The head of Scotland’s coaching watchdog has said that more and more trainer schooling courses are recruiting profession changers or those keen to spend the previous few years in their running lives inside the schoolroom – as hostile to high school leavers.
General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) leader executive Ken Muir advised the Scottish Parliament’s education committee that once he skilled to be a trainer the great majority of students came into teaching immediately from school.
However, he said, the alternative routes into the profession – of which there at the moment are over a dozen together with a two-12 months grasp’s that prepares instructors to educate throughout number one and secondary – did not follow this traditional model.
Later, the committee heard from Stuart Robb, head of the schooling workforce unit, that a complete of 770 teachers had been recruited via the opportunity routes.
Mr Muir stated that Scottish teacher training institutions hardly ever hit their objectives for Stem instructors, or for domestic economics, Gaelic and sometimes English teachers. He said that as a result of that there had been extra focus on trying to recruit mature entrants.
Mr Muir – in reaction to a query from the Scottish Conservative training spokeswoman Liz Smith, who’s a former instructor – said: “What we’ve discovered inside GTC Scotland is we’re having to look at new routes that don’t attract teachers inside the traditional sense of coming from faculty and going to university and doing instructor schooling and going lower back into schools.
“A lot of the brand new routes were designed to try to attract people who possibly desire to exchange their profession – or indeed to draw folk who are getting towards the end of their profession who may need to finish off with the aid of imparting 3 or five years into the teaching career.
“Quite loads of our attention maximum lately has been in addressing that exchange inside the model of the type of character who desires to come into the teaching profession. It’s no longer the case as become historically the case in my days – and I dare say your very own – in which the huge majority of teachers got here in from school, went to college and went to a college of training. That’s now not the model and we have needed to adapt our programs to take account of that.”
Mr. Muir made his comments while giving evidence to the training committee that is investigating how technological know-how, engineering, generation, and maths is taught in the early years of a child’s education.
The committee heard that the GTCS had recently checked out the minimum qualifications for access directly to instructor education courses but in the end, had determined towards demanding applicants had a Higher in maths. It had also shied away from creating a science qualification compulsory, stated Mr. Muir. However, he said it had endorsed entrants to the career had at the least the equivalent of a National 5 in science or modern-day languages. He careworn, although, that the suggestions were the minimum access necessities and universities had been at liberty to set more difficult entry standards.
Charlaine Simpson, a senior training officer at the GTCS with responsibility for preliminary trainer schooling and accreditation, said the evidence GTCS had accumulated in the course of its consultation procedure had advised a Higher in maths would be a “real barrier” for teachers getting into the career.
However, the Scottish Labour MSP Daniel Johnson changed into unconvinced and advised later – when the committee was hearing evidence from the Scottish authorities – that requiring a National 5 in science in an effort to input teaching did now not seem “specifically arduous”.