Monday, January 18, 2010

Teaching + Tories

It is perfectly possible that David Cameron isn't just a marketing ploy by the Tories to - finally - get themselves back into power. He might have some genuine policies. He might even mean what he says. I'd like to think that having become leader of the Conservative Party it was more about merit than the fact he was an Old Etonian Oxbridge blanidate selected as the cuddly face of a clapped out party desperately in need of another stint in government.

But then they come out with some bollocks sound-bite led non-policy policy that implies you can only teach kids if you've got a decent degree from a good university. Heaven forbid you might be a good teacher regardless. Or that you might have come late to the realisation that teaching was the right job for you. If you went to a lesser known University (or heaven forbid what used to be a polytechnic) then teaching is clearly not for you. Go away and do something else instead and let those people who deserve it teach the kids. Perhaps those old Etonian Oxford educated chaps might get involved when they've retired from running the Tory party.

There are many things wrong with the education system in this country: too many targets; too much paperwork and a focus not on education in the broadest and best sense but on churning out grades. There is a problem with finding and retaining GOOD teachers.

But it shouldn't matter what university or what undergraduate degree grade someone got. What should matter is whether they can teach. I'm all in favour of improving the quality of the teaching profession; of encouraging good teachers into difficult schools but not of thi kind of arbitrary 'if they've got a 2:1 from a proper uni then they'll be a shoe-in' policy.

The joke used to be if you can't do, teach. Perhaps the time has come to change it: if you can't do go into politics and screw it up for everyone else.