For the past three years Edinburgh University’s faculty of education has been running an extremely popular and successful returning to teaching course in conjunction with Edinburgh City Council. There are presently 80 returners on the course and, looking back over the past 12 years during which the former Moray House College ran it independently, some 2,500 returners have come to these twilight sessions to catch up with the many changes which have taken place since they were last in a classroom.

David Turner, the founder of the course and a senior lecturer in educational studies at Edinburgh University, says that more than 75 per cent of these participants have gone back into the classroom with around 60 per cent getting full-time posts.

“Some 50 per cent of teachers in Scotland will retire in the next 10 years, that’s around 20,000. So we can all see why courses like this are important,” he says.

Returners courses are also run by Aberdeen University (sometimes in association with local authorities) for primary and secondary teachers and by Strathclyde University (primary only), but Mr Turner believes the alliance struck between the city council and the university in Edinburgh makes his course “pretty well unique”.

Returners are often women who have interrupted their careers to have children but also include further education, university and art college lecturers who want to return to the school classroom. Some travel for the weekly three-hour sessions from as far afield as Orkney, Inverness, Aberdeen and Dumfries. There are also foreign teachers seeking registration and ex-pats returning from around the world. It costs returners pound;150 for 30 hours (three hours a week for 10 weeks).

“It’s a heavy commitment organisationally and not hugely profitable for the university,” says Margaret Alcorn, of Edinburgh Council’s education department, “but it gives the city the chance to pick good quality teachers.”

“It’s highly labour intensive and costly, especially with regard to secondary subject specialists,” says Mr Turner, “because the course is run on demand. So if we only get one home economics candidate, for example, we will still provide a subject specialist and they will get one-to-one tutoring, which makes it a costly and complex business.”

Both Mr Turner and Ms Alcorn say the McCrone pay settlement is not a factor in attracting returners, though the participants frequently mention that they feel teachers are now better supported in schools and more widely respected in society than they were during the 1980s, all of which makes teaching more attractive to them.

The City of Edinburgh Council insists that those who have not taught in the past five years take this course in order to catch up on the radical changes which have taken place in curriculum development, child protection guidelines, information and communications technology, behaviour management, raising attainment and ethos of achievement.

“The course is necessary now because of the curriculum changes, target setting, 5-14, Higher Still assessment and so on,” Mr Turner says. “The returners often don’t know what these things mean.”

Sessions, which tend to be interactive, are run mostly by practising teachers, often principal teachers and headteachers, with input from local authority managers and academic experts, such as Pamela Munn, director of the Scottish Schools Ethos Network.

“The crucial thing is that these returners are very eager to learn about new developments,” says Professor Munn. “This makes it exciting to teach.

“You do approach it differently to the way you would with students because you can still draw on their previous experience as teachers in order to get them to understand new approaches.”

John Grant, a science teacher at Castlebrae Community High in Edinburgh, has been teaching on the course for three years. He says: “You have to be as much a listening ear as a teacher and put them at ease about the new classroom realities. At first they might not understand just how well teachers are supported compared to the old days.

“And it’s also very important to them to know that I’ve not been out of teaching, nor am even seconded from the classroom. It reassures them to know that I’ve come from a classroom today and that I’ll be back in one tomorrow.”

Jane Milliken, principal teacher of home economics at Broughton High in Edinburgh, introduces returners to the challenges of the new health and food technology and hospitality Higher exams. “I do it for my subject, which is desperately short of teachers. It also makes you reflect on your own practice,” she says.

Such is the popularity of the course it has only been advertised twice. It fills up on word of mouth. Once 50 names are gathered, the next course is announced.

There is no written work, no assessment, but a register is kept and all regular attenders (not missing for more than three sessions) receive a certificate at the end, presented jointly by Professor Gordon Kirk, dean of the university’s faculty of education, and Roy Jobson, Edinburgh’s director of education.

The drop-out rate is minimal, say the organisers, and those who do leave tend to have managed to get supply, part-time or full-time teaching posts. Headteachers looking for good supply teachers often telephone course organisers.

“Headteachers see participation in the course as evidence of the returners’

commitment,” says Gillian Hunt, management development officer for the City of Edinburgh Council. “From this year’s tranche, 35 have already applied to Edinburgh to do supply work.

“The course is a success because they get access to experts and to resources ranging from 5-14 to Higher Still and because it familiarises them with what is meant by ethos, child protection and disclosure and raising achievement, issues which were not around 10 years ago.

“We like to think most of the sessions are fun but the returners, like ourselves, do take it seriously.”

The organisers’ evaluation of the 2001 course shows that of the 50 (out of a possible 60) responses received, none rated the course below seven out of 10, 84 per cent rated it at eight or higher and 19 per cent of respondents could find no room for improvement in its quality. About a third of primary teachers cited stricter observation of time limits as the best means of improving the course, while 18 per cent of secondary teachers identified ICT sessions as the priority area for development.

Teachers from the secondary programme expressed a preference for sessions relating to their subject specialism, while primary teachers found early intervention, support for pupils and child protection to be the most useful.

The next returners’ course will start in September.