Teaching Quality

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. All we are asking for when we talk about qualified teacher status are minimum safeguards to ensure quality.

That is only part of the story. A Labour Government would demonstrate our commitment to elevating the standing of teachers by expecting them to undertake regular professional development, which would sit alongside any internal appraisal structure or the intervention of Ofsted. That is vital to raising standards, and it would bring teaching into line with other high-status, mature professions such as lawyers and doctors. It is also vital for future-proofing our education system. Technology is transforming education—it is remarkable how the internet is allowing access to so much of the artistic and historic creativity of humankind—but I was shocked to receive a letter from Microsoft telling me that, according to one of its surveys, 74% of teachers believe they do not have the skills to teach computing properly because the subject is moving so fast. That is exactly where we want teachers to be up to date with continuing professional development.

Just as doctors are revalidated on their knowledge of new medicines and trials, so teachers have to be up to date with the latest research and pedagogy. We need teachers to share expertise, to observe lessons, and to collaborate across schools and trusts.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I think the hon. Gentleman said—it will be in his script—that successive Secretaries of State have not been interested in continuing professional development. I think that is exactly what he said. Can he explain to me why inset days used to be referred to as Baker days?

[Tristram Hunt]

Because they were introduced by Lord Baker, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

The best continuing professional development produces remarkable results for young people, and the process needs to be profession-led. If we are interested in serious professional development, it cannot be a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise. I am encouraged by what the Prince's Teaching Institute says in its proposals for a royal college of teaching:

“Certification will be the process by which teachers’ standards are assessed by the College.”

As the former Secretary of State, Baroness Morris, has written:

“The idea of a Royal College of Teachers, fast gaining support from all sides, is the obvious organisation to lead on developing the idea”

of revalidating or recertifying to ensure that teachers are up to date with their professional development.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

This debate has the entirely laudable aim of raising the status of teachers. There has been a need to do that ever since George Bernard Shaw said “those who can’t, teach”, to which Woody Allen added that those who can’t teach, teach PE.

I have to begin with a confession. I began teaching without any teaching qualifications. Having left university with a philosophy degree, I took a job with Liverpool city council as an estate manager. At that stage, Liverpool city council thought that it needed to employ graduates, but it was apparent after a week that neither the council nor I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. I saw an advertisement for Warwick Bolam secondary modern school in Bootle and within a week I was teaching 11 to 16-year-olds in what was a surprisingly good and well-run school. I had to learn quickly on the job because the tradition in Bootle was that the children felt obliged to play up and the teacher had to demonstrate that they could exert control. Failure to do so was a route to a nervous breakdown, resignation and a pretty unhappy life. The children actually preferred not to mess around, but the onus was on me to demonstrate that they could be prevented from doing so.

After two quite happy years in the classroom, I was sent a letter by the Department of Education and Science, as it then was, saying that I was a qualified teacher. By that time I had moved on to Salesian high school, also in Bootle, which had become a comprehensive school, where I taught English, history and social studies. The last of those was a new subject introduced for embittered 15-year-olds who had been badly affected by the raising of the school leaving age and were disgruntled to be there, but it worked.

It gets worse. I was then asked to take on A-level sociology, which I believe to be a much underrated and misunderstood discipline. Unbelievably, I helped to revise and set the extremely testing and highly theoretical A-level syllabus and exams for the Joint Matriculation Board. The students’ A-level results were pretty good—in line with, or better than, their grades in other subjects.

After a happy and successful decade, I moved to a top independent school as head of religious studies, also teaching some Latin, neither of which subjects I had taught before. Only towards the end of my career did I teach philosophy at A-level, which was what my degree was in. In the meantime, I had done a diploma, an MEd and even, for no apparent reason, a course in teaching maths, which I found interesting rather than of any real use in the classroom.

I therefore clearly cannot argue credibly that teacher training is either a sufficient or a necessary condition for being a good teacher. Indeed, I would probably argue that an effortless grasp of some subjects, such as that shown by brilliant mathematicians and the like, often equips people poorly to explain them to lesser mortals who are struggling to comprehend them. I believe that teacher training can help, inspire and provide a fund of ideas that the grind of day-to-day teaching might not. It cannot provide commitment and dedication, which are indispensible to successful teaching, but it can do much that is good.

I refer hon. Members to the recent, surprisingly enlightened, CBI report on our education system, “First steps: a new approach for our schools”. It argues that good schools are those that are well led and have clear and challenging targets, but that have considerable flexibility in how they organise themselves and their staff, and that even an enlightened Secretary of State should back off. It seems to me that today’s teachers would welcome that. They have a prodigious, often unnecessary administrative load, and they are already assessed rigorously in every school worth its salt. To add a national scheme of revalidation for every teacher, as proposed by Labour, seems to me overload on top of overload and would not be welcomed by the profession. It is likely to annoy good professionals, to no real effect. Continuing professional development—we are up for that. However, Government teacher MOTs would simply produce clones, not charisma, if successful and further de-professionalisation and more of a tick-box culture if unsuccessful.

[Michael Gove]

I intervene just to say that my hon. Friend is making an outstanding case and I would love to hear more.

[John Pugh]

Well, I am going to close, because other Members want to speak, but the CBI states that the approach that we are taking towards education is rather like the conveyor belt approach abandoned by industry in the 1980s, and we simply have to get away from it. I will finish by quoting the CBI—I do not suppose I will do that many times in my political career. It stated that head teachers and teachers

“are professionals—we should treat them as such”.