Stuffing Schools With Mickey Mouse Teachers

A half-baked plan to cut teacher training time in half is set to confine the profession to the dustbin and children to the scrap heap as the government outlines plans for a raft of Mickey Mouse gimmicks already branded as back-of-a-fag-packet stuff. 

People could qualify as a teacher in England in six months rather than the usual year, under plans unveiled by ministers today, all part of a raft of  public service reforms designed to spin Brown away from the heat of the economy. 

And in an ominous footnote which smacks of jobs for the government's Common Purpose toadies, school minister, Jim Knight, reckons two hundred people seen as future head teachers will be able to move into school leadership within four years.

And its more for jobs for the boys and girls, with cabinet office minister, Liam Byrne, having the bare-faced cheek to tell the BBC: "We know there are a lot of fantastic mathematicians, for example, who would have once perhaps gone into the City but now actually might be more interested in a career in teaching." 

That's already drawn fire from the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Dr Mary Bousted:  "It sounds like an employment scheme for unemployed bankers, but this may not be the best way to go about it.

The plans, which would only apply to England, would get short-shrift in a more rigorous Scottish education system.  

Teaching unions are up in arms as they see through the gimmicks, raising serious doubts about the need for the scheme in the first place or its practicability, as the plan is destined to confine teaching to the dustbin of a Cinderella profession. 

Once again ministers have been caught out flannelling and floundering away with useless gimmicks which no one is prepared to take lying down. 

Voicing those concerns Dr Bousted added: "I'm becoming very worried about the plethora of different gimmicks and initiatives the government is coming out with - this looks very much like back-of-the-fag-packet stuff."

Teaching and teacher training has had a long fight to drag it up from being downgraded to a second class profession of the Thatcher era.

But the standard of graduate teacher training has already been dumbed down, with a so-called graduate profession letting in any Tom, Dick and Harriet with a meaningless Mickey Mouse degree. 

Teaching is tough. It's both challenging and exhausting, particularly if you've got to square up to a classroom of monsters or demanding high-flyers every hour of the day. 

Sure teaching is all about finding the brightest and best when a child's future is at stake. Pupils deserve the best but it's not everyone's cup of tea and should not be a soft option for a bunch of resentful no-hopers when there's nothing else around to take their fancy.  

That can only be achieved by tightening up entry requirements, not dumbing them down and placing trainee teachers in schools for a good long period to see if they're really up to the job  and to weed out the crap. 

It's not as if there's a shortage of people thinking about teaching as the recession depression really starts to bite. That should be a golden opportunity to tighten up on standards not dumb them down. 

Only with proper incentives of pay and conditions and help with the mountain of administration and a rigourous weeding out of incompetents can the profession hope to give pupils what they deserve. 

George Bernard Shaw once said: "Those who can do, those who cannot teach".  

Now with these ill-thought out Mickey Mouse gimmicks, it seem those who can't teach can easily find a cushy way into the classroom.

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Govt A-Level Sham Fails Students

The government has failed its A-levels once again with today's record results, as sixth-formers jump around clutching their fantastic results only to turn round and see everyone is a winner, waving the same fantastic results. 

Ministers and quangoland lackeys, trotted out their well-worn phrases - 'How dare anyone put them down. We all should be celebrating their hard work, not criticising them'. 

But that's not the point, as noted in the today's Guardian.

Time and again, New Labour's 'record A-levels' has been exposed as a sham. A deliberate ploy to try to hit ridiculous targets of 50% in higher education and keep down the unemployment figures. 

They've tried every trick in the book to boost the pass rate and inflate the grades. Making exams easier, watering down exams with course-work, introducing soft subjects, skewing the statistics and tinkering with the grade boundaries. 

It's all a far cry from the days when bright, hard working sixth-formers would be rightly rewarded for their efforts, with a well-earned place at a proper university, studying a proper subject. 

And that applied just as much to the youngsters from working class backgrounds, as it did to the kids from the posh schools, which most of New Labour's top ministers attended. 

