Question

Debate on teachers : a neglected lot

Answer 1

Improving the quality of teachers and teaching is generally recognised as being crucial to improving outcomes for students and the performance of an education system.

Improving the quality of teachers and teaching is generally recognised as being crucial to improving outcomes for students and the performance of an education system. Students who learn with the best teachers can progress up to three times as fast as those placed with low-performing teachers. Improving the quality of teachers and teaching involves:

attracting the most able graduates into the professionoperating initial teacher education programmes that balance knowledge about how children develop and learn with classroom experience that equips trainees to diagnose problems swiftly and accurately, use data effectively and apply a rich repertoire of approaches to meet the needs of different studentscreating professional development pathways that encourage teachers to have high expectations of themselves and their students and that view teacher education, induction and ongoing development as an integrated learning continuumsupporting teachers to be expert ‘knowledge workers’ constantly striving to improve their classroom practice. Crucially this needs to be done by teachers working together. Institutionalising improved practice (ensuring the consistency and quality of teaching across a school or group of schools) comes from teachers within and across schools planning lessons together, observing each other’s practice, reviewing the evidence on effective interventions and trialing and assessing with students the impact of teaching and learning innovations