Initial Teacher Training

Lord Kirkham Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkham (Con)]

Surely none of us can be in any doubt at all about the critical importance of teachers in society. We all know from our own experience, or that of our children and grandchildren, how a good teacher can spark interests, arouse enthusiasm and encourage engagement that will set a child on a positive course for life.

Teaching is the profession that creates all other professions, and capable and motivated teachers working alongside responsible parents are the key to influencing and shaping our good citizens of the future—tomorrow’s movers and shakers and captains of industry. Conversely, inadequate teachers and bad schools can wreck lives and prevent children from realising their potential. I have had much personal experience of seeing both the best and the worst, working over many years to help young people from all backgrounds through the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the Outward Bound Trust.

This is, I think, a great moment to re-evaluate and improve our approach to teacher recruitment and training, to give teachers the tools to do a good job and feel good in doing a good job. The pandemic made parents aware, as they faced the challenge of home schooling for the first time, just how hard it is to teach their own children. But many were also left feeling that schools and teachers could have done more to support them than they actually did, particularly during the first national lockdown.

We should make these perceptions a starting point for change. Our priority should be improving the supply of teachers, particularly in disadvantaged areas; reducing the number of teachers who leave their jobs, particularly in the early years after qualifying; and ensuring that high-quality, dedicated people are attracted to and retained within the teaching profession. I feel strongly that the Government’s carefully researched proposed reforms of teacher training are a definite step in the right direction on all these fronts, notably in ensuring that teachers continue to receive training, not just in their first year of work but in years 2 and 3 as well, together with ongoing mentoring from an experienced teacher.

I note from my previous experience in a customer-focused business that built an outstanding reputation and won many awards for the quality of its service that it is not just training that delivers results: it is constant mentoring that helps build morale and ensures that the training is effectively applied in practice.

It is entirely reasonable, right and beneficial to seek to level up teacher training by making every organisation involved in it apply for reaccreditation, and the Government should not be deterred by vested interests, however distinguished, protesting against this. The Government should make their intentions clear on the issue of reaccreditation and move ahead with implementation. They should not allow themselves to be put off by any personal interests or the teaching unions’ traditional opposition to all change, however well intentioned—an odd approach, one might think, from a profession dominated, in many eyes, by the left, underlining the importance in this review of taking the politics out of both teacher training and teaching in our schools.

That is not, incidentally, a party-political point. There have been 13 Secretaries of State for Education since 1997, both Labour and Conservative, and as far as I can recall the teaching unions have been at odds with all of them. Even before 1997, the then Labour education spokesman, now the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was forced to spend some time trapped in a small room with his guide dog for his own protection when chanting militants took exception to his attempt to address the NUT conference, because he had had the temerity to condemn school strikes and seek to fire incompetent teachers. That sort of militant behaviour does nothing to raise public esteem for teachers, which is actually the key to winning them the high rewards that they seek.

We can see around the world that teachers enjoy a higher status in countries that invest heavily in their continuing training—countries such as Singapore and Finland. In countries where teachers are held in greater esteem, more parents aspire for their children to become teachers and encourage them on that career path. It really is a virtuous circle.

I am not speaking in support of the reform of teacher training because I am against teachers anyway, or because I want to stamp out individuality and creativity. I certainly do not want us to turn out identikit teachers reciting to their classes each day from a little red—or, for that matter, blue—book. I am supporting these reforms because I want teachers to be more highly valued in society. I want their status to reflect the responsibility and importance of their role, and I strongly believe that we will help to achieve this by levelling up and depoliticising their training, and by ensuring that their training does not end when they leave university or college.

High-quality, continuing training, not only in years 2 and 3 but throughout a teacher’s career, could and should, with performance reviews, be linked to pay progression, with the best-trained and most highly skilled teachers reaping the greatest rewards. The countries with the best-performing education systems also tend to give teachers more time to plan, evaluate and improve their lessons. They give them the breathing space to improve their skills, not expecting them to fill every hour of the working day with teaching—or, worse still, crowd control. We should do the same. By improving and extending training, depoliticising teaching and fighting militancy, we greatly increase the chances of parents respecting teachers and working with them, hand in hand, to shape the well-educated, highly motivated and properly civilised citizens of tomorrow. We must prioritise continuing training and upskilling for our teachers, so that we can match the very best educational systems in the world, and give our young people a head start in life.