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Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Education, University of London
SUMMARY
1. Measuring quality · Good teachers' expertise combines a range of knowledge strands beyond subject content, and is highly context-specific. Policy should focus on supporting the quality of learning as much as on the quality of teaching.
2. Entry into the teaching profession · There are concerns about the overall quality of some entrants to teaching, and evidence suggests that we recruit less academically able candidates than the most successful education systems. · Teacher recruitment cannot be separated from retention - a high proportion of teachers leave the profession in the first five years which is not cost effective. · Undergraduate teacher education does not deliver consistently high-quality candidates into teaching and needs to be radically reformed. · Attracting the best teachers to the most challenging schools will not be achieved by salary-based solutions alone; access to support and career development are key.
3. The delivery of ITE · Education is critical in the twenty-first century. In the past, it was enough to recruit teachers of average quality. This is no longer acceptable and the fitness for purpose of ITE for a radically changing school system needs evaluating. · England is distinctive internationally in the extent to which it has developed university-school partnerships for delivering teacher education. Partnership has been successful, but in many areas (particularly London) partnerships are unstable; more robust relationships between HE institutions and schools are needed. · The thrust of recent ITE reform has emphasised the practical element over the theoretical and reflective. We need to ensure that teaching becomes a genuinely evidence- and research-based profession.
4. CPD provision · The quality of CPD for existing teachers is still variable and a low proportion of teacher time is devoted to it. · We need to engineer improvement at a much more rapid pace and with a commitment to research-based and on-going professional learning if we are to develop the teaching profession we need for the twenty first century.
Submission to House of Commons Select Committee Inquiry into Initial Teacher Training
This submission has been coordinated on behalf of the Institute by Chris Husbands, Professor of Education and Dean of the Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy, Institute of Education and Susan Steward, Research and Policy Officer to the Dean of the Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy, Institute of Education.
The
Preface We use the term 'initial teacher education' (ITE) rather than 'initial teacher training' (ITT) throughout to reflect the need for all teachers to develop and enhance their knowledge, skills and disposition over the course of their professional life. Training implies the acquisition of a set of skills and competencies that finishes when the required standard is reached; while initial preparation should prepare beginning teachers for the reality of classroom life, it also needs to provide a grounding of the knowledge and skills which enable teachers to become effective professionals committed to continuous development.
B. Measuring quality 1. 'Good' teachers secure high outcomes for all students. The McKinsey report[1] identified teacher quality as the main component of high quality education systems. Research suggests that effective teachers have both wide knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge appropriately in a variety of contexts[2]. Teachers' knowledge not only includes subject matter but also of pedagogies, the curriculum, students' learning and, most importantly, how to combine these different knowledge strands[3].
2. Through research programmes such as the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme, based at the Institute[4] we are developing a consensus on the nature of successful teaching and learning. While there are generic competencies that characterise 'good' teaching, it should not be assumed that standard instruments can be developed to measure all teachers and their teaching. Best practice is context dependent - consider such diverse settings as an early years classroom compared with an A-level History class or a Key Stage 3 Mathematics class compared to a Physical Education class. As a result, high quality teaching also depends on opportunities for teachers to investigate successful practices and to learn from others in similar settings[5].
3. In the 1990s, OFSTED evidence provided a measure of the quality of classroom teaching because inspections were based on large numbers of lesson observations undertaken by inspection teams. The OFSTED database provided a basis for making judgements about quality of teaching between subjects, across the age range and across the country. The transformation of the OFSTED model into a self-evaluation-driven process, whatever its other merits, means that this external evidential base no longer exists.
4. There is a strong case for focusing on the quality of learning which takes place rather than on trying to assess good teaching. High quality learning also requires a number of other elements, for example: strong home-school partnerships, good teaching resources including ICT, well maintained buildings, and positive prior learning experiences. One function of good teacher education is helping teachers enhance the impact of their work in the context of these other factors.
C. Entry into the teaching profession Entry requirements 1. There are floor requirements for entry to ITE[6]. Decisions on admissions beyond minimum requirements rest with individual providers. Given the importance of attracting the most able candidates, it would be imprudent to relax formal entry requirements. Even though this might improve supply in shortage subjects, consequences for overall quality would be negative. There is evidence that the intellectual calibre of recruits to the teaching profession is positively correlated with student attainment[7]. Current entry requirements probably secure recruits from the top 35-40% of the population, though this varies across subject[8]. According to Smithers and Robinson, 70% of History teachers have a 2:1 degree or better, but only 40% of Mathematics teachers[9]. By comparison, higher performing school systems in PISA[10] select teachers from the top third of graduates from the school system, and the best performing countries such as South Korea and Finland recruit from the top 5% and 10% respectively[11]. Of course, there is no guarantee that a student teacher with high qualifications will necessarily acquire the practical skills and knowledge in the other areas described above, but without high intellectual calibre, even high quality skills will be less effective[12].
