Teachers get it handy!

[Eamonnca1]

Bomber, what facts do you deal in? You know nothing about being a teacher. That's the fact

The facts that teachers don't work for a quarter of the year. The fact that teachers are not unique in taking their work home. The fact that teachers enjoy a shorter working week than most.

Christ. I just had another look at this thread and can't believe this old chestnut is still going around. Add in all the marking and class preparation and teachers are working a good 50 hours a week. If you think it's such a cushy job then why don't you sign up and do it?

The annual OECD "education at a glance" report shows that secondary school teachers have the fourth highest teaching hours of 21 countries surveyed at 735 hours.
Scotland clocks in at 855 hours, the Netherlands 750 and Luxembourg 739, while the average across the 21 countries is 622 hours.
Outside Europe, teaching hours tend to be longer. In the US, it's 1,076 hours, Australia 801 hours, New Zealand 760 hours and Canada 751 hours.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/do-irish-teachers-work-long-hours-by-international-standards-1.2235805

[Owen Brannigan]

Teachers with a degree in education (and primary teachers) are as thick as pig shit compared to PGCE teachers. Discuss.

A fella at the wife's school was told by someone at a grammar school they wouldn't even consider him for a job as he was a generalist from a teaching college and not a specialist with a primary degree.

They are not as 'thick as pig shit".  Young people going to teacher training courses to obtain a BEd degree have usually achieved grades ABB, AAB or AAA in A levels or equivalent.  They have worked very hard and are high achievers. 

The problem is with the course content at these training colleges is often at or even below A level standard and nowhere near the standard reached by those taking degree courses at universities.  They do not have the opportunity to study their subjects to the depth of their university colleagues.  They are being failed by the training colleges who believe that most teacher trainees should concentrate on training for primary education as subject generalist.  However, the training colleges do produce secondary teachers in RE, Business Studies and Technology.  Unfortunately, they don't raise the standard and depth of study in these areas compared to the subject generalists for primary education. These trainees are particularly failed by their colleges.

In addition, the BEd route produces young teachers who lack the emotional maturity to take on the role of teachers and this is particularly exposed when they are taken on in secondary schools.  They spend up to 4 years as very immature students training to be teachers and are put in a very difficult position in dealing with today's adolescents who recognise that trainee teachers are only a few years older than themselves and deal with them accordingly.  Just imagine if someone with the emotional intelligence of EBD were put into a training position in a school how the children would tear him to pieces by the end of the day.  At least graduates are a bit older and will have made a more mature decision to become teachers and will have a better chance of developing into good teachers before affecting the education of too many children as they practice their skills.  A similar argument applies to medicine and hence the development of a graduate college being out forward by University of Ulster.

The result is that secondary schools and particularly grammar schools will lean towards those who have studied their subjects in depth for a degree and taken the PGCE qualification to allow them to be licensed as teachers and those who are able to display a greater level of emotion intelligence and maturity.

PE and RE students in the training colleges who took primary school courses turn up at secondary level to compete for jobs with those from universities. Some of these PE teachers will be employed for various reasons but will struggle when they attempt to take sports studies/science courses to A level because they don't have the depth of study.  In Technology, the training college students get preference because they have agreements with DE to create a closed shop, pardon the pun, as DE insists on a C&G qualification for workshop competency which is only built into the NI teacher training courses and excludes well qualified teachers with degrees who studied and trained in England.

[ONeill]

Owen, in your experience would you agree it's much easier to get your 3 As now compared to 1975/85 or even 95?

Is this down to

a) Better teaching
b) Online and additional resources
c) Dumbing down of content?

[Tony Baloney]

Owen, in your experience would you agree it's much easier to get your 3 As now compared to 1975/85 or even 95?

Is this down to

a) Better teaching
b) Online and additional resources
c) Dumbing down of content?

Is there a D (all of the above)?

[Owen Brannigan]

Owen, in your experience would you agree it's much easier to get your 3 As now compared to 1975/85 or even 95?

Is this down to

a) Better teaching
b) Online and additional resources
c) Dumbing down of content?

