The quest to transform education is not yet over, says Andrew Adonis
My new book Education, Education, Education describes Labour?s achievements ? academies, Teach First, sure start, the literacy and numeracy strategies, the City Challenge programmes, Building Schools for the Future, more and better teachers, the doubling of education spending. All this transformed standards, eradicated failing schools, boosting social mobility and social justice. But there is so much more still to do.
The key reform priority is to make teaching the foremost profession in the country. No school can be better than its teachers. The best education systems in the world recruit their teachers from their top third of graduates and they have 10 or more applicants per teacher training place. In England there are barely two applicants per training place. Recruitment to teaching, and the calibre of teachers, improved markedly under Labour but much more needs to be done. We need a ?new deal for teachers? comprising eight big?reforms.
First, Teach First, the highly successful charity which recruits, trains and places top graduates into schools with more deprived intakes, should be expanded to make it one of the main routes into secondary school teaching. Teach First should increase its recruitment by 500 a year to reach 5,000 a year by 2020, by when it would be supplying one in four new secondary school teachers and perhaps half in more challenging schools. Universities should systematically support Teach First to achieve this recruitment?target.
Second, mainstream teacher recruitment and placement beyond Teach First should be professionally managed on a national basis. Instead of the existing system, where more than 80 universities recruit trainees and provide teacher education in partnership with many thousands of schools, training should be concentrated in a far smaller number of universities and schools. There should be a national recruitment process, adopting higher entry standards, managed by an independent trust akin to the BBC with a board comprising educational, business and social leaders. This National Teaching Trust would commission the very best universities and schools to undertake training, and support teachers directly throughout their training and their early years in teaching.
Third, schools rated outstanding by Ofsted should be allowed to recruit trainees directly, apart from the national recruitment routes, provided they are prepared to pay them and train them properly. This option would be particularly attractive to the best academy chains and federations.
Fourth, teacher trainees should be paid a salary. Learning from Teach First, graduates should be employed by a school and work a standard 48-week year for two initial training years. They should teach or assist at their school during the whole 38 weeks of term time, with out-of-school university courses taking place in the other 10 weeks, starting with a summer training programme in the six weeks before their first autumn term.
Fifth, on the evidence that starting and top salaries matter most to recruiting good teachers, there should be a much higher starting salary for target groups of teachers. For new maths, physics, chemistry and IT teachers, the salary should be in the region of ?30,000 outside London and ?35,000 in London, and for new headteachers I suggest a starting salary of ?70,000 for larger primary schools (?80,000 in London) and ?100,000 for secondary schools (?115,000 in London).
Sixth, for teachers and headteachers on these higher starting salaries there should be an end to nationally determined increments. Pay progression should be at the discretion of the individual school.
Seventh, teachers and headteachers on these higher starting salaries should be subject to a longer probationary period of three or four years, during and at the end of which employment could be ended without recourse to claims of unfair?dismissal.
Eighth, the generalist BEd degree in primary education should be replaced with subject-based degrees. In future, primary school teachers should either be recruited with honours degrees in specific subjects and then undertake postgraduate training ? as do secondary school teachers and a small number of primary teachers ? or they should study for combined ?academic subject plus pedagogy? degrees, with a large proportion of these majoring in literacy and numeracy. Then every primary teacher would have profound subject knowledge and the primary curriculum could be broadened and deepened significantly.
This ?new deal for teachers? is at the heart of my ?manifesto for change?. But there is a lot more beyond. All underperforming schools should be replaced by academies. All universities and all successful schools, state and private, should become academy sponsors, taking responsibility for managing academies in areas with low educational standards. There should be a new ?A Bacc? to broaden the A level curriculum and a new ?Tech Bacc? leading directly into apprenticeships. Sure start should be expanded. And the voting age should be reduced to 16 with a polling station in every secondary school, to transform citizenship education in schools. The reform task ahead is huge.
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Andrew Adonis is chair of Progress and former schools minister. Education, Education, Education is published by Biteback Publishing
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academies, Andrew Adonis, education, head teachers, leadership, New Labour, public service reform, Sure Start, Teach First
Source: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/09/30/a-new-deal-for-teachers/
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