EDUCATION
Too many teachers?
RHODES BOYSON
Dr Rhodes Boyson is headmaster of High- bury Grove School, a new London com- prehensive school for boys.
This year will probably be remembered both as the year when we could clearly foresee a surplus of teachers and the year when the teaching profession became par- ticularly militant in support of salary increases throughout the whole educational service. This year is also likely to be the year when both the public and the local authorities, owing to the cut in the increase in the rate support grant, became much more cost-conscious and therefore partic- ularly aware of the heavy escalating cost of higher and university education. A further clash between the advocates of new and permissive methods and those who favour the traditional approach adds to the confusion of a scene already put in dis- array by the advance of comprehensive education in the secondary field at the ex- pense of a clearly defined selective system.
The country and public have been so conditioned for twenty years to plans to increase the supply of teachers that few have realised that expansion may soon have to give way to the contraction of Colleges of Education and a retraction in at least this sphere of higher education. Within twenty years the annual intake into such colleges has increased from 16.000 to 39,000. To this intake must be added the 4,500 graduates who each year take the Postgraduate Certificate in Education in university departments. The annual intake of trainee teachers is thus over 45,000 when further allowance is made for un- trained graduates entering directly into schools. This means that the whole of the teaching profession could be replaced within nine years in its present numbers of 370,000, or in twelve years if the number of teachers expands to 500,000 by the late 1970s. A tightness in the local authority purse strings could ensure that a .small sur- plus would quickly become a large excess, which would then be further increased by thousands of teachers returning to the class- . room from the contracting colleges.
This need for a contraction of teacher training must be used as an opportunity to reassess its whole method and purpose. 'For years the need for teachers has been so great that hundreds of thousands of 'women were trained in the knowledge that they would spend only a few years teaching before they married and raised a
family. Less than one out of five women are still in the schools after six years teaching; in fact, this country has more trained teachers not teaching than are em- ployed in the schools. Such wastage of women, whose training costs between £2,000 and £4,000, has been accepted because it was argued that they would return to full- and part-time employment as married women returners. Now that there is no longer a shortage of teachers the Department of Education and Science has ceased to advertise for their return and authorities have shown every intention of preferring to recruit newly trained teachers. Last year nearly 1,700 fewer married returners were recruited than in the previous year.
Under such conditions it appears that the contracted Colleges of Education must re- duce their recruitment of women from 72 per cent of their intake to some 36 per cent. The great majority of women recruited should be specially trained for infant schools, domestic science and for shortage subjects such as science and mathematics. At least 66 per cent of male teachers are still in teaching after six years; and the trend towards a male profession would bring a career salary structure, perhaps along the lines advocated by the National Association of Schoolmasters, which could be so attractive that even more remained in teaching. It would be far better to spend money on such a salary structure than in training surplus women teachers. The re- cruitment of a greater proportion of men would not only be more economic in costs but could bring greater stability in schools. One of the most grave causes of school in- discipline is continued turnover of staff.
A greater demand for fewer places in Colleges of Education could be used to raise the standard of entry to the teaching profession. In October 1967 only 37 per cent of men and 34 per cent of the women joining Colleges of Education had two or more `A' levels of any grade. This level of admittance was far too low. Some 12.3 per cent of the eighteen plus age group now obtain two `A' levels as against 4.8 per cent in 1955 and the percentage will rise to some 17.2 per cent by 1980, equal to the old grammar school intake. Two `A' levels should be the minimum condition of admittance. This should allow for a much higher level of academic achieve- ment in Colleges of Education, particularly for junior and secondary school teachers.
A higher minimum standard of entry and higher academic levels in colleges should also help the teaching profession to obtain higher salaries.
As soon as it appeared that we were moving into a period of teacher surplus the Minister promised, in a speech to the National Union of Teachers, to fix a date in the early 1970s after which no untrained graduates should be allowed to begin teaching in state schools. Yet most public schools and many grammar schools recruit untrained graduates: and their academic and social results have been more than satis- factory. By all means stop untrained graduates teaching in primary schools; but if trained non-graduates are to be recruited for grammar and comprehensive schools in preference to graduates it would appear that respect for learning had declined. One would have to conclude that modern meth- ods and forms of school organisation had increased consumer resistance—and that salesmen, not scholars, are required as teachers. This conclusion that pupils in such schools needed to be persuaded or coerced into learning would be a very serious indictment.
Recruitment of graduate scholars could be balanced by a number of special colleges training men at least thirty years of age and of good learning and wide ex- perience, who had decided that they would like to teach. In my experience in four headships some of my most capable colleagues entered teaching through the Emergency Training Scheme arranged after the last war to train largely mature ex- servicemen in some thirteen months for the teaching profession. They were trained by practising teachers. Such recruits were mature, their attitude to teaching was widened by outside experience, and entering the profession late they were determined to succeed in a career they had positively chosen. A similar if limited scheme could bring into teaching the sort of men who could deal with the fifteen-plus reluctant learner who is unimpressed by the twenty- one year old graduate or College of Edu- cation product.
The wastage from teaching is increased because many enter Colleges of Education simply because they have not been accepted for a university course. To train for three years for a profession that one then finds one dislikes is most unfortunate; but it is more common than is sometimes realised. If all recruits for Colleges of Education had to work a first year in a school as a paid, unqualified supernumerary before they began their course it would ensure that applicants really wished to teach. One year's previous service in schools for college entrants would also ensure that lecturers had to be more realistic and that college students were more mature. It is indeed possible that one year's pre-school service would bring more maturity than any extra year at college.
The year 1969 could perhaps be the year when we thought deeply on teacher re- cruitment, training and salaries. A greater proportion of male teachers and a better career pay structure could arise from the problems of surplus. Perhaps one might then move on to consider how we can afford to pay 500,000 teachers a good salary; and heavier taxation on one side, and a voucher payment system with the expansion of private education on the other, may be the next point of discussion and division between the 'progressives' and the 'reactionaries'.
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