tickedoffteacher Education Policy

3 things teachers want more than Rishi Sunak’s promises for artificial intelligence

More education news in the Tory Leadership Race as Sunak announces support for teachers by encouraging the adoption of AI in classrooms

The Tory leadership race seemingly has a new battleground, education, and school policy. Truss and Sunak have both been making a series of promises to reform education. Sunak’s latest soundbite has been the promise to introduce AI into classrooms to reduce teacher workloads and ‘inspire’ pupils.

This Ticked Off Teacher is pleased to see teacher workload and wellbeing being discussed as part of education reform. However, the promises are unclear and there are definite limitations to the application of AI in education. When the profession is crying out for support, in the midst of a recruitment and retention crisis, it seems like a bizarre solution to the problem of teacher wellbeing and workload.

The Ticked Off Teacher has prepared a letter to Mr. Sunak to voice their concerns.

Dear Mr. Sunak,

Firstly, thank you for bringing to light that there are issues surrounding teacher workload. While it’s an interesting proposal, I thought you might be interested in some other well-researched measures which are sure to increase teacher well-being exponentially more, and cut the costs for the Conservatives.

1) Coffee for staff – £300 per teacher

It’s official! Teachers in England work the longest hours in the world, over 25% of teachers work more than 60 hours per week. My proposal is to offer some kind of season-ticket loan scheme for an annual Pret subscription. Subsidising caffeinating the workforce could only boost wellbeing and productivity.

2) Biscuits for the Staff Room – £376,000

With 32,163 schools in the UK and an average of 39 teaching weeks per year, it would only cost Sunak’s government approximately £376,000 to provide each staff room with a pack of ASDA own brand custard creams each week for the entire academic year. Yes, workloads may be increasing, but it’s pretty hard to be sad with a custard cream in your mouth.

3) Name-Brand Glue Sticks – £7.5 million

Any teacher will tell you that name-brand Pritt Sticks are like gold dust. Amazon has a pack of 5 for £12 at the moment, so I did you the liberty of doing the maths to give each teacher in the UK a pack. Surely we could all chip in for a Costco card or something to bring the cost down further?

I hope you found my suggestions to be insightful. In the unlikely event that they don’t do the trick, I suggest you consider – increasing PPA, funding intervention teachers, investing in SEN provision, and creating a free centralised platform of classroom resources.

Signed,

Think custard creams will cut it or our ideas are crumbs? Comment below.

tickedoffteacher Education Policy

Lowering the requirements for teaching – what lessons will the USA teach us?

Several states are removing or relaxing barriers to entry in an effort to reduce the USA’s ‘teacher shortage’, will the uk be next?

It’s no surprise to anyone in the education space right now that there is a teacher recruitment and retention crisis in the UK. Experienced teachers are leaving the profession at the fastest rate for over a decade and 25,000 fewer trainees in 2022 than the previous year to replace them.

There have been calls for various policies aiming to incentivise remaining in the profession to ease the crisis, such as an ‘inflation plus’ pay deal (1). Across the pond, some states are taking a more radical approach to solving their own teacher recruitment crisis. Individual states are removing barriers to entry by lowering the requirements to teach in the public sector. Arizona, for example, no longer requires public school teachers to hold a degree as long as they are currently enrolled in college (2). California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Missouri and Alabama are just a handful of other states where similar measures have taken effect.

Why is lowering the barrier to entry such an ‘effective’ measure in solving the recruitment and retention crisis?

  1. In short, it’s very cheap! The state, instead of funding new teacher training routes or measures can simply remove administrative check boxes, saving money for them, while still providing bodies in the classroom. It requires less effort and is easier for the establishment to remove existing measures and leave nothing to replace them. It requires no additional administrative work.
  2. It appeals to the wide group of people that believe teaching is easy. Disrespect of teachers is broadly perceived by those in the profession (3) and has been cited as a major reason for teachers changing career. Lowering barriers to entry is extremely palatable to those that believe teaching is an easy profession and perpetuates a trend of undervaluing teachers in their work, experience, and education.
  3. It shifts the accountability for the retention crisis. Instead of focusing on the systemic failings that are causing droves of teachers to leave the profession, lowering barriers to entry gets bodies in the room. The effectiveness of these teachers can then be blamed on the individual and the school, shifting the blame from central policymakers. Short-term statistics will look excellent, but student outcomes and the well-being and longevity of these teachers will be harder to measure over the long term, making it a simple sticking plaster, rather than a long-term solution.

What are the drawbacks of these policies?

