BBC: Tests flummox trainee teachers

[Susan Godsland]

Tests flummox trainee teachers

Many trainee teachers are struggling to pass tests in numeracy, literacy and information technology, figures show.
The Teacher Training and Development Agency says one in five recruits has trouble with simple maths and with spelling words such as "receipt".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4793655.stm

[bwking]

20% (of the upwardly aspiring, mind). That rings a bell and then some. These young people have presumably achieved the necessary O and A level 'GCSE''s in order to apply to a t. training institution, and still can't read and write and figure well enough for a teacher's job.

B.

[Susan Godsland]

I find this worrying:

http://thedta.tripod.com/index.html

[Lesley Drake]

Well, something doesn't add up! (Sorry!)

Yeah, right

[bwking]

Lesley,

Yes, aways add yet another layer of qualification that 'the proles' (in reality, lower middle class) can pass thanks to their acquaintance with literacy and grammar and stuff.

B.

[Lesley Drake]

To me, the whole point is that these tests SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY!

If all the people wanting to enter the teaching profession already have bucket-loads of GCSEs, A levels and degrees, it should be a given that of course they are literate, numerate and know their way round a computer.

When I did my PGCE, xx years ago, no-one asked me to pass a basic skills test. There was no need. My qualifications were deemed evidence enough.

This shows how absolutely, without doubt, these exams have been dumbed down in the intervening years.

The hole in whole language has undermined everything.

PS: computers HAD been invented when I first started teaching, but only the science teachers got to play with them.

[Lesley Drake]

Mr. Chalk

This blog is worth a look while Henry Walpole is on holiday.

[bwking]

Well, I had to give up finally on reading all the stuff, but this guy is a seriously disillusioned, but informative, teacher (especially for we non-teachers).

Thanks Les.

[Lesley Drake]

You're welcome, Brian.

He is a SECONDARY teacher, remember.

They inherit all the disillusioned children who haven't learned how to read and write properly in Primary.

A lot of the cynicism, in some cases, is just a protection mechanism. Under the surface it hurts too much.

In others they're just hard-bitten b******s!

Now, am I talking about the children, or the adults here...Maizie???!!!

[john walker]

It's a pity when so much is being written about literacy that, in the posting for Mr Chalk entitled 'More Bullying', there is a miss-spelling of 'persistent' and there is a semi-colon after Cherelle, when there should be a comma!
<Last year a parent complained that I was not doing enough to stop the persistant bullying of her daughter, Cherelle; who was being bullied by her friends Chevaunne and Collette>
Would Mr Chalk pass the said literacy test??
JW

[bwking]

John,

By way of some exoneration of Mr.Chalk, he is a MATHS teacher.

He has, in any case (TES this week), chucked up his blog in terminal despair - so there won't be any more spelling or punctuation from him to pick up in the foreseeable future.

B.

[g.carter]

.... And Mr. Chalk probably went to school in the late 60s or the 1970s when teaching of punctuation was considered to be a heineous crime - rather similar to today's Educratic attitude to synthetic phonics.

[bwking]

I was going to say that, Geraldine, and about spelling too, but I forgot (the old short-term memory is getting to be a serious pro

B.

[Lesley Drake]

...blem!

Don't worry, Brian, you're in good comp

[FEtutor]

any one for ten