Key Issues

The Role of Higher Education in Teacher Education
Teacher Education Policy
Initial Teacher Education
Continuing Professional Development
Educational Research
Post-compulsory Education

The Role of Higher Education in Teacher Education

UCET holds that

• in an all-graduate teaching profession, it is appropriate that Higher Education continues to play an effective central role in the initial preparation and the subsequent continued professional development of the education profession.
• Higher Education is able to offer the teaching profession and those involved with the development of the policy and practice of teacher education a range of facilities and a depth of expertise which cannot be found elsewhere.
• Higher Education can, through its scholarship and research, offer an evidential base to the teaching profession and policy makers which will inform changes in the policy and practice of education.
• the values which characterise Higher Education - those informing the unbiased acquisition, validation and dissemination of knowledge - are of crucial importance to a vibrant, powerful and dynamic education profession operating in a complex, pluralist democracy.
  

See our Occasional Paper 12 The Role of Higher Education in Initial Teacher Education.

Teacher Education Policy

Policy shifts that affect teacher education have in the past often been quite radical, announced with the apparent intention that the practice they imply should be in place almost overnight. Consequently this approach to policy development has created considerable disturbance to existing forms of teacher education. UCET has been pleased to see the current government tending to introduce changes to current policy and practice for the preparation and continued professional development of teachers with a little more planning and understanding of how these changes might impact on other elements of the system.

However, there are at least three areas with which we have significant and pressing concerns:

1. The sudden introduction and expensive implementation of so-called ‘skills’ tests for those taking initial teacher education courses in England. These represent in our considered view an unnecessary hurdle which might turn prospective teacher education students away from considering entering the profession. Very few students fail the tests and it would appear that all they have achieved is to confirm the validity of GCSE's in Maths and English as an appropriate check on students’ mathematical and English abilities. We fail to see the point of these tests, not least because a student who trains to become a teacher in other parts of the United Kingdom does not take the tests, but can still have their qualification recognised in England.
2. Whilst accepting that the government is right to be concerned about teacher supply, at least one of its attempts to address this problem concerns us. We recognise the vital, and increasing, role that classroom assistants play in providing valuable support to teachers: it follows that we accept the concomitant need for teacher education courses to help prepare beginning teachers to make appropriate use of this resource. However, not all teaching assistants want to become teachers (some are in fact already qualified teachers) and they deserve their own career structure. Whatever system is put in place to allow generally untrained adults considerable responsibilities over children in their care, to the extent that they relieve qualified teachers of many of those responsibilities, will need to be very carefully thought through, with appropriate consultation with the profession.
3. The sudden announcement of the possibility of introducing para-professionals into the classroom so as to reduce the load on teachers leaves unsaid the detail of the responsibilities and training that these otherwise generally untrained adults will undertake.

Teacher education, described by Emma Westcott of the English General Teaching Council as inhabiting a ‘crowded policy field’, is becoming buried in a plethora of initiatives. The schools minister, Stephen Timms, has emphasised the fact that teacher education needs diverse routes, diverse players and a diverse range of students. We would agree with the general tenor of this assertion, and have in fact been centrally involved with developing and delivering such diversity. However, hidden in this diverse plethora of initiatives is a critical fact - that nearly 95% of new teachers come through existing university/school partnerships. It is of course natural to focus on the new, but what needs to be recognised is that without the successes that the university led system has delivered the teacher recruitment situation, in England at least, would by now have descended into what Barry McGaw of the OECD has termed "melt down". UCET is particularly concerned to bring to the attention of policy makers the fact that the considerable sums of money being used to develop new initiatives is money that existing partnerships could use to very great effect.

We will watch with interest the ways in which the Graduate Teacher Programme will be further developed, and will be comparing the cost of this programme with those that currently exist. We will be interested to see how the quality of the programme might be improved to meet the criticisms currently levelled against it. We will in particular look forward to the response from those responsible for the programme to the Scottish General Teaching Council’s policy not to accept as qualified teachers those students who have successfully completed the course.

