11 Plus Exams Forum

Has anyone seen this programme, it follows new teachers (who have had only 6 weeks of training) as they begin teaching at their schools.
They are all teaching at schools infamous for poor results and bad behaviour.

They were thrown in the deep end I thought. They needed an experienced teacher to help them plan lessons and understand how children learn!

I find this programme so depressing. What are these children (the ones who are rude and not studying) going to do and how are they going to contribute to society when they are older.

MamaBear wrote:I find this programme so depressing. What are these children (the ones who are rude and not studying) going to do and how are they going to contribute to society when they are older.

Sadly I think I was both rude and not studying from about year 9 onwards, I was a very unhappy stressed teenager. However, I now seem to be doing something fabulous and am definitely contributing to society........both financially and in other ways I terms if what I give both professionally and personally.

In my experience these very disengaged children have every reason to be disengaged. The challenge is engaging them. I agree with Guest 55 - they need so much more support!

I thought it depressing to think that after only 6 weeks those young people were thrown head first into the deep end and then expected somehow to save themselves. Perhaps the logic with Teach First is that those who can stick it out and survive will make the best teachers, but in the meantime potentially good teachers will be lost. I felt sorry for the kids, a teacher was trying to explain to a girl negative numbers by talking about scuba diving. She had no idea what he was talking about and the teaching was boring so unsurprisingly the children played up. Compare the teaching with that in Educating Yorkshire and the contrast could not be greater.

I agree that the teachers were not prepared and I was shocked that they openly stated that they didn't know what they were doing.
However I also don't like how rude behaviour is tolerated and almost expected from teenagers.

I heard a radio interview from Malala and I wish British teens would appreciate how amazing it is to have free education.

Would you recruit graduate trainees to save a failing business? When the banks need bailing out do they install 22 year olds to give them a new direction or do they pay hundreds of thousands for the very best, most experienced people?

These schools need to be given money to entice the best teachers in the country away from the grammars and independents, and these superbly educated but inexperienced teachers need to be shadowing for a year at least, and then mentored.

Our country seems to be happy to throw serious amounts of public money at banks and shopping centres and paying politicians, but we are neglecting our most valuable commodity...our children's earning potential and international recognition as the brightest and best educated.

Btw...why do male teachers nearly always wear shirt/tie/jacket and female teachers look like they are going for a stroll round the town? Chloe is lovely, but all bra straps and vest tops, hardly appropriate for teaching teenagers? The kids look smarter than some of the female teachers, it surely cannot help with the respect issue.

southbucks3 wrote:Would you recruit graduate trainees to save a failing business? When the banks need bailing out do they install 22 year olds to give them a new direction or do they pay hundreds of thousands for the very best, most experienced people?

These schools need to be given money to entice the best teachers in the country away from the grammars and independents, and these superbly educated but inexperienced teachers need to be shadowing for a year at least, and then mentored.

Our country seems to be happy to throw serious amounts of public money at banks and shopping centres and paying politicians, but we are neglecting our most valuable commodity...our children's earning potential and international recognition as the brightest and best educated.

Btw...why do male teachers nearly always wear shirt/tie/jacket and female teachers look like they are going for a stroll round the town? Chloe is lovely, but all bra straps and vest tops, hardly appropriate for teaching teenagers? The kids look smarter than some of the female teachers, it surely cannot help with the respect issue.

It's soooo, true. The 'sink or swim' mentality doesn't help... neither teachers or students benefit. I mean, however talented some TF graduates are, they won't (and don't) have the most positive effective on students in schools. Teachers blossom through support, good mentoring and experience. It's common sense to use experienced teachers in these situations.

But most MPs lack common sense... just lurve Lab's proposal of Teacher MOTs

I haven't seen this programme but I passionately believe that you cannot learn to teach 'on the job'. The only way to have a decent, professional force of teachers is to invest a decent, professional amount of time and money in their education. In fact it is quite telling that in this country we talk of teacher training, and in most other countries (think Finland!) they talk of teacher education. It is the goal of this government to reduce teachers to technicians delivering a set of outcomes-based curriculum goals, while pacifying them with talk of increased autonomy and professionalism. The reduction of university-based teacher education and the continued innovation in finding ways to train teachers cheaply and quickly are testament to this ideology. No one in this country has the balls to tackle what really needs to be done, and as with so much which happens here, they tinker round the edges with ill-advised initiatives which sound good on the front page of the Daily Mail but have no real teeth and leave both children and teachers themselves very poorly served. As SB3 says, the money all goes elsewhere - long university courses are expensive and take some delivering, but stick a graduate in a classroom and let them get on with it and hey presto! you have a teacher. We will pay the price for this short-sighted strategy for decades to come imho.

I think better measures need to be introduced for teachers, the number of teachers leaving the profession every year is rising.
Also the science teacher Claudina's father pointed out that teachers get a rough deal. They can have chairs thrown at them and verbal abuse but nothing is resolved.
It sets a bad example to the other children too