2. "The top-performing school systems have more effective mechanisms for selecting people for teacher training than do lower performing systems"[13]. Both Singapore and Finland select on academic achievement, communication skills and the motivation to teach[14]. However, in order to be able to choose from the highest quality graduates, teaching as a career must be seen as attractive so that these candidates want to apply. The status of teachers in high-performing countries is high; in both Singapore and South Korea "the general public believe teachers make a greater contribution to society than any other profession"[15].
Trainee numbers and quality 3. Since the establishment of the TTA in 1994, ITE allocations have been driven by two pressures: first, the need to recruit sufficient teachers to deliver the National Curriculum, and secondly the statutory requirement to take into account quality of ITE provision in allocating places. While the latter has been a lever for improving quality, the former has been the paramount concern and has driven the diversification of routes into teaching: mainstream higher education numbers would not alone have ensured recruitment in shortage/priority areas[16]. To this extent, the way in which training numbers have been allocated nationally has been successful: it has not been necessary for schools to send pupils home, or to expand class size as a result of teacher shortage. However, the strategy has meant that ITE allocations have been relatively conservative in their approach, and as curriculum reform, 14-19 and workforce remodelling take hold, these may produce an increasing disjunction between the needs of schools and the organisation of ITE. Current ITE provision needs to adapt to and keep pace with the changing system.
4. Teacher recruitment cannot be separated from retention. Evidence suggests that 33% of teachers leave the profession within five years of qualifying, and, perhaps more worryingly in terms of financial and personal investment, of every hundred students recruited onto ITE courses, only 56 are teaching five years after qualifying[17]. If more teachers could be retained, training numbers could be reduced. Alternatives such as recruiting more beginning teachers so that only the best ones are recruited by schools (as in Toronto[18]) or recruiting fewer but of better quality could be considered. It may also be that it is not the 'wrong' teachers who prematurely leave but the 'right' teachers who are not given adequate support in their first few years. We need to better understand the reasons for teacher withdrawal from the profession and newly qualified teachers' early professional experiences so that we can improve the initial preparation year, induction and early career development.
5. The current range of routes has been broadly effective in attracting teachers from a variety of backgrounds with a range of qualifications, skills and attributes. Many of the barriers to entry have been removed with the development of part-time, employment-based and school-led provision. Entry routes into teaching are more diverse than in almost any other country. There is inspection evidence that employment-based routes into teaching struggle with quality issues especially in knowledge-underpinnings for teaching[19]. However the picture may be even more complex than it appears at first sight: some universities run employment-based and conventional provision; many school-centred schemes draw extensively on university-expertise. There is a strong case for a coherent examination of the relationship between different routes into teaching and the experiences of teachers themselves - ultimately new teachers gain QTS from all these routes but there is little research on how different routes prepare them for their professional life and career prospects with the underpinning knowledge needed.
6. There should be a question-mark over the continued existence of undergraduate (BEd/BA(QTS)) teacher education. Undergraduate teacher education, now almost entirely primary, has low A-level entry requirements (often D/E grades) so it fails the McKinsey test on recruiting from the top third of the cohort, is relatively inflexible in responding to changing demand because it involves a three or four year course, and produces a qualification which has low currency in graduate employment markets. There is a case for moving to wholly post-graduate entry. Many countries in Europe do use a 'concurrent' model - i.e. education combined with a degree in another subject - but the course is usually longer and recruitment more competitive than for a BEd[20].
7. Undergraduate provision should be retained as a training vehicle for the wider children's workforce, focused on youth, community and psycho-social work, with considerable foundation degree and part-time provision. Universities have developed 'educational studies' degree programmes; recruitment onto these is typically from those with higher A-level grades than for BEd degrees. Foundation degrees for the wider children's workforce, as at the Institute, are highly effective in widening participation.
