s Angoff Memorial Lecture. The title of the lecture was “Inferences About Teachers Based on Student Test Scores.”

The lecture comes at a time when various efforts—including the use of value-added models—are afoot throughout the nation to evaluate teachers as well as teacher prep programs based on student achievement.

In some ways, Haertel’s lecture was a synthesis of recent research that he used to underscore the problematic nature of VAMs.

For instance, he cited a 2010 Harvard study where two math teachers of questionable competence were observed making serious mistakes in math instruction—one of them concluded that 0.28 minutes was the same as 0.28 seconds—but nevertheless achieved VAM scores in the top two quartiles.

The teacher who scored in the top quartile usually offered “only the briefest of mathematical presentations” and failed in one lesson to “teach any material,” but presumably scored high because he was teaching a classroom of accelerated students, Haertel said of the study.

“These sound like the kinds of ‘bad teachers’ we might imagine VAM scores should catch,” Haertel said, “but they both sailed right through.”

Haertel said VAMs could have a negative effect on children’s education.

“These include increased pressure to teach to the test, more competition and less cooperation among the teachers within a school, and resentment or avoidance of students who do not score well,” Haertel said.

Haertel said VAMs may be good for research purposes but only under certain conditions. Those conditions include limiting comparisons to “fairly homogenous groups of teachers,” not attaching any fixed weight to the scores in any “consequential decisions,” and making sure that anyone who uses VAM scores are “well trained to interpret the scores appropriately.”

One D.C. teacher who was in the audience said a principal at the school where he used to teach seemed to be using the VAM scores arbitrarily.

“Value added is very dangerous,” the teacher said. “I remember the day when they rolled it out. We all looked at each other like, ‘This is not good.’”

If VAMs are “put in the hands of people with a low value system,” the teacher said, they could be “very punitive.”

via Experts Recommend a Switch in Teacher Evaluations – Higher Education.