The Conservatives think they can improve education in this country by making the teaching profession “brazenly elitist” but it looks like they haven’t done their homework. David Cameron’s latest wheeze would actually exclude Carol Vorderman, the Tories’ own Maths Taskforce chief.
David Cameron made a speech today at a south London school, outlining Conservative pledges:
The Tory leader said he wanted to make teaching the “noble profession” and would bar students with a poor degree from taking government cash to train for the classroom.
And in what was almost certainly a conscious echo of Labour rhetoric, Mr Cameron said: “Good education is the right of the many not the privileged few.”
Michael Gove, the Shadow Education Secretary, went further in confronting head on claims that the Conservatives’ policies favour the better off.
An incoming Conservative government would be guided by a “moral purpose” to make opportunity more equal, he said, adding that it was a ‘scandal’ only 79 boys in receipt of free school meals achieved three ‘A’s at A-level nationwide compared with 175 pupils from Eton alone.
“It’s a scar on our conscience and we are pledged to reverse it,” said Mr Gove.[Times]
However, “breaking open the supply of education” won’t be achieved by discouraging graduates with lower classes of degree.
The Think Politics blog has some interesting thoughts:
Quite apart from whether Mr Cameron can find enough Maths graduates with a good degree to fill schools’ recruitment needs, an important question must be asked: does it matter?
In fact, Mr Cameron is wasting his time. A degree, or the quality of a degree, is no better at predicting a person’s likelihood of success as a teacher than the colour of that person’s hair.
The piece goes on to quote Malcolm Gladwell, writing for the New Yorker:
In teaching, the implications are… profound. They suggest that we shouldn’t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before… It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated.
Paul Waugh at the Evening Standard points out:
Under the Gove plan, only the highest calibre graduates should be given state funding to become teachers. Those with anything less than a 2:2 would be barred from a new high-flyers recruitment scheme.
Unfortunately, a quick bit of research shows that Carol Vorderman – Mr Cameron’s prized Maths Taskforce chief – didn’t do all that well when she studied engineering at Cambridge. She got a third class degree.
Looks like poor old Carol doesn’t measure up to the demands of her favourite party.