Teaching Quality

Simon Wright Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)]

As the OECD and Members in the debate have highlighted, teachers are the most important resource of any school. On these Benches, we support greater professional freedom and autonomy for our schools and teachers while also ensuring that every parent has a guarantee that the school their child attends meets certain core standards of teaching and care. Liberal Democrats want every pupil in every state-funded school to benefit from the coalition’s slimmed-down national curriculum and freedom from overly centralised Whitehall regulations. We also believe that parents want and expect their child to be taught by a qualified teacher.

Although our two parties in coalition have differences of opinion in these areas, by working together, we have taken great steps to encourage the best graduates into the profession. We have massively expanded Teach First and made more scholarships and bursaries available to help to recruit the most talented graduates with the potential to be brilliant teachers in key subjects. The teaching schools network will help to support the lifelong learning of teachers. I welcome the fact that more than seven out of 10 new teachers now have a first or upper-second class degree, the highest proportion ever recorded, as the Secretary of State noted. Teaching is attracting more of the country’s top-tier graduates.

More and more teachers are being publicly recognised for their contribution to society. Around one in 10 of all honours last year were awarded to people from the world of education. The rising status of the teaching profession is reflected in the comments of the former editor of The Times Educational Supplement, Gerard Kelly, who wrote last September:

“Contrary to most reports, teaching in Britain has never been in better health.”

He added:

“Most encouraging of all are the widespread acceptance that a ‘satisfactory’ education isn't really good enough and the determination of schools and teachers to take ownership of their profession, sharing ideas and best practice in ways unknown only a few years ago.”

Yet there is still more that can be done, led by the profession, to support teachers once they enter teaching. Continuous professional development must be of a consistently high standard and relevance to enable teachers to update and refresh their pedagogy and subject-specific skills. While there is undoubtedly good practice in the provision of teacher CPD—as the Government’s White Paper “The Importance of Teaching” highlighted—too little teacher training takes place on the job, and too much involves compliance with bureaucratic initiatives rather than working with other teachers to develop effective practice. The White Paper states that two thirds of professional development involves passive learning, such as sitting and listening to a presentation.

The teaching profession itself is best placed to develop a system of CPD beyond initial teacher training, and to make clear what teachers should expect throughout their careers. It is preferable for the profession itself to lead and design that process, rather than Whitehall imposing a model, and a royal college of teaching would be an obvious body to do that work. A royal college of teaching could provide a strong voice for teachers to press the case for their ongoing professional development, including promoting time and resources, and perhaps also acting as an accreditor of CPD activity so that high standards could be promoted. The role of the Government in establishing a royal college of teaching should be minimal; its establishment should be driven by the profession. However, the Department for Education could help to facilitate its creation, perhaps by offering discussions over roles that the college could take on from the Department and perhaps by providing arm’s length financial backing.

Another way to support CPD is by ensuring that each teacher has an individual CPD plan, subject to regular review and providing both an entitlement to and an expectation of ongoing training based on their own needs. Schools would ensure that each teacher had such a plan, and Ofsted could play a role in reviewing their effectiveness. We also need to ensure that we get the maximum benefit from the Government’s support for the Education Endowment Foundation. The EEF is supporting important research and practice that could deliver innovation in classrooms to address the needs of disadvantaged children. I would like Ministers to discuss with the EEF whether it could play an even greater role in evaluating and disseminating the application of research to classroom practice.

Teachers want the opportunity to enhance and update their own knowledge base, but I have reservations about a relicensing system on several grounds: I believe it risks being an over-bureaucratic box-ticking exercise; I worry that the focus will be on removing a few of the weakest teachers in our schools rather than on providing positive encouragement for all teachers to become great teachers; and I am concerned about the implications for head teachers if an external body were to overrule a head teacher’s judgment as to whether a teacher was deemed to be suitable.

I welcome the focus today on raising the status of teachers in our classrooms. We must keep that debate at the centre of our thinking if we are to expect all of the nearly 450,000 teachers in classrooms to achieve their very best on behalf of the children they teach, and if we are to build on the positive progress made by the coalition Government.