Diversity 8. Some measures to improve diversity have been successful although there is a lag between the transformation of school populations and the transformation of educational infrastructures. There may too be dangers in 'ghettoising' ethnic minority teachers in schools with pupil intakes like themselves and there is research that reports that "most ethnic teachers expressed impatience with school leaders' inequitable approaches to promotion"[21]. Considering the proportion of men in primary teaching, this has remained virtually static throughout the twentieth century and despite attempts to recruit more men onto ITE courses the actual percentage has never exceeded 20%. There is also some evidence that despite small increases in the number of men recruited onto ITE courses the proportion of male primary teachers is declining[22].
The adequacy of ITE for entry into the teaching profession. 9. OFSTED evidence[23] and the NQT survey[24] suggests that ITE is generally good. The former Schools Minister Lord Adonis asserted that the country has the "best trained teachers it has ever had". However, the demands on teachers in the early twenty-first century are considerable, and changing quickly. The teaching profession of the twenty-first century requires: · practitioners with strong underpinning knowledge about successful pedagogy as well as classroom skills and secure subject understanding. Given the rapid transformation of knowledge, this subject understanding involves knowing how subject disciplines work and how to develop these at interdisciplinary boundaries as much as extensive content knowledge; · teachers who have a commitment to excellence and equity for all so that all students reach their potential; · teachers committed to informed interventionism that involves working successfully with others such as parents and other professionals to build success in learning.
We do not currently have the infrastructure to develop this profession. Debates about the location and form of teacher education are side-shows in relation to the form of teacher professionalism we need in order to create a world-class education system. The emergent view in the highest performing education systems is that we need an active transformation of teaching, much like the transformation of the medical profession after the Second World War[25].
10. A major challenge lies in establishing what it is sensible to teach in ITE as part of professional preparation and what would be best taught as part of early career enhancement. This is especially true in respect of SEN. Galton and MacBeath note that "while the proportion of children requiring specialised support has increased, the specialist knowledge and qualifications have not kept pace"[26].
11. Too few of the best teachers teach in the most challenging schools, and too many of those who do subsequently leave. The highest performing systems in PISA (e.g. Finland) have much less between-school variability, so that challenging pupils are less concentrated in a few institutions. However given that between-school variability in England is likely to persist we need to be more imaginative in policy terms. There is little evidence that salary-based solutions alone will work. Consideration might be given to teacher education-based models deriving from the Chicago and Boston teacher residency schemes that offer teachers in challenging schools continued access to high quality support. Universities could help to provide this by developing strong partnerships with such schools[27].
D. The delivery of ITE Innovation and diversity 1. The current ITE system is not designed to encourage innovation and diversity, but to ensure that there are adequate numbers of new teachers to deliver the national curriculum. This means that current ITE largely reproduces our existing structures, with little innovative power. The current structure for allocations, accreditation and partnership largely embeds reproduction.
Higher education and partnership 2. Higher education institutions provide economies of scale in recruiting, training and assessing students as well as effective quality assurance. They equip new teachers with new knowledge and access to research on teaching and learning; teachers read more extensively during their ITE than at any other point in their career. The potential to be derived from linking HEIs to the most innovative schools has not been realised.
3. England is distinctive internationally in the extent to which it has moved towards partnership as a base for the delivery of ITE. There is no extensive appetite to unwind partnership but it needs to be reconceptualised. International evidence indicates that effective ITE depends on close relationships between higher education and schools[28]. Neither can work successfully without the other. Our experience, and wider research evidence would suggest that there is a powerful case for placing partnership on a more formal footing to provide a more coherent focus on quality and innovation.
4. Partnerships,
especially in urban areas, are very fragile. The Institute's experience in
5. Although 'training schools' have now become established, they have, rather curiously, not been well embedded in ITE partnerships: higher education plays no part in identifying training schools, and training schools are not necessarily exemplars of good practice. The potential of training schools would be maximised if higher education were involved in their identification and development. The early studies of the Oxford Internship Scheme demonstrated the immense power of involving schools, individual school departments and higher education in a stable training model[29].
6. Whilst schools have been extensively involved in the delivery of the 'practicum' component of partnership, they have remained junior partners in ITE[30]; even in SCITTs[31] ITE has not been developed as a key element in school improvement. A possible solution would be to make it impossible for schools to secure the highest OFSTED grades if they were not involved in partnerships for ITE and on-going education for their teaching staff.
Development opportunities for staff involved in ITE 7. Opportunities
for teachers involved in ITE vary. In all schools, ITE depends on 'mentors' -
classroom teachers who provide support to trainees on placement in school. The
experience of being a mentor is a career-stage, often undertaken by teachers
with three to five years' experience, and something from which such teachers
move on.
