Title
The Graduate Teacher Route To Q.T.S. - Motorway, By-Way or By-Pass?
Author
Rob Foster
Senior Lecturer in Education
Address
Edge Hill College of Higher Education
Ormskirk
Lancashire
L39 4QP
Tel 01695 584336
Conference
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, University of Leeds, England, 13-15 September 2001
Abstract
The paper examines the context in which the Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) has developed, particularly the promotion of employment-based routes to QTS as an alternative to Higher Education based routes such as the PGCE and explores the perspectives of schools on this training route.
To date, the response of schools to the GTP has been little researched. The first phase of this research, published in 2000, reported a project carried out with schools in the north west of England. The main findings were that the GTP had support as a suitable option where a flexible, individually tailored scheme was needed, e.g. for someone who already had substantial teaching experience. However, it was not seen as an appropriate model for training large numbers of beginning teachers and few schools showed interest in taking full responsibility for training new teachers.
The GTP was substantially changed in 2000 - 2001 with the introduction of salaried, supernumerary places and priority categories. The second phase of this research has examined the impact of these changes on the development of the GTP in the North-West, particularly in schools working with the Lancashire Consortium, a GTP support consortium comprising Lancashire LEA and two HEIs – Edge Hill and St. Martin’s, Lancaster. The main findings are that the GTP continues to produce some committed and high quality teachers but that the achievement of consistently high quality across the GTP is threatened by the prospect that the programme will increasingly be used to fill teaching vacancies rather than to create supernumerary training places.
An on-going phase of the work is investigating how the programme is being perceived and used in other parts of the country.
1. The Context
The Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) was first proposed in a Teacher Training Agency (TTA) consultation document in October 1996. The programme was announced as being:
…designed to offer a high-quality and cost-effective route into the teaching profession for suitable graduates who do not want to follow a traditional pre-service route, such as the Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE), but would prefer a tailor-made training route coupled with employment as a teacher. It is also seen as meeting the needs of schools who wish to be directly involved in the training of their own teachers but do not want to develop a School-centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) scheme. (TTA, 1996:1)
The GTP was given the go-ahead in October 1997, and began to operate in January 1998. The programme is for mature graduates (i.e. at least 24 years of age) whose degrees and other educational and working backgrounds provide the basis for teaching in their chosen phase and/or subject. Successful completion will normally take a year, although the regulations allow for a minimum period of just three months.
The prospective Graduate Teacher has to find a post in a school willing to provide a training programme, either independently or in conjunction with a Higher Education Institution (HEI), Local Education Authority (LEA) or other training provider. The school or the training provider must become a ‘Recommending Body’, taking responsibility for assessing training needs, devising and monitoring a training plan and assessing and recording the Graduate Teacher’s progress. The training plan has to be approved by the TTA. At the end of the training programme, the Graduate Teacher will be assessed by an approved assessor against the Standards for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).
The GTP is one of several initiatives undertaken in the 1990s under the collective title of ‘Employment-based routes into teaching’. Two such initiatives, the Licensed Teacher and Articled Teacher Schemes, were established by Circular 18/89 (DES, 1989), and began operation in 1990. The reforms of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) included in Circular 9/92 (DfE, 1992), particularly the proportion of training to be school-based, reflected the then government’s determination to move the focus of ITT away from higher education and into schools. This policy was given further impetus in 1993 by the Government’s Proposals for the Reform of ITT (DfE, 1993), which included a scheme for consortia of schools to establish School-centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT). A number of such consortia were set up and continue to operate. The GTP and the parallel route for non-graduates, the Registered Teacher Programme (RTP) have now replaced the Licensed Teacher and Articled Teacher schemes.
Employment-based routes to QTS have been heavily promoted in recent years, (see, e.g. TTA, 1998; DfEE, 1998). However, it has been difficult to detect a consistent rationale behind these promotional efforts. Some of the impetus has been ideological, concerned with the nature and location of ITT, and there remains a strong strand of opinion that would like to reduce the involvement of Higher Education in ITT. For example, influential figures such as the former Chief Inspector of Schools, Chris Woodhead, have consistently criticised Higher Education-based ITT (Woodhead, 1998) and have sought to encourage more schools to support the employment-based alternative (Gardiner, 1998).
Evans summarised this standpoint as follows:
The justification for change to educational policy lies in the perceived improvement which an implementation will bring. The rationale for the changes to secondary PGCE training which have been implemented…was predicated upon seeking more effective and efficient teacher training than that which previous approaches achieved. (Evans, 1997:319)
A second emphasis, however, has been more pragmatic, concerned with finding new ways of attracting suitable graduates into a profession facing serious and worsening staff shortages. For example, TTA promotional material has stressed that one of their priorities is to secure a diversity of high-quality routes into teaching, with the greatest possible involvement of schools and serving teachers, to attract more appropriately qualified people to teaching.
Early experience of the GTP was that it attracted a large number of potential candidates but very few schools. A report published early in 1999 indicated that more than 9,500 enquiries about the GTP had been received (TTA, 1999). However, the same report revealed that only some 620 schools had expressed an interest in taking someone on as a Graduate Teacher. It was argued that part of the problem was the lack of any sort of brokerage system bringing together potential recruits and schools willing to offer a place but the failure of an initiative designed to provide a 'matching' service (Mansell, 2000) suggested that the issues in relation to schools were more fundamental.
