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June 2000

This time I am going to be on time if it kills me! I spent the half term in Prague, meeting Czech teachers and renewing old friendships and I also managed to spend a fair bit of time looking around the city. This has convinced me that a) I need to go again and b) it must be time we had another MirandaNet conference there! I leave that suggestion before the house. (Oh, and beer is still only 60p a litre....)

Terry Freedman sent me a copy of his new book and I managed to put aside time to read it. I have actually written a review which you can find at www.mirandanet.ac.uk/publications/terryreview.htm. Although I'm not an ICT coordinator myself it seems to me the book contains a lot of useful stuff so have a look at my review.

First, as usual...Jane's bit

Site News

The MirandaNet site is about to be physically moved to a different server. This means that for a little while certain things will not be working - the search engine is one. And there will be dead links. The reason for this is that we are going to leave the present site as it is while a new one is being designed. It will have a more professional, portal feel to it. Now is the time for anyone to chip in and say what they would like to see on the site. But it does mean that there's going to be an interim summer period when it's all a bit wobbly.

Watch Mirandalink to see when the new site is launched.

Meanwhile the front page is a bit different and now tells you what the newest pages are. And there's a new guest book feature so that we can attract new scholars and educators who might want to get involved with the Fellowship, with Think.com and with the forthcoming new mentoring scheme.

Think News

Improvements are being made to Think.com all the time. So if you haven't looked at it recently, have another browse about. There are a lot of new Help screens which could give you ideas (we'd like to anglicise them, of course, but meanwhile the information is there).

Do try and post something on the MirandaNet Gazette. Anyone with Reporter rights can do so and we'd like to see much more variety than there is now.

Links

The June Educational-site-of-the-Month has been awarded to:

Terra Media - a chronology of the media and an impressive learning and reference resource on audio-visual and communications media for all ages www.terramedia.co.uk

The Community-site-of-the-Month MirandaRose Award goes to:

Parents Information Network - apparently 60% of secondary schools report that parents ask questions about ICT; this site helps answer their queries. www.pin.org.uk

Both of these site owners have written back to us to say how honoured they are to have been given these awards and have suggested closer links.

And a happy strawberries-and-cream season to you all from Your Web Editor

Onto serious matters....

At the seminar on the 5th June we spent some time discussing the stresses affecting the profession at present. this led to two separate threads developing on Mirandalink.

Thread one concerned the Threshold process. Steve Copley was first in.....

It took a grand total of 9 hours 45 minutes to complete mine, spread across a number of VERY late nights. Yes it was frustrating, time-consuming, etc, but I think it has been a very useful exercise for me to have done: - It has made me look extremely closely at what I do well and what I am not doing, but maybe should. - It has given me a chance to tell my head all the good things I do (just in case he hadn't noticed!) - It has made me feel good about what I do.

I know we deserve the pay rise without the hassle, but from what I gather the Treasury wouldn't simply give us the case... A hoop was required for us to jump through so that other public sector employees didn't see us just being given free cash. Such is politics I guess.

Also, coming from industry prior to teaching, I see nothing wrong with obtaining a pay increase for doing your job well. It is a pretty poor way of proving you do it well, but less subjective than some other ways. No way would be perfect or please everyone.

Our school has been fantastically efficient in supporting its staff. I have read in the TES about the misinformation some teachers have been fed and we have had none of that at all. Our head and staff support team have provided excellent guidance, support, feedback... Spot on. A chore, yes, but a one-off and a new pay scale at the end of it. Could be a lot worse I say!

John Meadows then came in with a very different perspective.

As a teacher educator ( I hate the word trainer, it sounds like a dog trainer!) I am interested in the way that teachers' work is monitored by these new assessors. Has anyone yet had any experience of being observed during lessons, not by Ofsted, but by other teachers/educators, using similar criteria to those on the threshold stuff. We certainly use similar criteria when we observe our student teachers doing practice lessons and also use similar ones for non-QTS teachers on our Registered Teacher Programme. My feeling so far is that this could easily be another serious source of strife, especially if you happen to disagree with the views of the so-called impartial assessor.

