Thousands of first-year students are being invited to reminisce about the people who helped them get to university, in a bid to woo them into teaching.
Personalised greetings cards are dropping through the letter boxes of almost 14,000 undergraduates reading the secondary shortage subjects of maths, chemistry, physics and modern languages, in an pound;85,000 mass mailing funded by the Teacher Training Agency.
The cards, accompanied by a covering letter, ask students to remember their former subject teachers and “imagine how they feel now you’re an undergraduate”.
The aim, says a TTA spokesman, is to plant the idea of becoming a teacher and highlight career benefits. Students who register an interest will be nurtured with additional information and via customised Internet microsites catering for their subject specialism.
“Research suggests about 5 per cent of those undergraduates already want to teach. About 50 per cent are unlikely to be interested in teaching. We want to encourage the remaining 45 per cent to put teaching at the top of the list of careers they may consider, and to get everything they need so that they can make an informed choice when they come to graduate,” he added.
“In each of these subjects, providers were able to recruit more trainees than last year, but these will continue to be the subjects where there is the greatest competition for graduates.
“Our recruitment programme needs to be as good as, if not better than, those of the major companies.”
Karen Thornton