In its original consultation document, the DfEE claimed:
Recent research carried out for the TTA by MORI suggests that many schools would welcome a revision of the existing employment-based routes to increase flexibility and reduce the bureaucracy involved, while maintaining high standards.
(DfEE, 1996:2)
The TTA launched a campaign to convince schools to ‘…give training opportunities to people who, for whatever reason, cannot easily follow a traditional ITT course’ (TTA. 1998:3). LEAs, HEIs and other training providers were urged to establish local contact and support networks, develop training packages and generally provide active help and support for schools in recruiting trainees to the GTP.
The initial public reaction of schools and of the teaching profession as a whole to the GTP was cautious. The possibility that a candidate might achieve QTS in just one term was a source of particular anxiety. For example, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) wrote:
The NAHT would be very concerned at any move to grant QTS more quickly than is justified simply in order to overcome a specific staff shortage. Employment-based routes such as the GTP have an important role to play in teacher supply, but must not be perceived as an easy or quick route to QTS. (NAHT, 1997:3)
However, research carried out in the north west of England (Foster, 2000) found that schools that had been involved in the scheme were generally positive. There had been much initial scepticism around the practical issues of training whilst carrying out professional duties and the quality implications of an ‘on the job’ training model. Schools emphasised the phenomenal workload required of the Graduate Teachers and of their mentors but were mostly satisfied with the outcome in terms of the award of QTS.
However, the point was made strongly that the Graduate Teachers were mostly experienced educators rather than genuine novices. For example, some were overseas-trained teachers, some had substantial Further Education (FE) teaching experience, others had been peripatetic teachers of music or drama. In such circumstances, a flexible and individually tailored programme made sense. There was strong doubt that the GTP was a suitable training model for applicants without an education ‘track record’. There was also considerable fear that to take complete beginners might be seen as an expedient to solve a recruitment crisis by lowering quality standards.
Schools that had trained a Graduate Teacher had done it for pragmatic reasons rather than from a commitment to the principle of training their own teachers. On the contrary, most were concerned that ‘on the job’ training was a difficult model to manage successfully, even with an experienced Graduate Teacher. The experience of the respondent schools had been that the GTP had provided a route to QTS for suitable candidates who were already experienced and/or working within the system. The programme had consistently produced good teachers and the working partnership of schools, LEA and HEIs provided by the Lancashire Consortium had been purposeful and effective. The GTP had not, however, brought many new recruits to shortage subject areas, nor had it led many schools to decide that they wanted to take main responsibility for training new teachers.
In 2000, the government amended the GTP in two main respects (‘Expanding employment-based routes into teaching - a consultation document’: DfEE, 2000). First, schools were offered the opportunity to bid for training places that were eligible for salary funding of £13,000 as well as a training grant of £4,000, enabling the Graduate Teacher to be supernumerary. Second, the allocation of training places by the TTA would be according to priority categories based on shortage subjects and the wish to make the teaching profession more representative of the community as a whole.
This research has been designed to examine how far these changes have influenced the attitude of schools towards the GTP. The revised scheme has certainly brought a significant number of new schools into the programme. The number of schools working with the Lancashire Consortium has more than doubled in 2000 - 2001, and there are many more schools now bidding, or interested in bidding, for a GTP place. Other schools in the north west have bid to become Recommending Bodies in their own right and other HEI-linked schemes in the north west also report increased interest.
The salary-funded GTP has proved popular nationally with both schools and potential candidates. Information published by the Department for Education and Skills (DFES) in September 2001 indicated that all 2250 funded places for 2001/2002 had been filled. The same press release announced that, with effect from January 2002, an unspecified number of additional places will be available on a ‘training grant only’ basis. Schools will receive a training grant of £4000 but will have to meet the salary costs out of their own budget.
2. Research
The research was carried out with schools that have been involved in the Graduate Teacher Programme in the north west of England. All schools that have worked with the Lancashire Consortium as their Recommending Body were invited to participate. This included primary, secondary and special schools in both the state and independent sectors. 106 of these schools responded, a response rate of 93%. A further thirty primary and secondary schools in the north west were invited to participate. These schools were all involved in the Graduate Teacher Programme but were not working with the Lancashire Consortium. They were either working with a different Recommending Body or had Recommending Body status themselves. 24 of these schools responded, a response rate of 80%. The initial contact was by questionnaire and follow-up semi-structured interviews were then conducted with 50% of respondents.
Research Findings
The huge majority of participating schools indicated that they were sufficiently happy with the model and with their experience of the programme to consider using it again. Most (some 80%) had trained a single Graduate Teacher and had no specific plans to take on another although they would be prepared to do so if it seemed appropriate. Around 20%, however, had decided to make the Graduate Teacher Programme a central strand of their on-going commitment to Initial Teacher Training and were looking to recruit between two and six Graduate Teachers on an annual basis.
There was clear and strong evidence that the introduction of salary funded places was a major factor in bringing many schools into the GTP. 78% of respondents indicated that it was very important in their decision to become involved and almost all of these said it was highly unlikely that they would have been interested had the places not been salary funded and supernumerary.
For almost 90% of respondents, the fact that the GTP places were supernumerary rated as very important or quite important. Schools that had been involved in the earlier version of the GTP, where only the training grant was funded and the Graduate Teacher held a post in the school, were virtually unanimous that supernumerary status provided more scope for the Graduate Teacher to follow a coherent training plan that prioritised the Graduate Teacher’s training needs rather than the staffing needs of the school. A significant number of schools did, however, indicate that they had found this balance difficult to strike.