Our prime concern is to continue to make available to those involved with the formulation of teacher education policy a wealth of expertise that will inform decision making in this critically important field. In addition, through our longstanding and extensive partnerships with schools we can continue to develop sound, sensible and effective forms of teacher education so as to address the twin issues of teacher recruitment and retention, whilst at the same time offering evidence-based critiques of new and current forms of teacher education.

Initial Teacher Education

1. Funding. The TTA unit of resource is inadequate. Partnership is expensive. HE institutions are being required to do more and more without commensurate increases in resources, while ITT-related funding opportunities for schools have increased. This has reached criticality in many HE institutions.

2. Schools’ involvement in ITT. The supply of school experience places for professional experience is particularly difficult in some secondary subjects and city primary schools. Schools are under little or no accountability pressure, and can vary their ITT partnership commitments from year to year at will.

3. The statutory ITT requirement to ‘ensure that training takes account of individual training needs’. (Qualifying to Teach, 2002, R2.3). This carries substantial implications for programme structures, accrediting prior experience, and assessment practices, with important attendant resourcing issues.

4. Attracting appropriately experienced and qualified staff to initial teacher education in HEIs. The growing disparity between school and HE pay scales makes this an increasingly critical issue.

5. Quality Assurance. The increased OfSTED ITT inspection emphasis on management of QA across all schools in partnerships is particularly challenging, especially in the context of HEIs remaining totally accountable for their schools’ performance when they have little or no real management leverage within schools.

6. Recruitment to ITT. In particular, secondary shortage subjects, undergraduate courses, under-represented sections of society.

7. Training salaries. Limitation of entitlement to PGCE students affects recruitment to undergraduate courses.

8. Continuity of professional teacher education, learning and accreditation. There still remains separation between initial training to QTS, NQT further training through Induction, early professional development, and advanced professional development. The teaching profession needs a coherent structure in which various pathways for progression are clear, and command universal recognition.

9. Retention in teaching beyond early career experience. Wastage within three or four years of initial qualification is alarmingly high (about 40%).

10. Primary-Early Years issues. Particular concern about the Foundation Degree.

Continuing Professional Development

Below, we argue the importance of the University Departments of Education (UDEs) -[1] -remaining as significant stakeholders in the continuing professional development of teachers.

Preparing and developing professionals

UCET supports the Government in its wish to raise school standards. Our members have worked over many years to put into place Government reforms in the initial education and training of teachers. Our organisation works closely with the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) and the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED) as well as with officials in the Department for Education & Skills (DfES) in helping to ensure that these reforms actually work on the ground. The rising quality of the teaching profession owes much to the work of our members as, with their school partners, they prepare people to meet the Secretary of State’s exacting standards for newly qualified teachers. Our confidence in the quality of this important work is validated by others: by regular and thorough OfSTED inspections; by the internal quality assurance processes which all universities are required to have in place; by what our students tell us; and by the reaction of Heads and Governors to the quality and capacity of the new teachers taking up posts in our schools. Higher Education’s role in supplying the teaching profession with newly-qualified professionals is a major one, and its record is a matter of pride for our members.

Equally, universities have a long tradition of offering teachers in schools a range of study opportunities throughout their careers. These have ranged from (for instance) one-day conferences on a particular theme to full- or part-time Masters programmes lasting several years. They embrace opportunities for teachers to visit their local university and also take place in the setting of the teacher’s own school. The relationship thus established between school and university, teacher and tutor, has been a marked and important feature of our education service throughout most of the twentieth century.

Therefore, we are anxious that, as it plans reforms to the continuing professional development (CPD) of school teachers already in post, Government continues to support the contribution made by Higher Education in that no less important part of its work.

Schools and universities in partnership

In constitutional respects, Higher Education is importantly separate from the rest of the education service. However, the close co-operation which has existed for so long between schools and universities in the initial preparation of teachers means that UDEs are very closely associated with primary and secondary schools through the many school partnerships they enjoy. These partnerships extend further than only initial training. Typically, they may involve staff secondments, research links, and a wide variety of provision for practising school teachers at all stages in their careers. These connections have served schools well. It is essential not to fracture them.

