Labour says new licensing plan will improve status of teachers

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/12/labour-licensing-teachers-plan-improve-status

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Labour will set out wide-ranging plans this week to drive up standards in the teaching profession after the main unions gave a mixed response yesterday to plans to introduce a new licensing system for teachers working in state schools.

Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, said the relicensing of teachers every few years would allow the best to advance and the worst to be weeded out, while bringing teachers' status closer to that of professions such as lawyers and doctors.

In a speech, Hunt will outline further measures, citing methods used in Singapore, where teachers can follow different "career pathways" according to their interests and abilities.

The moves show Labour wants to concentrate on teaching standards in the classroom, as opposed to what Hunt sees as the coalition government's focus on school structures.

Hunt told the BBC yesterday that he wanted the "enormously important" role of teachers to be recognised. But he added: "If you're not a motivated teacher – passionate about your subject, passionate about being in the classroom – you shouldn't really be in this profession."

Teaching unions responded sceptically to the plans for regular licensing, an idea floated by the last Labour government but dropped before the 2010 general election after opposition from the unions.

But Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers' union, said that if the proposal was part of a wider plan, her members would be open to discussing it.

But Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said she had serious reservations. "The fact is that teachers are very highly observed. Many of our members describe themselves as being surveilled the whole time," she said. Hunt has already set dates to meet teachers' unions in the near future.

A Conservative party spokesman said it was willing to look at any proposals that would "genuinely improve the quality of teaching". He said: "We have already taken action by allowing heads to remove teachers from the classroom within one term, as opposed to within a year previously, and by scrapping the three-hour limit on classroom observations.

"We are improving teacher training, expanding Teach First and allowing heads to pay good teachers more. Thanks to our reforms, a record proportion of top graduates are entering the profession. Fixing the schools system so that young people have the skills they need is a key part of our long-term economic plan."

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