Just a few random Friday night thoughts while watching Radiohead at Glastonbury. (Much better than poor Kris)

No doubt.  Grade inflation has occurred and is not the fault of the young people in schools or who have left in the last ten years.  It is down to a number of factors:

1. Modularisation
All A level courses have been broken down into individual modules which can be taken on their own and repeated until the highest score is achieved.  Aggregation of the modular scores allows for high scores in some to compensate for lower scores in there difficulty.  AS level modules have the same value as A2 level modules yet the degree of difficulty of A2 course is much greater.  You can max out AS modules to compensate for not doing as well at A2 level.  Some modules within AS and A2 are easier than others, e.g. I recall in Maths you can substitute a module in statistics for a pure maths modules which is far more difficult.  In RE A level you can take history modules instead of the more difficult ethics modules and the end result is the same but an easy route through history.

All modular exams are sprints with small amounts of material covered by each one. When A levels had to be taken at the end of two years with a series of 3 hour exams it was much more difficult to achieve higher grades.

2. Coursework
Although coursework has been tightened up in recent years it is still easier to gain marls through this route than through exams and it suits those who can work hard but find that exams do not suit them.  Intervention in coursework beyond the exam candidate occurs.

3. Grading
Exams are no longer normative referenced (think that is the right term).  Until recent years, I think up to the end of the 80s, the grades awarded at A level were statistically calculated regardless of the achievement of the candidates.  the same percentage of students could gain E grade or better each year, it was 69% and applied to all subjects.  The percentages of candidates assigned to each grade were then assigned accordingly.  This was a cop out by the exam boards.  they could set papers that were hard or easy and then apply the percentages to each grade by statistical means.  In 80s, this was also applied to O levels and one year the pass mark for Maths ended up at the low 20% and A grades were awarded to those over 50% because the paper was so difficult no one did well but the same grade profile existed.  So, no matter how much you knew it did not matter in terms of the grade you would get, you just had to do better than your peers, it was a competition.  I used to joke to A level Chemistry students that after half an hour they should put their hands up to ask for more paper, (in those days exams weren't structured in booklets as now) this would have a negative effect on the others and give them an edge.  So, students competed against teacher other and not the exam paper when it came to grades.

Since the early 90s grades have been awarded on the basis of criterion referencing.  This means you get marks according to the amount of correct answers you provide and these raw marks are converted to standard marks, e.g. 600 for a paper and 480 gets an A.  The candidate now competes against the paper and not his peers.  The more you can answer the higher the grade you get regardless of how many others have given as goos answers.  Hence we have tight mark schemes and higher grades.

Structured Exams
Recent trends have led to exam papers being highly structured. A question is broken down into its component sub parts and each part answer is marked and contributes to the final score.  Older papers just set a question and the student was not led through a series of questions contributing to each other.  Candidates no longer have to know everything, as I used to advise, many answers can be found on the exam paper if you study the questions properly instead of blindly trying to answer individual sub parts.

Playing the game
Schools and particularly the teachers know how to play the exam game and strategies are developed within subject disciplines to help students maximise their scores towards a final grade.  Everything is worked out to ensure that students follow an assessment path that will get the best score.  This occurs in many ways within subject areas but some will include analysis of modules to find the easiest, e.g. choosing the correct books, plays and poetry in English Lit, the periods of History, human or physical geography etc.  Many teachers are exam experts and dispense advice to students on which modules to repeat to maximise scores.

Schools will offer subjects that are more suited to some students than others to maximise results.  Not all A levels are equal under criterion referencing.  In the old days all subjects were norm referenced and made equal in terms of the percentage of students achieving a particular grade.  Criterion referencing means that a student can take 'easier subjects' and get into a better course than someone just randomly picking A levels in an Arts provision.  You look at grades and the raw scores required to achieve them and decide which subject offers the most A  grades.  It is not a criticism of subjects or students taking them.  Vocational A levels with higher levels of coursework raised the number A grades overnight as they suited some students and allowed for more intervention by those other than the student, just look at coursework marks. Most of these subjects had 60% coursework, statistics showed that these subjects had students getting almost full marks in coursework but struggling to pass the exam module but still getting an A grade.  The use of BTEC assessment took this to a different level because the teacher started assessing students form the first day and just had to hand back work to make sure each assessment sub criterion was ticked to award the distinction grade.  BTECs allowed students to avoid exams completely and depend on teacher assessed modules where intervention was rampant in terms of marking and repeating until the right answer was achieved.