8. Development opportunities for ITE staff in HEIs are more complex. Although ITE staff are fully integrated members of the university workforce, some performance indicators in HE are difficult for ITE staff: ITE courses are typically 36-40 weeks in length (the length of a school year) and the demands of ITE can make it difficult for staff to develop research profiles which would enable them to secure HE promotion. Work needs to be done to provide structures for HEI staff which valorise their teaching and outreach work with schools. Attempts to develop the sort of staffing structure which the best medical schools have, with a strong 'teaching consultant' cadre have so far been unsuccessful, but a more coherent framework would open up more exciting career possibilities.
The role of educational research 9. Progress has been made in developing the role of educational research in informing ITE provision, not least as a result of TLRP[33] which has produced a series of projects focused directly on teaching and learning. There are some challenges to embedding research into ITE provision. Firstly, much ITE provision is located in departments which are relatively lowly graded in the RAE, and even in higher rated institutions, demands on ITE tutors make it difficult for them to be active researchers. Secondly, the thrust of ITE reform over the last twenty years has been to enhance the practical at the expense of the theoretical and reflective[34]. This has produced important advances, which should not be understated but makes it more difficult to ensure that teaching is a genuinely research-based profession. There are some solutions to this in hand which might work: in particular the development of Masters level credits in PGCE courses that require students to read more extensively, although it further isolates the BEd, and may create an unhelpful hierarchy between different training routes. Additionally, there is good evidence that 'reading' and 'thinking' are not activities confined to higher education, and that the best schools provide rich learning environments with engagement in research. The teacher-researcher movement has had an impact, and could be made more productive with sustained support from HE.
D. CPD provision 1. Induction[35] is not mentioned in the terms of reference but it is unhelpful to think in terms of a model which assumes that teacher preparation is complete after one year. The best induction programmes allow NQTs to work together with those in other schools and in other disciplines, and thus cannot be wholly managed in-school.
2. We
have already argued that there is a need to attract higher quality entrants
into the teaching profession, but this will take time and thus have only a
limited short term impact. If we are serious about improving educational
outcomes for young people, this has to be through investment in teacher
development. Currently however continuing professional development lacks
coherence and focus: it is often an afterthought in school development planning,
and there is no quality guarantee[36].
Rather, there is a patchwork of provision by local authorities, HEIs and
private (often very small scale) consultancies. The proportion of teacher time
devoted to CPD in
E. Conclusion 1. ITE has made progress in the last twenty years, but there remain serious concerns about the overall quality of entrants and the fitness for purpose of ITE for a radically changing school system. International evidence would suggest that we not only need to raise the quality of applicants but, perhaps more importantly, also establish university-school partnerships on a more robust basis to ensure a strong commitment to linking initial preparation, induction and early career development as well as on-going teacher learning in order to secure a world-class education system.
2. Much of the policy discourse in the field fails to comprehend the complexity and demands on the teaching profession in the twenty-first century. Throughout the twentieth century, while the economy largely demanded low-skill levels from most workers and high skills from a few, it was enough to train and retain teachers of average quality. In the twenty-first century, this is a recipe for failure. We need to engineer improvement at a much more rapid pace and with a commitment to research-based professional learning if we are to develop the teaching profession we need. February 2009 [1] Barber M. &
Mourshed M., (2007) How the world's
best-performing school systems come out on top. [2] See, e.g., Verloop,. N., Van Driel, J., and Meijer, P., (2001) 'Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching', International Journal of Educational Research, 35, 5, pp. 441-461; Darling-Hammond, Linda. (2002). Research and rhetoric on teacher certification: A response to "Teacher Certification Reconsidered," Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(36) [3] Gopinathan, S., et al (2008) Transforming Teacher Education: Redefined Professionals for 21st Century Schools, Report Commissioned by the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes (NIE, Singapore); P. Rudd, M Rickinson and P Benefield, (2004) Mapping Work on the Future of Teaching and Learning: final report for the General Teaching Council (London: NFER and GTC(E)) [4] See www.tlrp.ac.uk [5] On the importance of context, see Day, C., Stobart, G., Sammons, P, Kington, A., Gu, Q., (2006) Teachers Matter: Connecting Work, Lives and Effectiveness (Buckingham, Open University Press) [6] Currently, GCSE at grade C or better in English and Mathematics (plus Science for primary teachers) and a degree or equivalent qualification; see www.tda.gov.uk [7] e.g., and much
