Commenting on a new teaching apprenticeship to be launched this
autumn, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National
Education Union, said:
"The teaching apprenticeship programme is an acknowledgement of
the crisis in teacher recruitment but is the wrong way to address
it.
"The NEU wants to see more teachers in schools as an absolute
priority, but it is essential that professional standards are
maintained, and that new entrants to the profession are fully
qualified before they embark on the early career stage of their
practice. The apprenticeship scheme puts those standards at risk,
placing underqualified and inexperienced teachers into
classrooms. It is not fair on pupils or apprentice
teachers.
"Without much more detail it is impossible to see how this scheme
will work in practice: how already overstretched schools will
manage the pressure on training resources and timetables – and
how the pay structure for apprentice teachers will work in a way
that will not cause confusion and, potentially, a sense of
unfairness among established teaching staff.
"Apprenticeships give people a chance to build skills and
careers, and are a vital part of our education system, but this
is not the way to go about meeting the challenges of recruitment
into teaching. Teachers should be graduates. However low pay,
high workload and oppressive accountability measures mean that
graduates are not willing to enter schools – and of those that
do, many more than are currently being replaced are leaving after
a few years.
"The fanfare around this announcement is a noisy distraction – a
wilful refusal to see the problems that are obvious, and to
deliver the reforms that are needed to get the teachers we
desperately need back into the profession."
