A sporting chance
This Twinkl blog reviews the main points raised in conversation at a Westminster Education Forum panel chaired by Baroness Sater around primary PE training in initial teacher training (ITT). The shared perspective, it emerges, is that most provision is not adequately preparing teachers for the subject.
As a tutor who regularly visits schools to see student teachers, I believe this is perhaps more to do with a general lack of real experience teaching PE. Many courses do offer small-group teaching and explicit direction, as was recommended by the panel, but what often doesn’t seem to happen is experience actually in school.
It is becoming much rarer that primary teachers teach PE. Instead, the subject is being covered by outside agencies, perhaps to cover PPA time. Interestingly, a similar experience gap can be seen in music and art too.
The panel’s solution seems to be to make PE a core subject, but if this drives up quality, it will be because it nudges schools to better support ITT providers. In the end, no ITT setting is ever going to be able to mimic a school hall or field.
But making a subject part of the core national curriculum is the easy bit. The tough reality is that teachers’ PPA has to come from somewhere.
I wonder what the curriculum and assessment review will come up with to solve this conundrum.
Pedagogical perfection
Which brings us neatly from the recruitment crisis to the retention crisis which, as we know, manifests very early in teachers’ careers. Perhaps we forget how tough it is to be a student teacher. Perhaps we think technology has just solved the lesson-resourcing problem and made things that much easier.
It hasn’t. Having been part of an education faculty, I’ve watched the rise of social media as a means of sharing amazing educational resources over a number of years. This can be both remarkable and entirely overwhelming. That’s still the case for me, and I’ve taught for over 30 years.
So how do you navigate the wealth of information to find the treasures you need? Here, Victoria Crooks uses task design for secondary school history students as her case study, but this is apt for teaching students teaching all ages.
Her sage advice is to focus on the what and the why of planning activities before getting to the how. And oh how I agree. I still fall into the trap of over-complicating this process, and I know it is a real sticking point for students, who waste a lot of time and get themselves increasingly frazzled.
In fact, I’d argue that our recruitment and retention issues start here: at 9PM, when desperately trying to come up with the most amazing whizzy lesson.
Mentors have a job on their hands to tackle this perfectionism. But support from school leaders and resources like this blog could make a real difference.
Family ties
To finish, I thought I’d step away from the recruitment crisis. I got away from recruitment well enough, but I couldn’t quite escape crisis. This time, the huge challenges around SEND provision.
Here, specialist SEND podcaster Jordan Garratt chats with Laura Brown (@spinningworldofautism) about being the autistic parent of an autistic child. Both are reflective and honest about their experiences – and it’s rare enough to hear the voice of a parent in an education podcast – so it’s a vital listen.
So many families are just like Brown’s, juggling life and work with the mind-bogglingly complex demands of being a parent of a neurodiverse child. Successfully advocating for your child becomes a trial of initiative and perseverance. Simply hearing a first-hand account of that journey is eye-opening.
What I really liked about this podcast was the insightful dialogue and openness about what is possible between a teacher and parent when trust is there.
This requires a whole-school approach with a relentless focus on the wellbeing of all involved. Not least teachers, who require support and training to get this right from day one.
Maybe I didn’t quite escape the recruitment and retention crisis after all…
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