quoted, Sanders, W., and Rivers, J., (1996) Cumulative
and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement, [8] Based on HE participation rates of approximately 40%, and on data which suggests that approximately 50% of entrants have a 2:1 degree or better. However, in some key areas, including Mathematics and Science, these figures would suggest recruitment into teaching from the fourth decile. [9] http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/education/research/ceer/pdfs/gtt-report.pdf [10] Programme for International Student Assessment; see www.pisa.oecd.org [11] Barber and Mourshed, How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top, p. 16 [12] The American research evidence suggests that nothing other than teacher IQ effectively predicts teacher quality. See E.A. Hanushek, F. Welsh and S.Rivkin (2006) 'Teacher Quality' in E.A.Hanushek, ed., Handbook of the Economics of Education, vol 2 (Stanford) [13] Barber and Mourshed, How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top, p. 17 [14] Barber and Mourshed, How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top, p.17; Gopinathan et al, Transforming Teacher Education, p. 39 [15] Barber and Mourshed, How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top p. 22 [16] There is international evidence that traditionally organised teacher training lacks the sustained capacity to deliver to schools the range, diversity and numbers of education professionals which modernising schools need; see Gopinathan, S., et al Transforming Teacher Education, pp. 86 ff [17] Data provided by TDA [18] Mira Gambhir, Kathy Broad, Mark Evans and Jane Gaskell (2008) Characterising teacher education in [19] OFSTED (2007) An employment based route into teaching 2003 - 2006 ( [20] Beard, R., (2007) Content
and Quality of Teacher Education across Europe ( [21] Hargreaves L., M. Cunningham, T.Everton, A.Hansen, B.Hopper,
D.McIntyre, C.Oliver, T.Pell, M. Rouse, and P.Turner (2007) The Status of Teachers and
the Teaching Profession in England: Final Report ( [22] [23] OFSTED (2008) Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector (London: OFSTED) http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Annual-Report/2007-08/The-Annual-Report-of-Her-Majesty-s-Chief-Inspector-2007-08 [24] http://www.tda.gov.uk/upload/resources/pdf/n/nqt_survey_results_2008.pdf [25] Gopinathan, S., et al (2008) Transforming Teacher Education, p. 90, and passim for a full analysis of the global transformation of teaching which is taking place. [26] Galton, M
& MacBeath, J. (2008) Teachers under
pressure [27] This could
be linked to William Atkinson's 'Marshall Plan' for 'schools in exceptionally
challenging circumstances' in this country which include class sizes of less
than 20, involvement of a range of professionals including social workers and
psychologists, better parental engagement and family support; see Atkinson, W
(2006) 'A loss of courage, will and
faith', [28] Bills, L.,
Briggs, M., Browne, A., Gillespie, H., Gordon, J., Husbands, C., Phillips, E.
Still, C. & Swatton, P. (2008) International
Perspectives on Quality in Initial Teacher Education: An Exploratory Review of
Selected International Documentation on Statutory Requirements and Quality
Assurance, in: Research Evidence in Education Library. [29] Benton, P., (1990) The [30] J.Furlong, L. Barton, S.Miles, C.Whiting and G.Whitty (2000) Teacher Education in Transition: reforming professionalism? (Open University Press) [31] i.e. School-Centred Initial Teacher Training Consortia [32] i.e. Advanced Skills Teachers [33] Teaching and Learning Research Programme - as before [34] Furlong, J. (2005) 'New Labour and teacher education: the end of an era' Oxford Review of Education, 31, 1 , pp. 119-134 [35] Induction:
Newly Qualified Teachers, i.e. those in their first teaching post, are entitled
to a reduced teaching load as well as school-based and perhaps local authority
based training as part of their on-going education and development as teachers.
There is evidence however that some NQTs are not receiving this statutory
entitlement. See: Hobson, A, et al (2007) Newly
Qualified Teachers' Experiences of their First Year of Teaching: Findings from Phase III of the 'Becoming a Teacher' ( [36] OFSTED (2006) The logical chain: continuing professional development in effective schools [37] School Teachers Review Body (2007): Teachers' Workload Diary Survey http://www.ome.uk.com/downloads/2007%20Teachers%20Report%20FINAL.pdf [38] Hargreaves L., et al (2007) Status of Teachers and the Teaching Profession |