The ‘non-trendy’ teacher training

A PRIVATE university has launched Britain’s first teacher training course that rejects trendy and ‘progressive’ classroom doctrines.

BPP University created the course – a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) – in protest at ‘child-centred’ learning, which has dominated teaching training for decades.

Creators of the new course say they want to offer a more ‘knowledge-based’ alternative to those peddling ‘popular but unproductive teaching methods’. BPP, which provides other professional qualifications at centres across the UK, will offer the course from September.

It is marketing it as ‘the UK’s first PGCE to focus on “knowledge- based” secondary and primary school teaching’. Programme director Robert Peal, a former government adviser, said there had been ‘a surge of enthusiasm’ in recent years for such methods and added that the reading list was ‘very different’.