Better teaching
Better teaching has been achieved as criterion referencing of assessment has meant that the teacher can teach precisely to the exam and have the students ready for the exam down to the final detail.  Years ago with norm referencing you just hope d your students were better than those in other schools, teachers competed against each if they wanted to improve results.  Now, they compete against the exam specification and win.

There are still those who shouldn't teach at A level but schools have worked this out and put those who are best in the top team of the school.  A level teaching is regarded by teachers as a measure of ability and esteem in which they are held. 

A wider range of courses and more modern exam specifications have rejuvenated some teachers and given them a keener interest in their subjects and desire to teach for their own enjoyment.

[tonto1888]

Bomber, what facts do you deal in? You know nothing about being a teacher. That's the fact

The facts that teachers don't work for a quarter of the year. The fact that teachers are not unique in taking their work home. The fact that teachers enjoy a shorter working week than most.

Showing yourself up again as knowing. Othing about teachers work. I enjoy reading a lot of your stuff but on this you're wrong

[Owen Brannigan]

Bomber, what facts do you deal in? You know nothing about being a teacher. That's the fact

The facts that teachers don't work for a quarter of the year. The fact that teachers are not unique in taking their work home. The fact that teachers enjoy a shorter working week than most.

Showing yourself up again as knowing. Othing about teachers work. I enjoy reading a lot of your stuff but on this you're wrong

Time to ignore him and treat his contributions to this thread with at least the same distain as he has for the teaching profession. Let him get back to sneering elsewhere on the Board.

[Over the Bar]

Teaching used to attract learned scholars at the top in their field.  Now it attracts Joe Average by and large.  Not saying all teachers are mediocre in their subjects but as a  profession it is on a serious downward slope from 40 years ago.   Borne out by the fact you can be a supply teacher in England with decent A level results! 

[Rois]

Two parents and older sister are teachers (you have to be informed to post on here).

My sister teaches English, and said that one of the younger English teachers (in a good East Belfast Grammar) told her she hadn't read a novel since her degree.
I'm not a teacher but I'd be appalled if that was true of English teachers across the board. We all have CPD.

[delgany]

Entry qualification for st Mary's college. Belfast is A AN
600 applications for 100 places
Applicants also have to pass an interview

Only the top performing students accepted

Drop out rate is about 3 %

Hardly shoddy

[ONeill]

Next year we're focusing on full stops. Time to get back to basics.

[ONeill]

Owen, in your experience would you agree it's much easier to get your 3 As now compared to 1975/85 or even 95?

Is this down to

a) Better teaching
b) Online and additional resources
c) Dumbing down of content?

Just a few random Friday night thoughts while watching Radiohead at Glastonbury. (Much better than poor Kris)

No doubt.  Grade inflation has occurred and is not the fault of the young people in schools or who have left in the last ten years.  It is down to a number of factors:

1. Modularisation
All A level courses have been broken down into individual modules which can be taken on their own and repeated until the highest score is achieved.  Aggregation of the modular scores allows for high scores in some to compensate for lower scores in there difficulty.  AS level modules have the same value as A2 level modules yet the degree of difficulty of A2 course is much greater.  You can max out AS modules to compensate for not doing as well at A2 level.  Some modules within AS and A2 are easier than others, e.g. I recall in Maths you can substitute a module in statistics for a pure maths modules which is far more difficult.  In RE A level you can take history modules instead of the more difficult ethics modules and the end result is the same but an easy route through history.

All modular exams are sprints with small amounts of material covered by each one. When A levels had to be taken at the end of two years with a series of 3 hour exams it was much more difficult to achieve higher grades.

2. Coursework
Although coursework has been tightened up in recent years it is still easier to gain marls through this route than through exams and it suits those who can work hard but find that exams do not suit them.  Intervention in coursework beyond the exam candidate occurs.