Funding CPD

Provision of CPD opportunities for school teachers comes in many forms, from half-day events aimed at helping them gain a particular skill to the sustained programme of study leading to a nationally-recognised qualification. Most is funded from the schools’ Standards Fund, a budget made available to allow schools to purchase provision according to their needs and based on the Government’s professional development agenda for raising school standards. A small amount is allocated to the Teacher Training Agency to distribute on the basis of competitive bids to anyone – including universities – who wishes to provide CPD. Additionally, money is also available in the grant offered to universities by the Higher Education Funding Council (England) – HEFCE – for various programmes for teachers and others who wish to study educational topics as postgraduates. The last two expenditure lines are essential if universities are to remain able to offer CPD to school teachers.

University-organised CPD

Typical of the programmes for teachers offered by Higher Education are those which are (normally) part-time in mode, modular in structure, and in content based substantially on each teacher’s particular professional circumstances. A teacher signing up for such a programme will build credits on a ladder of awards leading if they wish from Certificate, through Diploma, to Masters. Each module will form a self-contained area of study which the teacher may follow up by taking subsequent modules in similar or in different areas of their professional concern. For example, a teacher may choose to take all the modules in special needs education, or to build up a pattern of classroom-based study in a variety of curriculum areas, or to study the effects of introducing a particular education policy (the literacy hour is a good current example) on practice in his or her school … the opportunities are very wide. The outcomes benefit the individual teacher, his or her school, and the profession in general from the nation-wide store of grounded research embodied in the teachers’ programme assignments and, in the case of those who pursue their CPD to Masters, in their dissertations. (Here indeed is the raw material from which to build an invaluable national research base, constructed by the profession for its own use.)

Each module will, typically, carry its own lower-level award. However, the achievement of a Masters qualification is an important staging-post in the careers of many teachers. It demonstrates a high level of sustained study based in the context of the school and the classroom, undertaken alongside other professionals, informed by current research, and supervised by experts. It is the kind of CPD which many teachers feel has helped them recall why they first came into profession: that teaching is a career in which knowledge, learning and human intelligence lie at the heart. Teachers, busy every day in their own schools and classrooms, find great benefit in being able to join others, from other schools, in the different context of a university programme for much of their study, knowing that the ideas they are considering within it can be tested in practice next day in school. The kind of CPD offered in the universities represents the successful balancing of theory with practice, of reflection with action.

Components for success

For CPD of this kind to succeed, certain things are necessary:

• First, of course, will be the enthusiasm of the teacher who, sometimes at the end of a busy day in school, will resume their own studies, sometimes in their own school, sometimes travelling to their local university to use the library, to meet their co-participants on their programme, perhaps have a tutorial with their tutor, and join in the session planned for that evening’s work. That so many teachers are prepared to give of their time and energy (and sometimes their money, too, in self-paid programme fees) indicates the value which they place on CPD of this kind.
• Second, they will need access to a good library, with up-to-date journals and the best that has been written about their professional interests. Other facilities, too, are vital to successful CPD: notably, the range of computing facilities found in modern universities, together with the specialist books and other classroom materials which a UDE uses as its stock in trade.
• Teachers are members of a profession, and another vitally important resource for them as they undertake their CPD is the presence in their group of other professionals. Learning alongside others is one of the most rewarding aspects of university-organised CPD. ‘Coming on this programme has reminded me that I belong within a whole profession and am not just bounded by my own classroom and my own school,’ said one teacher. Those words would be echoed by many. School teachers habitually describe the gains they enjoy as a result of university-organised CPD in terms of meeting and reflecting on DfES career standards, improving classroom practice, raising pupil performance, closer contact with up-to-date research in their areas of professional practice .... Indeed, many teachers have claimed that such CPD has changed their professional lives for the better.
• Finally, the university can provide school teachers, through their programme tutors, with people who are themselves educators, members of the same profession, but who are making their particular contribution at university level. They will be expert in that part of the education system in which they offer their supervision, very often key researchers in the field. It is their job to design the programmes and to stimulate and guide the learning of programme participants, as well as to assess their assignments. Many work back in the school classroom with the same teachers in the shared supervision and mentoring of students preparing to enter the profession. The presence together on the same programme of education professionals working within different parts of our education system is a strength of university-organised CPD. The collaboration in schools of these same professionals is one of the great strengths of our education system.