Enter John Potter

So Mirandanet goes political this week. OK... A couple of points that have been made clear to me in the schools I visit and with which I happen to agree:

  1. Give everyone a pay rise. Teachers with under 7 years experience have also been implementing strategy after strategy (in primary, but look out secondaries here they come). I've got trainee teachers who are excellent practitioners and who have given up other careers in other areas to become teachers. And what are they starting on? One, a parent with a four year old, has been offered a salary of about £19,000 in September.
  2. According to the TES, the "independent assessors" will look at about 8 applications a day. They will be paid about £375 per day for processing them. Are they required to have actually done the job? What do you think?

David Fuller next

If we're on the subject of starting salaries. I became a teacher 10 years ago and was shocked at the poor pay. I was on a high salary at the time Approx £30k with expense account and company car etc. I was not expecting anything like this sort of salary but when offered jobs in schools the pay varied from £13k - £18k. Fortunately I took the plunge and have never regretted the decision since.

I do have one bugbear with the present system. That is I came in an environment crying out for my skills as an IT professional, but because I simply could not afford to take a year off for a PGCE course (£700 a month mortgage anyone?) I was forced into the only area that would take me - the independent sector. There was no in-house course designed for IT, the closest I could get was D&T and I was not prepared to get in there. I also have managed to successfully complete an MA in Educational Computing, but this still does not make a difference.

John Potter

You're right about the money side of it David. A lot of my students go into the most tremendous debt to train in the public sector. Some of them even go on working at night to pay for food and such in the most demanding year of their lives, the PGCE. The training salary next year will help (but there's no promise that it will continue the year after in primary). But for this year's trainees, not only will they start on £19,000. They will be repaying a student and/or hardship loan.

Robert Ellis

I welcome any opportunity to reward staff for the huge efforts that they make. In our College we already have a performance management system that (I hope) made it reasonably easy for staff to complete the form.

My opinion.

From being a debate about Performance related pay this debate moved very quickly to the fact that starting salaries generally are too low and that everyone needs a boost, not just the "point niners" I think John potter is right - salaries just need raising overall. I suspect that the training salary will not do anything to address the current specialist shortages that are now emerging. (Tried getting a maths teacher lately?) I suspect that a large number of trainees will accept better offers in industry once they have had their years' training. I must also beg to disagree with Steve. I don't think the hoop jumping is to keep the treasury happy, though that might be a side affect. We will see the fruits of its real intent in January when people know whether or not they have crossed the Threshold. Teachers in scools like Bob Ellis's will be okay but for many the cosy staffroom conspiracy to protect the less competent and the ineffectual head teacher are both going to be blown wide open. Teaching will never be the same again. Supporting colleagues because they are a weak link in your team will be a thing of the past. - just call me a cynic if you like and I hope I am wrong but......

Thread two was all about how hard it is to become a teacher and was started by Maureen Cronin

On a slightly different, but related note, I graduated with honours with a 4-year double degree in Education and English from a university in the US, got a Fulbright scholarship to study the educational system of South Korea, did a 2-year masters degree in International and Comparative Education at Columbia University in NYC, taught in the state school system of NY for years, and still I have to do a PGCE to become qualified for the state sector in the UK. I don't get it.

Now I work mostly freelance doing evaluation of educational programmes using ICT and I run INSETs here and there. I miss having my own classroom so much, but I'm committed to state education and can't see myself in the private sector.

Jet setter John Seward had a possible explanation

The psychological explanation is UK Government parochialism. The field of education is a sample, not an exception.

John Potter

It might interest Maureen and others on the list in the same predicament to know that the TTA is moving towards heavy promotion of a modular PGCE for people who wish to go at different speeds into the profession. To work in the state sector in the UK you need to go through the process of accreditation against the standards published in the curriculum for Initial Teacher Training (the famous 4/98 document, aka High Status, High Standards). These standards, it is now thought by the powers that be, could be broken down, offered in a modular way and sometimes accredited from prior learning. So some people on a modular PGCE may move more quickly than others because they may, for example, have all the ICT knowledge they require. Similarly, for others who wish to qualify more slowly than the mad 38 week PGCE, there would presumably be opportunities to take modules over time. No one yet knows how this would work in practice.

