A license to teach is not empowering
178 words | ~1 min
Ed Balls's white paper, Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future, published today, contains the breathtaking proposal that teachers should have licences to practice which would need to be renewed every five years.
Incredibly, the general secretary of the NASUWT seems to support this. From the BBC report:
The general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, Chris Keates, said licensing could give qualified teacher status "the long overdue recognition that it is a high status qualification" like those in medicine and law.
No it doesn't. It sends a message that teachers are like bankers: probably inefficient, possibly incompetent, and in need of more government regulation.
When the Children's Secretary says that 'it may be that we will discover some teachers who do not make the grade and some who aren't re-licensed', teachers can be forgiven for not feeling that this licensing proposal is being handed down in recognition of their achievements.
# Alex Steer (30/06/2009)