3. Grading
Exams are no longer normative referenced (think that is the right term).  Until recent years, I think up to the end of the 80s, the grades awarded at A level were statistically calculated regardless of the achievement of the candidates.  the same percentage of students could gain E grade or better each year, it was 69% and applied to all subjects.  The percentages of candidates assigned to each grade were then assigned accordingly.  This was a cop out by the exam boards.  they could set papers that were hard or easy and then apply the percentages to each grade by statistical means.  In 80s, this was also applied to O levels and one year the pass mark for Maths ended up at the low 20% and A grades were awarded to those over 50% because the paper was so difficult no one did well but the same grade profile existed.  So, no matter how much you knew it did not matter in terms of the grade you would get, you just had to do better than your peers, it was a competition.  I used to joke to A level Chemistry students that after half an hour they should put their hands up to ask for more paper, (in those days exams weren't structured in booklets as now) this would have a negative effect on the others and give them an edge.  So, students competed against teacher other and not the exam paper when it came to grades.

Since the early 90s grades have been awarded on the basis of criterion referencing.  This means you get marks according to the amount of correct answers you provide and these raw marks are converted to standard marks, e.g. 600 for a paper and 480 gets an A.  The candidate now competes against the paper and not his peers.  The more you can answer the higher the grade you get regardless of how many others have given as goos answers.  Hence we have tight mark schemes and higher grades.

Structured Exams
Recent trends have led to exam papers being highly structured. A question is broken down into its component sub parts and each part answer is marked and contributes to the final score.  Older papers just set a question and the student was not led through a series of questions contributing to each other.  Candidates no longer have to know everything, as I used to advise, many answers can be found on the exam paper if you study the questions properly instead of blindly trying to answer individual sub parts.

Playing the game
Schools and particularly the teachers know how to play the exam game and strategies are developed within subject disciplines to help students maximise their scores towards a final grade.  Everything is worked out to ensure that students follow an assessment path that will get the best score.  This occurs in many ways within subject areas but some will include analysis of modules to find the easiest, e.g. choosing the correct books, plays and poetry in English Lit, the periods of History, human or physical geography etc.  Many teachers are exam experts and dispense advice to students on which modules to repeat to maximise scores.

Schools will offer subjects that are more suited to some students than others to maximise results.  Not all A levels are equal under criterion referencing.  In the old days all subjects were norm referenced and made equal in terms of the percentage of students achieving a particular grade.  Criterion referencing means that a student can take 'easier subjects' and get into a better course than someone just randomly picking A levels in an Arts provision.  You look at grades and the raw scores required to achieve them and decide which subject offers the most A  grades.  It is not a criticism of subjects or students taking them.  Vocational A levels with higher levels of coursework raised the number A grades overnight as they suited some students and allowed for more intervention by those other than the student, just look at coursework marks. Most of these subjects had 60% coursework, statistics showed that these subjects had students getting almost full marks in coursework but struggling to pass the exam module but still getting an A grade.  The use of BTEC assessment took this to a different level because the teacher started assessing students form the first day and just had to hand back work to make sure each assessment sub criterion was ticked to award the distinction grade.  BTECs allowed students to avoid exams completely and depend on teacher assessed modules where intervention was rampant in terms of marking and repeating until the right answer was achieved.

Better teaching
Better teaching has been achieved as criterion referencing of assessment has meant that the teacher can teach precisely to the exam and have the students ready for the exam down to the final detail.  Years ago with norm referencing you just hope d your students were better than those in other schools, teachers competed against each if they wanted to improve results.  Now, they compete against the exam specification and win.

There are still those who shouldn't teach at A level but schools have worked this out and put those who are best in the top team of the school.  A level teaching is regarded by teachers as a measure of ability and esteem in which they are held. 

A wider range of courses and more modern exam specifications have rejuvenated some teachers and given them a keener interest in their subjects and desire to teach for their own enjoyment.

So, what are you saying?

[Tony Baloney]

Entry qualification for st Mary's college. Belfast is A AN
600 applications for 100 places
Applicants also have to pass an interview

Only the top performing students accepted

Drop out rate is about 3 %

Hardly shoddy

Some interview. "Your grades are good. I see you play county football. When can you start?"

"Your grades aren't great. I see you play county football so there's a handy wee Liberal Arts with PE course you can do. When can you start?"

[delgany]

Liberal arts degree  isn't a teaching qualification
You'd need to do a post grad , after
Not too many interviews like that .
Level of questions. May be beyond you

[Tony Baloney]

Liberal arts degree  isn't a teaching qualification
You'd need to do a post grad , after
Not too many interviews like that .
Level of questions. May be beyond you

What language is that?