  • For the current teachers – these policies do an excellent job of sweeping current concerns under the carpet. It adds to a feeling of being ‘replaceable’. The responsibility of training and supporting these new teachers will likely fall on existing staff, increasing their workload and likelihood of burnout. This will lead to more experienced staff being lured away from teaching.
  • For the untrained teachers – their experience will likely be extremely stressful. Generally speaking, areas that are tough to teach in experience the most difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. Therefore, it is likely that these inexperienced teachers will be sent to challenging settings where existing staff will not have the time or resources to effectively mentor and support new staff. These new teachers will be exposed to situations that they are not ready for and may lead to extreme stress and a sense of failure, despite having likely ‘taken up the call’ with the best of intentions. This would lead these new teachers to leave the profession due to a lack of support.
  • For the pupils – there is a consensus that a well-trained, effective teacher is essential to raising pupil outcomes. While these new teachers are surely well-meaning, any teacher would admit to finding their first few years of teaching tough. As explained above, children in low-income areas would likely be disproportionately affected by having inadequately trained and supported teachers, stunting their progress further.

Surely this would never happen in the UK?

A practical, ethical and evidence-informed approach and debate of initial teacher training is an essential feature of good education policy. However, 36,000 teachers left the profession in 2021, and with that figure expected to rise, the UK is heading towards a crisis point. We have already seen alternative teacher training routes such as TeachFirst and School Centred Initial Teacher Training rise in popularity. There appears to be a demand for a departure from the university-centred PGCE.

In a similar move to some US States, the UK Department for Education scrapped the traditional numeracy and literacy professional skills tests. The reason was to end ‘arbitrary testing’ as a barrier to recruitment (4).

In summary, there is clearly a teacher recruitment and retention crisis in the UK. I believe that policymakers here will continue to watch the effects of the American policies unfold with keen interest and an eye on their bottom line.

Signed,

Sources

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jun/23/english-schools-warn-of-acute-teacher-shortages-without-inflation-plus-pay-deal
  2. https://www.k12dive.com/news/arizona-law-removes-bachelors-degree-requirement-for-teachers/627128/
  3. https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2018/11/18/teacher-index-2018/
  4. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/changes-to-the-professional-skills-test-for-teacher

Cost-effective policy or American nightmare? Let us know what you think below.

tickedoffteacher Education Policy

Raising school start age in Scotland to six – what does the evidence say?

A bold move for Scotland’s devolved Education is seeing a proposal for a kindergarten stage for three to six-year-olds being debated at the SNP’s conference in October, but what evidence is there?

Education has been a central issue of British politics in the last few weeks, with PM hopeful Liz Truss pitching herself as the ‘education prime minister’. However, it’s the push in Scotland for a shake-up in the early years that has got Twitter talking.

What’s the current system?

Scotland has had a fully devolved system of education since 1999. Scottish children take different exams at the end of secondary school, and do not pay tuition fees at Scottish universities. The rest of the system functions largely similarly to the rest of the UK.

What’s the problem?

Audit Scotland found that there is a ‘wide’ gap between the richest and poorest students in Scotland (1). The report also found that the effect of Covid-19 has negatively impacted work to close the attainment gap. The report reads that the ‘attainment gap has remained a feature of our society for generations and does not do justice to the type of Scotland we wish to build’.

What’s the solution?

Toni Giugliano, the SNP’s policy convenor, has called for a ‘culture shift’ in how Scotland administers early years education, with the hope of improving children’s mental health and closing the poverty attainment gap (2). He said that the current system was ‘designed to build a workforce’ and did not reflect education for a digital age. The proposal is for a play-based kindergarten for three to six-year-olds, followed by six years of primary school.

What isn’t happening

There has been a significant amount of misinformation, misunderstanding and comparison to ‘Scandinavian’ education systems, where it is more common for children to start formal education at seven. However, in Scotland the proposal is not to delay starting school until 7, but to actually add an additional year of funded kindergarten starting a year earlier than in the current system, starting with a kindergarten at age 3.

What evidence is there to raising the school starting age?

Raising the school starting age is increasingly common in developed nations (3). However, research literature has not shown clear educational or economic advantages. A 2018 paper (4) measured a proximate outcome of academic achievement, measures of mental health in childhood. It found that a one-year delay in the start of school dramatically reduces inattention and hyperactivity at age 7, and persists at age 11, a strong indicator of student achievement. However, this widely cited paper has various issues of generalisability. The variation between systems of education, pupil and teacher demographics, teacher training etc. makes it very hard to predict what the outcome would be in Scotland were the proposal to move forward.

What’s next?

The general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Larry Flanagan, said that he was not opposed to a kindergarten stage and believed in a play-based approach to the early years. However, he was also clear that the change would require a considerable amount of resources and training that are not currently in place.

A Scottish government spokeswoman confirmed that the government does not have plans to change the school age (2) but that it welcomes the debate as part of the national discussion on education and will inform future reforms to improve outcomes.

Scotland’s neighbours and the rest of the world will surely have their eyes on Aberdeen as the issue is debated at the SNP conference in October.

Signed,

Sources

  1. https://www.gov.scot/publications/closing-poverty-related-attainment-gap-report-progress-2016-2021/
  2. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62368574
  3. https://expatchild.com/school-starting-ages-around-world/
  4. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hec.3638

Step forwards or backwards? What do you think of the kindergarten proposal? Comment your ideas below.