Preserving the HE asset

UCET is concerned that, in its reform of the ways in which teachers can access university-organised CPD opportunities, nothing is done which would weaken this resource for the teaching profession. Those who espouse the market-place theory of provision suggest putting all the funding into the schools. ‘Let them buy the CPD they need from whoever can supply it. If what they want is university programmes, they’ll buy them, and if they don’t ….’ Though we support reforms which place ever more autonomy in the hands of professionals, we believe the developing quality of each teacher, and so of the profession as a whole, is far too important to be left entirely to the whim of the market place. We look to Government to lay down the requirements on teaching professionals to undertake high-quality professional development throughout their careers.

We also expect Government to ensure that, when that CPD demands a Higher Education input, the resources are there to provide it. We in the universities need to sustain our human resource if we are to be able to offer a service to the teaching profession at all its levels. That means we need the money to continue to employ staff of a calibre appropriate to the task the Government is intent upon achieving. Take away that funding, and this part of the professional development of teachers will go with it. So will significant elements in the initial training of teachers, since the people who teach the teachers are often the same people, using the same university resources and facilities, as the ones who support the development of those already in the profession.

The universities have played a vital role throughout the twentieth century in contributing to the health and development of the teaching profession. In the twenty-first, we would consider as preposterous the lessening of the partnerships holding between school and university educators as little more than one of haphazard circumstance. We can think of nowhere in the world where the schools do not look to the universities for vital support in their work.

Except, unless we are very careful, in England.
July 2002

Educational Research

1. Educational research has a key role in the identification, further development and spreading of best practice in all areas of education. It is a pre-requisite for improving standards in schools, colleges and higher education institutions. Despite this, however, the provision of high quality, relevant and applicable research is threatened by the way funding is allocated through the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

2. There is clear evidence of a government commitment, unfortunately shared by some members of the higher education community, to the intensification of research selectivity. UCET has registered its concern at the concentration of research funding, in particular funding for educational research, in a diminishing number of centres, holding that the nurturing of a research-based teacher education sector requires that teachers should be educated in a context within which research flourishes. UCET has also maintained that the kind of research which teacher education staff are well placed to promote – practice-based professional enquiry – is undervalued by the RAE. This paper sets out UCET’s stance on research policy and funding in the light of recent discussions and developments.

3. Firstly, UCET maintains that educational research is weakened nationally if the country cannot support research centres and departments of the highest international standing, capable of competing with the world’s best. However, by the same token, UCET cannot subscribe to a policy which entails that research funds are so concentrated in perhaps less than 20% of such centres that many suitable institutions receive no funding to at all support educational research.

4. Secondly, therefore, UCET maintains that, in line with proposals in the Roberts Report, existing RAE funds should be used to strengthen research across the sector by encouraging cross-institutional collaboration in the form of long-term strategic alliances and other capacity-building initiatives. Through such initiatives institutions can support the creation of regional and other concentrations of research expertise and can enable their staff to strengthen their participation in research. Such a policy would imply a regional as opposed to an entirely institutional approach to research funding.

5. These measures are nevertheless on their own insufficient: if the quality of educational research across the country is to be enhanced, and if UCET institutions are to play the role expected of them by the professional community, they need a substantial injection of additional funds. The recent Report of the Expert Group on Educating Teachers for Changing Roles: an Exchange of Policy Practice (September 2003) maintains that additional support “is crucial to the setting up of partnership and other forms of collaboration between teacher education institutions and schools and to the promotion of evaluation and research focussed on school and teacher education”. Such partnerships, it was claimed, “should stimulate the quality improvement of schools”, and could contribute strongly to research-based teacher education.

6. Thirdly, then, UCET argues for the establishment of a new source of funding to support practice-based research (PBR). These funds should be accessible to all teacher education institutions, for it is essential to avoid the creation of two categories of institution: those which are funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils for research quality and those which are PBR-funded. Nor is it wise to attempt to drive a wedge between the pursuit of internationally acclaimed research and PBR. Clearly, PBR can continue to be assessed in the RAE even if a new and additional source of funds is established specifically to support PBR.