Now, for many students, it will a couple of years at Smalltown Polytech - rebranded Bigcity University - 'studying' Media and Computer Games. Until they get fed up and leave. 

Faced with the grades sham, the proper universities are trying to keep up standards by introducing their own entrance exams, because the A-levels are not worth the paper they are written on.

Disillusioned overseas students are being used to prop-up the cash-strapped rebranded polys and offered 'rotten' degrees for their efforts.  Home students are enticed with the sop of easy subjects, with the word 'studies' in the title. Without an A-level gold standard, the student drop out and failure rate at the so-called 'universities' is soaring.

Soon A-levels, in England at least, could be a thing of the past. To be replaced by vocational 'diplomas'. Industry chiefs recently warned the government what everyone else has been saying for ages - the new Diplomas to replace academic A-levels aren't worth the paper they're written on. 

So what next for the failed education experiment? Raising the school-leaving age is a neat way of taking the NEETS out of the rising unemployment figures. Then just give away the A-levels as a School Leaving Certificate. All students get results and everyone passes. 

In the shallow, fantasy world of New Labour, everyone's a winner - except the students, schools, parents, universities and this country's future. 

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Dumbed Down Diplomas

Industry chiefs are telling the New Labour government what many have been saying for ages - the new Diplomas to replace academic GCSEs and A-levels aren't worth the paper they're written on. Dumbing down just go dumber.

The employers' organisation, the CBI, says government plans for Diplomas for academic subjects in England are "an unnecessary distraction".

Of course they are. It's a sham. A New Labour wheeze to justify the billions of pounds spent trying to achieve ridiculous education targets. 

They've tried dumbing down the GCSEs and A-levels, introduced course work to make them easier and a whole range of subjects which require little rigourous academic study in an effort to boost results. But after ten years - that still doesn't work.

They want more youngsters to stay on at school between 16-18 to keep down the unemployment figures. But you can't expect them all to study A-levels. 

Diplomas for vocational subjects (GNVQs) are already taken by students and have been for years. They're simply being rebranded as Diplomas and introduced for both vocational and academic subjects, all rolled into one 'qualification'.

The uptake of the new Diplomas, to be introduced from September, is poor even from the state schools where their funding source dictate what they should do. There's a shortage of markers for the subjects and universities are beginning to set their own entrance exams because the A-levels are becoming worthless.

In the shallow, fantasy world of New Labour, everyone's a winner. More students get good results and everyone passes. It's a School Leaving Certificate by another name. In the US it's called a High School Diploma.

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Ministers 'Failing' Schools Gimmick

Schools secretary Balls' latest academy plan for 'failing schools' is a cheap gimmick, a government wheeze to privatise state education and put it in the hands of the 'education' business.

New Labour has squandered millions of pounds on education over the past decade and little has been achieved. How embarrassing.

The much vaunted 'flagship' plan for academies is stalling. It's not working fast enough for its architect, Lord Adonis. So schools are being unfairly stigmatised as 'failing' as a pathetic excuse to hand them over to the vast army of education consultants and bureaucrats in privately managed academies.

This has nothing to do with raising standards or performance and everything to do with the half-baked ideas of politicians who are systematically undermining English state schools to save face and put their own political self-interest over the education of children.

The cull is targeting one in five secondary schools in England, so in two years time (election time?) almost one in 10 secondary schools will have academy status.

The teaching unions are rightly indignant and reject the "focus on failure and closure". These schools are not failing. They just haven't met the ridiculous and unrealistic targets set by this government.

The education of our children should not be in the hands of politicians looking for cheap headlines and education consultants after a quick buck. Academies and trust schools are part of the problem, not the solution.

Maybe Edward Michael 'call me Ed' Balls (independent public school and Keble College, Oxford) and Andreas 'Lord' Adonis (independent public school and Keble College, Oxford) should listen to what the real and realistic education professionals have to say, starting with the Campaign for Real Education.

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