Scot-School Times Comment

Coronavirus lockdown to be eased from Monday

This is going to cause ructions with the SNP as Ian Blackford alluded to in PMQs. The problem in Scotland is that the schools are being prepared for reopening in August (thanks to Unions & LAs). And when they do there will be problems.

• DELMIJ
• 5 DAYS AGO
• Pual Martin
• Some of the schools in Scotland operate in very old and/or small buildings. The possibility of accommodating a class of 24 to 28 children plus teacher (maybe along with assistants or student teachers) at the required social distances in classrooms that are say 7m x 10m is quite unlikely, regardless of the attitudes of unions and LAs. Some solution that may include part-time attendance will need to be worked out. In Scottishstate schools primary teachers are graduates of the Colleges of Education; secondary teachers are university graduates who have subsequently trained and graduated from a CoE with a PGTC; PE , Art and Music teachers also have a tertiary qualification plus appropriate teaching qualifications. Students on the teaching qualification courses spend a considerable amount of time in schools as part of their training. Scottish private schools usually require the same qualifications for their teaching staff. This shut down will have a long term negative impact on the student teachers who are due to graduate this July.
• BBDavies
• 5 DAYS AGO
• DELMIJ
• My daughter is training to be a teacher in England. The Department for Education has decided that her cohort will gain their post graduate teaching qualification if they meet the overall requirements of their course, but fall short of the amount of teaching practice normally required. She will lose about 8 weeks teaching practice. She has already has substantial teaching practice, (her course is a school centered one), & worked as a teaching assistant for a year, so feels relatively comfortable with this. But the upshot is that her cohort will need additional support in their NQT year, not least because the children are likely to have been affected academically, socially & emotionally by the lockdown. The alternative of not letting this cohort graduate would have penalised them due to no fault of their own, stopped them from entering the employment market & led to a shortage of teachers.