Teacher training standard attacked

THE QUALITY of school-based teacher training in England has been inconsistent and poorly monitored, the new schools inspection authority said yesterday.

The report on the articled teacher scheme, launched in 1990, is a sign that the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) intends to take a robustly independent line in its advice to ministers.

The Government is committed to moving teacher training out of universities and colleges and into the classroom; the articled teacher scheme under which trainees spend 80 per cent of their two-year training in schools is seen as a forerunner of that.

Ofsted warned that effective school-based training could not be produced overnight. Trainees needed to see good practice and have experience in at least two schools, while all school staff, not just the mentors responsible for articled teachers, needed to be prepared, the report said. It expressed concern that some articled teachers emerged with only a superficial knowledge of the basic national curriculum subjects.

The inspectors found that most articled teachers were just as competent after their two-year training as similar students who had followed a one-year postgraduate training course. An articled teacher cost about pounds 10,000 to train, as opposed to pounds 4,000 for a conventional one-year course.

All articled teachers had a better understanding of school life and the role of the teacher than students trained by other routes, Ofsted said. However, poor monitoring of the schemes by the consortia of schools and colleges or universities was a big weakness.

A second report on the licensed-teacher scheme said it had helped significantly to attract teachers of shortage subjects in secondary schools.

More than half of the 1,500 teachers licensed since 1990 were overseas-trained.

The Articled Teacher Scheme and The Licensed Teacher Scheme; Office of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools; HMSO; pounds 3.95 each.