7. Fourthly, UCET argues that this new and additional source of funding should be allocated in two ways. Firstly, a proportion of the new funds should be used to strengthen the core funding of all teacher education institutions, on the condition that they can demonstrate that they have a satisfactory research development strategy for teacher education staff and that they participate in a strategic alliance with other centres and agencies, including schools, to promote PBR. Secondly, a proportion of the new funding stream should be allocated on a competitive basis. In England, the criteria governing the allocation of the competitive element should be agreed by GTCE, UCET, NERF and TTA, and the agency responsible for the allocation of the new funding stream should be representative of these bodies. Parallel arrangements would be required in the devolved administrations.

8. It is of particular importance that the criteria for the disbursement of this new source of funding are the product of consultation and discussion. There is a tendency for any such funding to be seen as a vehicle for the furtherance of government policy. That policy can often be short-term and rather restricted, for example, to the raising of pupils’ achievements. That is, of course, a laudable focus of educational research, but it by no means exhausts the range of educationally valuable research, and can have the effect of compromising longitudinal studies. In UCET’s view the principle criterion for the disbursement of the new funds should be that the research enhances the quality educational provision.

Post-Compulsory Education

Compulsory Training. A degree level teaching qualification is now compulsory for all those who teach full-time or substantial part-time in Further Education (FE). This is available through universities or awarding bodies such as City & Guilds.

Difficult for some? Many whose skills are valued in FE have not had academic education for many years. Even the Introductory Level is now pitched at first year degree standard. We have yet to see whether all trainee teachers will cope at this level.

Not all teachers of adults work in FE. Courses now have to be endorsed by the Further Education National Training Organisation (FENTO). The FENTO standards are generally welcomed as being professional and applicable to initial training and continuing professional development (CPD). However many students on our teacher training courses teach adults in a range of different settings e.g. hospitals (nurses, midwives, paramedics, doctors), prisons, armed forces, industry, public services, adult community education; in effect any aspect of lifelong learning. Our courses cater for all of these; regulations only seem interested in FE teachers.

Low status. The FE sector has always suffered from low status. This is probably to do with the vocational emphasis of many of the courses. This shows itself in many ways:

• Teaching qualification. Despite the James Report (1972) recommending a University based qualification for FE teachers, it only became necessary for FE teachers to have any kind of teaching qualification in 2001.
• Comparative Salary. FE teachers earn significantly less (£3000 at the minimum pay scale level) than school teachers, despite often offering the same curriculum. For instance more students take A levels in FE than in schools. Full-time FE teachers are much more likely to have a post-graduate degree than school teachers. Whilst it is now acknowledged that a pay rise is needed their lack of political clout means that FE teachers have been told they will have to wait for parity.
• Conditions of service. Most FE teachers routinely teach one or two evenings a week. They are contracted to teach significantly more hours per annum than school-teachers. They have significantly less holiday than school teachers. Very few have access to administrative support and therefore carry out their own administration.
• Research. There has been very little research into or by the post-16 sector. It is obvious that the exploitative conditions of service do not allow any scholarly activity or research, yet despite this many FE teachers are delivering Higher Education in colleges. A case of cheap but not very cheerful! With Foundation Degrees this activity is likely to increase.

Mixed ability. At the other end of the spectrum FE teachers work with adults who have specific and multiple learning and physical disabilities. With many students they are expected to develop literacy and numeracy skills not achieved in school or previous education. In some cases the same teacher could be delivering curriculum at both ends of the spectrum.

14-19 curriculum – implications for training. The Increased Flexibility Project promotes collaboration between schools and FE colleges. This means that school and FE teachers are working together with the same group of 14-16 year olds, despite a large salary differential. FE teachers have not been trained to teach this age group and therefore CPD needs are being identified. This initiative in effect extends downwards the age range of Post 16 teacher training courses. Should the sector now be called Post 14?

In 1997 the Kennedy Report, Learning Works, began with the statement ‘Further Education is everything that does not happen in schools or universities’. In 2002 FE is everything! The workforce deserve to be remunerated well, given the opportunity to be trained well and to be able to continue to develop as professionals in the wide range of ages and ability they are expected to educate.