The Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, I read in this morning’s press, is in favour of all teachers being trained.
Conductors are trained.
Ergo Stephen Twigg is in favour of Conductive Education!
Well, no. I’m kidding. It’s a fantasy as well as a non sequitur.
Actually, it’s also a case of misreporting.
The Shadow Minister is not, as I wrote, "in favour of" all teachers being trained, certainly not if by that we mean initial training. He’s not actually “in favour of”, at all. It turns out, what it is, is that he’s against Free Schools and Academies employing unqualified teachers. All 5,330 of them. That’s 1.19% of the total workforce of 442,000 teachers working in English schools, according to the DfE.
There are four times as many teachers working in Special Schools in England, and almost none of them have an initial teacher training that qualifies them to do so.
I do not recall reading Stephen Twigg or any Education Secretary or Shadow Education Secretary for that matter, raising even a modest eyebrow at this state of affairs.
As I was googling around all this for stats and such, I chanced across a recruitment website ("the best possible start to your career") that just about sums up our 21st century reality when it comes to the initial training of teachers of the pupils who attend special schools.
SEN in special schools
Only children with the most severe needs are taught in a special school environment. Children may, for example, have a diagnosis of autism, Down’s syndrome or foetal alcohol syndrome, or experience difficulties as a result of premature birth or chromosomal abnormalities. Generally speaking, teachers in special schools for pupils with learning difficulties have had mainstream school training at primary or secondary level. This experience is very useful as it provides a professional benchmark as to what ‘average’ attainment is.
Getting into special needs teaching
There is no specific requirement for teaching in a special school. However, there are a number of postgraduate courses available that specialise in special needs teaching and some initial teacher training courses offer SEN modules. The most important attributes for a special school-teacher are flexibility, the confidence to put the pupil’s needs at the centre of his or her teaching, patience, empathy and a good sense of humour.
This is patronising and complacent to a breath-taking degree. But it says it as it is.
A young person aiming to work in a special school in England, today, will embark on their initial teacher training course knowing that there is no expectation whatsoever that they will learn about the specific nature of an impairment, nor to consider the merits of contrasting special pedagogies nor assess appropriate special curricular arrangements.
What their training “as mainstream primary or secondary teachers” apparently will give them is an understanding of “average attainment”, secure in the knowledge that as long as they are ‘flexible’, ‘confident’, ‘patient’, ‘empathetic’ and can have a giggle now and then, they will be well-prepared to start on their first day of their careers in a special school classroom.
How do we persuade Stephen Twigg to speak out “in favour of” the proper and specific training of our special school teachers?
