Teachers: Professional Competence (Hansard, 13 June 1988)

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State wants to encourage many more talented people with relevant qualifications and experience to become teachers. He proposes, therefore, to change the regulations on the granting of qualified teacher status for those who have not trained in England or Wales. These regulations have long been in need of reform. Under my right honourable friend's proposals, no one will be granted qualified teacher status until he or she has received any necessary training and their professional competence has been fully tested. The existing arrangements do not provide such a safeguard.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, is it right that the training is to be given by the various LEAs round the country, or organised by the governors of grant-maintained schools or city technology colleges? What monitoring will there be of the training? What monitoring will there be when qualified teacher status is finally given?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, the training arrangements will vary according to the needs of the teacher concerned. Some overseas-trained teachers may require very little additional training, whereas an untrained person with no previous teaching experience would clearly need more extensive training. On the whole, that will be the responsibility of local education authorities. In due course the department will make available guidance on appropriate training for licensed teachers.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, may I follow up that by asking whether the Government will help LEAs with the expense of this extra in-service training?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, in the sense that the regulations provide nothing new, the arrangements will follow current practice. The regulations will enable the Government to clarify the situation. Already we have about 10 per cent. of teachers who enter under the routes which are described in the consultation document. The consultation document clarifies the entry arrangements. It will not make an enormous difference to the follow-up training that is required.

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, can the Minister say how this extra training is to be paid for in a context where local authorities have been substantially cut back and are finding difficulty in maintaining a number of services in the field of education? Can the Minister also say how professional competence is to be tested?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, the costs of training will be eligible for support under the local education authority training grant scheme and the grant-maintained schools grant. As I said, guidance on monitoring will be issued after the responses to the consultation document in which monitoring is referred to.

§ Lord Ritchie of Dundee
My Lords, I understand from the Government's consultation paper that if a governing body or a local education authority wants a teacher for a specific school, it can apply for that teacher to be given a licence. How long is it likely to be before a licence is granted? If a period of, say, two years' training intervenes, the need for that teacher may have disappeared before he is on the staff. How long will the school have to wait?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, the proposal in the consultation document is that qualified teacher status will be granted on the recommendation of the local authority or school governing body after the licensed teacher has taught satisfactorily during a period of no fewer than two years and no more than three years. During that period a licensed teacher with no or insufficient pre-entry training would have had to undertake a training programme tailored to his or her needs.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the replies she has given are completely unsatisfactory and will be rejected by almost everyone in the teaching profession and those associated with it? I ask the noble Baroness to refer to exactly the same experience which we had in the 1960s. Although there were some natural born teachers at that time, they were very few and far between. It took a great deal of effort, time and I may say (because I was engaged in it), a great deal of human suffering in trying to remove the other people from the profession. Finally, does not the noble Baroness agree that if training means anything, it must be the training which we have now? We do not have untrained lawyers, doctors, and so on.

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Lord. A number of people have already warmly welcomed the proposals, and more will do so when they have considered the consultation document. We hope and expect that the new arrangements will attract more people to teaching. Indeed, the work of the Teaching as a Career unit has shown that many older people are attracted to teaching but are put off by the pre-service training requirement and the lack of clarity in the present arrangements for granting qualified teacher status on the basis of experience. We hope that the proposed arrangements will also help to attract more candidates from the ethnic minorities who perhaps possess overseas teaching qualifications. That must be to the benefit of the schools.

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the proposals which are outlined and which are being challenged at the moment by the noble Baroness will go an enormous way to help in the shortage subjects by getting people with science and technology backgrounds into the classroom with the appropriate training? The proposals will also meet some of the requirements of the new curriculum.

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, as my noble friend said, and as I said previously, we expect this scheme to attract many new entrants.

§ Lord Peston
My Lords, the document itself refers to the licensed teacher undertaking such training as the employer deems appropriate, but my noble friend asked how we shall know that each employer deems the same kind of qualities appropriate as each other employer. Perhaps I may also ask whether a teacher who achieves this status in one LEA will be eligible for employment with any other LEA.

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, I can probably say "Yes" to the second part of the supplementary question asked by the noble Lord. The arrangements for the training of licensed teachers will he subject to the same kind of central supervision as all other teacher training.

§ Baroness Fisher of Rednal
My Lords, can the Minister give the House information as to the level of the salary scale at which the licensed teachers will be joining the profession before the two years' training, and afterwards? At what level of the salary scale will they be placed?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, no change will be necessary to the regulations which govern teachers' salaries. During the period of licensed teaching, special arrangements will apply. Obviously, after qualified teacher status has been acquired the normal provisions of the teachers' pay and conditions document will apply.

§ Lord St. John of Fawsley
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one needs only one attribute to be a good teacher, and that is to have a teaching nature?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. That is one of the most important aspects of teaching. By presenting these regulations as proposals at this stage, the Government hope very much to attract to the profession people with that particular indefinable quality.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, do I understand from the Minister that when teachers first enter the profession under licence they will have less salary than a qualified teacher?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, yes.