Per the BBC:About 1,500 teacher training places are to be cut next year, according to the Scottish Funding Council.
Its figures show that the number of trainees will fall by 40% compared to 2009/10.
The Scottish government said it had reduced the student intake to deal with teacher unemployment, and to create jobs for those already qualified.
On the face of it, it makes sense to cut training positions if those that are already qualified cannot find jobs and last year only 1 in 7 newly qualified teachers found permanent positions.
However, a 40% drop is a huge number in anyone's book, so how did we get to this situation of having to cut so many positions?
Well, again per the BBC: the number of teachers has fallen by 2,000 from 53,000 since the SNP came to power in 2007 and Mr Russell said recently this trend was unlikely to be reversed.
So it seems that before 2007 there was a philosophy of the more teachers the merrier. The simple line between expected number of teacher vacancies and number of teachers being trained had not been drawn. This is perhaps not surprising given the one of the parties in power had as its leader Tony Blair who arbitrarily chose 50% as the number of 17-30 year olds that should be in higher education.
In the end Tony managed to increase the number of students in higher education from 39.2% in 2000 to 39.8% in 2007. An increase of 0.6%. The ex-PM would only have achieved his target of 50% some time after 2100.
So it seems there has either been a lack of delivery or a lack of joined up thinking from the very top over where pupils need to go in order to fill the country's skills gap going forward. Did we need 50% of pupils to go to university and we now have a desperate shortage or did it just sound good and actually 40% is a more appropriate amount? Who is to know.
Mike Russell is clearly not afraid to make the unpopular statement that the number of teacher training places will need to go down in the near future. Yes, it's always nice to hear that everything is pointing upwards but sometimes some truths have to be brought home and lessons learned the hard way.
Smaller class sizes, more teachers, a more focussed education for the next generation and a more intelligent, literate, numerate society of course has to be the long-term aim for Scotland, and it is with the current Government in place, but sometimes you have to take one step back in order to take three steps forward.
4 comments:
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Alena
http://grantsforeducation.info
sigemingize
ydpf
Sorry to go way off topic Jeff, but this important story seems to have gone largely under the radar:
Scotland and N Ireland could reject bill of right
- Proposals to change the Human Rights Act could become a 'legal and political nightmare,' experts have said
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/07/northern-ireland-bill-of-rights
'Hating the human rights act – an English phenomenon'
- Westminster has no right to change the constitutional settlement in other parts of the UK, simply to appease human rights critics in England
What does it mean to be British? It depends, of course, which part of the United Kingdom you are in when you answer that question. The English stand accused of taking their own sense of identity and list of priorities, and projecting them across the entire UK. The press are number one culprits, said to ignore Scotland and Northern Ireland, unless there is a flare-up in sectarian violence or a significant step towards further devolution. I know how much this angers readers because they write and complain about it.
It's hard to avoid the suspicion that the radically different legal tradition in Scotland is just not something proponents of a British Bill of Rights even thought about. But the problem is bigger than that - it's not just about what rights go where, or even whether it matters that the Tories could take the UK down a path where there is a human rights lottery, depending on which country you live in.
It is also about what binds the UK together. Not a question I would even attempt to answer, but if I were trying to radically change the constitution, I would certainly have given it some serious thought.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/feb/08/human-rights-act-devolution-constitution-labour-conservatives
Mike Russell is absolutely right to reduce the number of trainee teachers. What is the point of training more people for jobs that don't exist?
My wife attended Jordanhill as a mature student 5 years ago, which entailed considerable financial sacrifice, and her reward? One 6 month stint, followed by days here and there doing the dreaded 'supply'. She is now working on the shop floor with The Factory Shop. A disgraceful waste of talent, time & money.
Indeed, I have been saying for over 10 years that the numbers of trainees would need to be cut - plain as a pikestaff when you have falling pupil numbers and an increasing casualisation of the workforce.
Post a Comment