Scotland will resist any attempt to circumvent its entirely university-based approach to initial teacher education (ITE), delegates at a leading education research conference have been told.
All routes into the teaching profession in Scotland are through higher-education providers - there are 11 institutions in all that prepare students for a career in teaching.
There have been occasional attempts to explore non-university routes into teaching, with fast-track pathways talked up as a way of increasing the teaching workforce.
However, when it emerged in 2017 that Teach First - a popular fast-track route in England - was exploring expansion into Scotland, the move was strongly resisted by Scottish universities. After months of controversy, Teach First decided to drop its interest in Scotland.
Last week, at the annual conference of the European Educational Research Association (EERA) conference, this year held in Glasgow, delegates heard that any similar attempts would be blocked again.
A session hosted by the Scottish Council of Deans of Education (SCDE) addressed “the challenges and opportunities experienced by those directly involved in leading teacher education faculties in universities”.
Margery McMahon, outgoing SCDE chair and outgoing head of the University of Glasgow School of Education, said: “Our university-based teacher education is one of our real strengths.”
She acknowledged, however, that some would like to see other approaches: “In Scotland, teacher education is all university-based [but] every now and again someone thinks let’s try a ‘fast-track model’.”
She added that “I think it will happen again”, but joked that Scotland would “fend it off at Hadrian’s Wall”.
Should Scotland have fast-track teacher training?
Opponents of fast-track routes have argued that parachuting students into classrooms after a few weeks of training undermines the status of teaching as a skilled profession. They also fear that fast-track routes have retention issues, with new teachers gaining experience in the profession before moving on to other careers.
However, the antipathy towards fast-track routes is not shared by all in the teaching profession.
One secondary headteacher who spoke to Tes Scotland recently, for example, queried why there was an attitude in Scottish education of “we’re no having that here” regarding schemes such as Teach First, and suggested that they could prove helpful in addressing teacher shortages.
“Why?” the headteacher asked. “Because you refuse to accept a different pathway that you don’t have control over? Or do you genuinely not think it’s a good system?
“I think we could find quite a lot of teachers down south who went through Teach First...who are exceptionally good teachers. But because they haven’t gone the traditional route, the [General Teaching Council for Scotland] don’t think they merit a place in the classroom.”
Earlier this year, a major piece of research into how well Scottish universities are preparing teachers for the profession found that ITE “as a whole is generally healthy, and there is definitely no ‘crisis’”.
The final report of the Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE) project found that, at the outset of their careers, teachers’ confidence in key areas of the curriculum - including literacy and numeracy - is high and that graduates report “no real areas of persistent weakness”.
However, a survey of school-based mentors carried out as part of the MQuITE study flagged up “tensions” over the respective power of the universities and schools when it came to assessing students. Some respondents cited “contradictory assessment decisions” and a perception that universities have “a desire to pass students who are struggling”.
