Labours education plan.

Danthus

Danthus

Danthus

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Swear an oath and give teachers a compass.

Teachers should take a public oath committing themselves to the values of their profession, suggests Labour's Tristram Hunt.

The shadow education secretary says it would be like the Hippocratic oath taken by some doctors.

Such a symbolic statement when teachers qualified would help to "elevate" the status of the profession, he says.

The pledge would emphasise the "moral calling and the noble profession of teaching".

Mr Hunt has returned from visiting Singapore, which has one of the world's highest-performing education systems, where he was looking for ideas to bring to England.

As Labour begins setting out its stall for the election, improving the quality of teaching is going to be a key theme.

Singapore's strength in education, said Mr Hunt, was its "total prioritisation on teacher quality".

This included a public statement of teachers' commitment to their profession and the symbolic gift of a compass, directing them towards their responsibility "to provide a sense of moral purpose and virtue to young people".

"There is a teacher's oath about continuing to learn and to pass on the love of learning.
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Er OK mate. :eek:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29482160
 
Well, who can argue with what he is fundamentally saying, I don't think anyone would disagree. However, it's going to take more to change the culture of society with respect to the teaching profession than an Oath and compass. ;)
 
Would be interesting to see if he takes any other lessons from the trip. The average monthly wage (based on 3 minutes of googleing) of teachers there is around $3600 with a performance related bonus.

It's a nice theory but I'd say better pay and better treatment in general would keep better teachers in the profession more than what would essentially amount to an extra line in their contract.
 
Rosbif said:
Well, who can argue with what he is fundamentally saying, I don't think anyone would disagree. However, it's going to take more to change the culture of society with respect to the teaching profession than an Oath and compass. ;)
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My argument is that MPs should take a similar oath of integrity, professionalism and ethics. Expenses scandals, house flipping, subsidised bars and restaurants and lucrative boardroom side jobs suggest to me that politics needs cleaning up long before teaching.
 
  1. Higher wages to attract better skilled practitioners and golden handcuffs to retain the exceptional ones.
  2. A radical and intelligent reforming of the National Curriculum (some of which is, frankly, ridiculous).
  3. The identification and replacement of incompetent heads and teachers.
  4. An intelligent rethinking in how children are assessed.

That would be a nice start. I would also change the subjects on offer quite a lot, too. I would remove things like mandatory foreign languages and the archaic and unnecessary components of other subjects (things that are utterly pointless to the vast majority of pupils like, say, long division). I would add more practical, manual learning for pupils whose academic skills are weaker, and I would teach older children about basic DIY, mortgages, money management, credit, how to vote and who for, citizenship, starter driving lessons, and lots of other modern life skills.
 
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Surprised the labour education plan isn't to just teach secondary school kids how to get the most out of the benefits system, as that's essentially what their last few terms of office led to anyway.
 
Executive Beef said:
Would be interesting to see if he takes any other lessons from the trip. The average monthly wage (based on 3 minutes of googleing) of teachers there is around $3600 with a performance related bonus.

It's a nice theory but I'd say better pay and better treatment in general would keep better teachers in the profession more than what would essentially amount to an extra line in their contract.
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Well it's basically $2 SGD to £1 GBP at the moment so that is £1800/month. Pretty much what the starting salary is over year. Was at Conservative Conference a couple weeks ago and the teaching unions there are utterly opposed to performance related pay, unfortunately and unsurprisingly.
 
Maybe its our kids and multicultural societies fault? Blame the parents and kids for failings. I bet in Asia their behaviour is much better.
 
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big_white_dog84 said:
If they want to be taken seriously as a profession they need to drop their opposition to performance related pay.
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It seems to be going towards that, and it has advantages, but if other things don't change it also brings in huge negative consequences so PRP is hardly a panacea.
 
Labour is a limping horse, they should be taken round the back and put out of it's misery. Enough people have woken up to the utterly failed grand experiment called socialism
 
big_white_dog84 said:
If they want to be taken seriously as a profession they need to drop their opposition to performance related pay.
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They already have performance related pay, the national pay framework ended in September and now heads are free to choose how to apply pay rises (i.e. none because "the budget is tight this year and I don't care how good you are"). It's interesting though that in every profession/company where performance related pay has been introduced that there has never been a demonstratable increase in productivity.

Elevation of teaching as a profession certainly is a good idea.
 
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Singapore's strength in education, said Mr Hunt, was its "total prioritisation on teacher quality".
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I think their strength in education is in teaching properly rather than teaching kids to pass specific tests where they basically get trained by muscle memory to take the tests rather than give the child knowledge and teach them how to think more critically and test them on a wide range of things.

You should teach a child well then test to check how well they are learning. Not teach a child to pass a test and use increasing scores on such tests as proof they are being taught well.

Prioritising teacher quality in the UK would merely mean asking the best of this type of test maker to teach kids how to take tests better, it's a never ending circle of failure.

Labour are still looking at the wrong things. Go to a foreign country and see how and why their system is working...... somehow look past the important things and only see what you want to see. A pledge, sure, that will fix it. Keep teaching our kids to pass ever easier tests, education system is screwed and the people trying to fix it are idiots.
 
I am sure swearing an oath and getting me a compass will make me a much better teacher...

It is already a commitment in the teaching standards anyway so I struggle to see how this makes any real difference?

If this is really all Labour have to offer at least we can look forward to a few years of no changes :D
 
drunkenmaster said:
I think their strength in education is in teaching properly rather than teaching kids to pass specific tests where they basically get trained by muscle memory to take the tests rather than give the child knowledge and teach them how to think more critically and test them on a wide range of things.
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Singapore (and the other PISA top rank nations) actually teach less, but to more detail rather than a wider range of things. They use a mastering type system where you don't go on to another topic until the first one is mastered. E.g. They will do fractions in Maths until all students understand it rather than doing a bit of fractions in Y4, a bit more in Y5 and so on.
 
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