U-turn on fast-track teacher training

THE SNP has laid the groundwork for a U-turn on its policy blocking a teaching scheme credited with solving staff shortages in other parts of the UK.

The Teach First programme has been running in England and Wales since 2002.

Top graduates are paid to work in schools with staff shortages, gaining a teaching qualification after two years of ‘on-the-job training’ combined with university tuition in their spare time.

The initiative is aimed at tackling the brain drain in teaching and has gave the education system south of the Border 5,000 new teachers.

But for years the SNP has resisted it, insisting would-be teachers pay for a university Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE).

Nearly 200 Scots graduates have quit the country to pursue the Teach First scheme south of the Border since 2012, it was revealed last month.

At the time, Nicola Sturgeon said: ‘We have a principle in Scottish education that the people who are teaching in our schools should have a teaching qualification... that principle is right.’

But education bosses are now examining new routes into teaching, removing the restrictions which previously disqualified Teach First. The

‘SNP refusal to consider scheme was foolhardy’

Government has made it clear that training would have to remain ‘in partnership’ with a university.

Scottish Tory education spokesman Liz Smith said: ‘People will be baffled as to why it has taken so long for the SNP to accept the merits of this type of initiative. At a time when it is so obvious that there are not enough teachers in our schools, the SNP’s persistent refusal to even consider the scheme was foolhardy in the extreme.’

The Scottish Government said: ‘We have committed £1million from the Scottish Attainment Fund to identify and develop new ways for people to come into teaching, and will be putting a new initiative out to tender designed to attract high-quality graduates in priority areas and subjects.

‘The tender will be open not just to universities, but to organisations capable of delivering highquality teacher education experiences. Any new route into teaching will require a partnership with a university to maintain academic rigour.’

Teach First executive director James Westhead said: ‘Any new model must be a bespoke solution designed in and with Scotland, with its world-leading higher education institutions.’

But Scottish Labour’s education spokesman Iain Gray said: ‘Mired in a mess of its own making, the SNP’s “solution” is to send untrained teachers into our classrooms to teach.’