Emerging Education Policy in Wales – helpful or harmful to the Professional Status of Teachers?

Emerging Education Policy in Wales

– helpful or harmful to the Professional Status of Teachers?

Children's Song

We live in our own world,A world that is too smallFor you to stoop and enterEven on hands and knees,The adult subterfuge.And though you probe and pryWith analytic eye,And eavesdrop all our talkWith an amused look,You cannot find the centreWhere we dance, where we play,Where life is still asleepUnder the closed flower,Under the smooth shellOf eggs in the cupped nestThat mock the faded blueOf your remoter heaven.

R S Thomas

1870

“Initial teacher education, as the first stage of professional education, is the foundation on which all further professional development is built”

(Livingstone and Robertson, 2003)

Versus

RAISING THE BAR?

• B grade GCSE minimum

• Masters in Educational Practice (MEP)

Lowering the Bar?

• More GTP candidates

• Introduction of Teach First Cymru

•80%• 50%

•69%•14%

34%

• Tabberer Review of Initial Teacher Education

• Good for beginning teachers?

• Good for children?

“All professional and ethical frameworks removed”

“We have a responsibility to support the practitioners working in our education system”

School teachers

School learning support workers

FE teachers

FE support workers

WBL staff and youth workers

EDUCATION

(WALES) BILL

Support staff in maintained schools (fte)2003 - 04 2010-11

Teaching Assistants

HLTAs Not recorded 1,044

TAs 2,860 10,492

SEN support 2,219 4,591

Other (pastoral support/ MFL assistants)

3,205 429

8,284 16,556

Administrative staff 2,774 3,468

Technicians 1,034 1,101

Other support staff(nurses/matrons/care)

625 193

TOTAL 12,717 21,318Source: ‘Schools in Wales:General

Statistics’ Welsh Assembly Government

‘.. 2:1 ..’

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

2003-04

2010-11

teachingassistants

registeredteachers

:FE should be included, because

• 27% of FE students(64,000) are under age 19

• ‘Transforming Education’ requires providers to work in partnership to provide choice of learning pathways to 14-19 year olds across school and college settings

• vocational provision will increase the number of FE teachers in schools and pupils taught in FE settings

What impact does this have on Professional Status?

The Institution of Engineering and Technology

Professional Status is protected by different categories of regulation, and enhanced by having regard for all those involved in contributing to the standards within the profession as a whole.

• Children at the heart-Valuing Children?• Valuing Teachers?• Valuing Education?