18th May 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A teaching union has claimed that the government is encouraging schools to use unqualified support staff to teach lessons, and that this is a form of abuse. In a report on the BBC, general secretary of the NASUWT, Chris Keates, claims that the government’s move is an effort to save money.
The education secretary, Michael Gove, has recently allowed flagship free schools in England to relax the requirement for teachers to be fully qualified. He says that he wants to create the dynamism and flexibility that one finds in private sector education, where teachers aren’t required to have a PGCE or achieve qualified teacher status before beginning to work as a full-time teacher.
A survey shows that the majority of parents expect state-funded schools to only use qualified teachers, and the NASUWT claim to have observed cases where unqualified teachers are working full-time, or they are teaching new material in the classroom, both of which are not allowed under existing government guidelines.
The argument is that the new relaxed guidelines actually allow schools to overwork and underpay support staff as if they were qualified teachers.