Teachers: Academies and Free Schools

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for bringing this debate to the House. It is important, and I start by saying that I agreed with the thrust of his arguments. Although I might quibble over a detail or two, I am basically on his side on this issue. I also look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Finn. I know that she brings a wealth of policy experience and advice to this House and I look forward to watching how she changes from being an adviser to a policymaker. I wish her well and look forward to her speech.

I will start on quite a generous note, given that I agree with the thrust of the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I understand or accept some of the assumptions and concerns that underpin this policy; I faced these things when I was in the noble Lord’s position as an Education Minister. I cannot argue that there are not individuals with a set of skills, usually around subject knowledge, whom I would welcome teaching my children if I had children, or teaching in my school if I was a head teacher. Why would I not want my child to be coached by somebody who is a marvellous football coach or taught music by a marvellous musician? Why would I not assume that the skills and knowledge of a recently trained coder are probably more up to date than those of the IT technology teacher who trained 10 years ago? I accept that and I would like to think that there is a way of bringing those people’s skills to our classroom. However, I fundamentally disagree with the way that the Government have brought this about by saying that teachers in academies and free schools do not need any qualifications at all.

Let us be clear what that means. If we assume that the White Paper that was launched in June is still government policy—I am not sure about that—we will in four years reach a situation where every school is an academy or every school is a free school. That means that every school, no matter whether it is good or bad, whether it has a strong or a weak head or has been rated outstanding or failing in its Ofsted inspection, will be allowed to employ people to teach any subject to any group of people, in any context and in any environment.

That is what we have; that law has been made to accommodate the wish to get a small number of people with specialist skills into the classroom. That is what I am against, and that is why this is such a dangerous policy. It is so dangerous because, whatever else we disagree on across this House, I think that we have all come to the knowledge and understanding that the quality of teaching matters. Call a school what you like, but at the end of the day, the school leader and the school teacher will make the difference.

I have already acknowledged that subject matter is important. You can have all the pedagogical skills in the world but, if you do not know your subject, you are not going to be a good teacher. But the reverse is true as well. You can have all the knowledge in the world but, if you do not know the pedagogy, you are not going to be a good teacher. If you do not know how to keep discipline, you are not going to be a good teacher; if you do not know the skill of asking questions of children in different ways, you are not going to be a good teacher; if you do not know about special educational needs and the needs of statemented children, you are not going to be a good teacher; if you do not know how to assess and feed back, which evidence shows to be the most important thing for a teacher to do well, you will not make a good teacher.

My argument is that you can bring somebody with specialist knowledge into a school, but the other things that make them a good teacher will be things they learn through training to be a teacher. That is what you learn when you get qualified teacher status. I know very few people who could come to the classroom with both the specialist knowledge and all those sets of skills. Essentially, that is why I am so opposed to this policy.

We live in a time when the qualifications of a profession mark out the way that society views it. Many of our top professions require people to have the highest qualifications. For example, they take people from Russell group universities and want people with first-class degrees. Whether or not that makes them better at their job is irrelevant to this argument. It is a mark of the value that society places on the job that they do. Why would we not want the same for the people who teach the next generation? Why would we not want to send the message that they are so important that they need a qualification to do the job? The only senior job I can think of for which you do not need a qualification is that of politician. If this is about making all teachers as skilled, knowledgeable and good as politicians, perhaps that is another reason to think again.

In a way, the Government have acknowledged this. Chapter 2 of the White Paper published in June was particularly good: “Great teachers—everywhere they’re needed”. If you look at the policies in that chapter, you will find few with which I would argue: replace qualified teacher status with a stronger, more challenging accreditation; have only excellent heads approving sign-off for people who get QTS; strengthen training providers; increase ITT content; introduce a qualification for school leaders. All that is in the Government’s White Paper on what makes a good school and what makes a good teacher. If it is so important that it is in a policy document, how can the Government follow that up by saying that it is not needed by everybody who enters the teaching profession?

There are ways in which we can allow people with specialist knowledge and attributes to quickly get a QTS. I do not want to put them through slow routes that bore them and keep them out of the classroom longer than necessary. In my day in the department, we had the graduate teacher route and the registered teacher route, both of which were abolished by the coalition Government. Those routes meant that, if you had that subject knowledge, you could go into a school straight away but would train and get your QTS at the end of one or two years. That is the debate that we should be having about how we can fast-track into the classroom people with a good level of knowledge but without teaching knowledge.

I welcome anybody who wants to come into teaching and has something to offer children. But anybody who wants to enter one of the most important professions in this country should put their hand up and say that they are prepared to get the qualification that society deems important for doing that job. So having looked at both sides—those who are becoming teachers and the Government as the safeguarder of standards—I think that no one should be allowed in our schools if they do not have QTS, or if they are not at least working towards getting it in the foreseeable future.