I personally think it needs a module which links all of the strands together into a learning plan (such as Helen Mitchell has devised for the MA at our uiniversity) and familiarises teachers with the current system. There have been very many changes (and more to come) which would require a steep learning curve in a UK Primary School if you were able to just go in and teach there. I also believe there is still a need to consider pedagogical approaches and theories of teaching and learning (not to mention child development for those colleagues working with younger children). We do face this issue in East London with very many people from different backgrounds wishing for speedier accreditation of prior learning and a different kind of programme of teacher education in order to teach in UK schools. Hopefully, there will one day be an imaginative and flexible approach which allows people to gain the necessary experience or extension to existing experience work in schools. The system certainly needs talented people from all backgrounds.

John Meadows

We are also planning a modular PGCE starting in September 2000 - a real pain, because we are trying to fit it into our regular PGCE - square pegs and round holes!

Tony Fisher

We too (at Univ of Nottingham) are offering a modular PGCE to begin in Sept. - current state of play is quite a lot of interest but somewhat slow on firm applications.

John Cuthell - following on from a brief discussion of an appropriate name for this thread.

That's right. Why bother as in "Why bother?" I wouldn't contemplate going into teaching these days. It's too much like that scene from 'Metropolis' - and there was a time when we thought that it would only happen to the kids we taught... So it goes. It's better than working in a call centre, though, which is the only option that a lot of graduates seem to have. I mean, it is a part-time job, and there are long holidays, and it is convenient (minimum child-care costs, and so on.) So it stands to reason, dunnit?

Sue Heightman

In all this debate about the threshold and the point of going into teaching, no one has talked about learning. When applicants are asked about why they want to go into medicine, the interviewers are always looking for the answer that the applicant is intellectually curious about disease and injury and how to cure or control it. There is only one good reason for going into teaching surely and that is that you are fascinated by learning and how people, including yourself can learn more effectively. Everything then becomes bearable - even the threshold-if you keep on learning yourself and you genuinely care about the real learning of the students/pupils/adults that you are responsible for teaching. Probably it's a bad idea to be a teacher from the age of 21-65 because it's hard to keep learning and teaching at the same time. Perhaps it's best to do the job in short bursts with money making jobs in between!

Conclusion

Well, I think Sue hits it on the head and there are signs that PGCEs are moving in the right direction. In the end though it all comes down to money and I suspect we all feel like John Cuthell at times.

Another source of stress maybe is the lead in time for things like the following.

Just out- teachers have until July 3rd to apply for a teacher research scholarship for £3,000. very useful if you are doing an MA or a PH.D anyway. You can cite MirandaNet if useful

You need to get your entry booklets from the Dfee:
0845 6022260
dfee at prologistics.co.uk
Call Val Candy for details
020 7925 6598

You have till the 3rd July to get your details submitted - and it came out on 5th June. Ho hum.

The next item derives from the NAACE newsletter, for which thanks

Niel McLean writes:

BECTa and QCA have been looking at the issues surrounding ICT teaching at key stage 3. Most readers of this newsletter will be aware that the Secretary of State has identified general concerns over pupils' progress during Key Stage 3. In ICT there are particular issues:

The consequences of this poor performance go beyond the immediate, in that:

Over the past few months BECTa has been working with QCA and DfEE to develop a strategy for key stage 3 that is integrated with the DfEE's wider strategy for literacy, numeracy and science being piloted in 17 LEAs. The aim is to develop and trial a pedagogy for teaching ICT in 5 of those LEAs which will:

The model being developed includes:

The project is a joint one between DfEE, QCA and BECTa, with BECTa providing the day-to-day management. In later newsletters we'll set out the detail of the project.

It's important that we find the necessary means of controlled dissemination - we want people to know what's going on, but we don't want schools to rush willy-nilly into copying approaches before they have been properly evaluated. NAACE will have a key role in this. We also need to appoint a project director, so keep an eye open for the advert.

If you want to know more contact either: niel_mclean at becta.org.uk or johnsonc at qca.org.uk

We can't flesh out all the details at present but will be happy to provide more information. When details are agreed with DfEE/SEU we'll make them available through the newsletter.

[Note - on a related point. The newly released QCA KS3 ICT schemes of work have been mailed out to schools during the last couple of weeks.]

And finally this month....

We are planning to start a MirandaNorth led by John Cuthell for "them up there." We are funding this by claiming some of the Best Practive Research Scholarships to look at Think. This means Oracle and Compaq are also helping out. Get in touch with John if you live in or near Yorkshire as we will be holding some seminars.

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