Did someone ask Michael Gove about a completely different government proposal to the one in this article? Or could he find nothing to add to, nothing to criticise in Balls' announcement?

Jeez, I fear it's going to be a long five (ten? fifteen?) years from 2010....

Teachers should be accountable to the parents and the community - not the state. History shows that government accountability and control - such as the national curriculum - has been an almost complete failiure. When did we begin to distrust teachers so much? Is it it any surpirse that teachers in the public sector spend 1/4 of their time filling in paperwork, rather then teaching?

When I did English - a subject I was reasonable at - I was in disbelief that the teacher could not teach books they wanted, and had to follow the boring standard of Shakespeare.

Moreover, it just creates dumbed down students and teachers who are amazing at paperwork but not much else.

Education shouldn't be targets, tests and accountability. It should be about freedom, adventure and questioning.

Oh God !! Here we go again!!!!!

similar to the new system for doctors and solicitors...

And obviously at similar pay scales as well.

How straw-graspy of a so-called solution is this? Toss another set of standardised goals at them? As if they aren't judged on enough mandated state tests as it is. With this and everything else, it's fair to say that teaching is now far more than a full time job, and should they want to keep having new teachers, they're either going to have to offer doctor/solicitor sized salaries or come up with some ways of bringing in more educators to share in classes run by one.

And everyone wonders why no-one wants to be a teacher anymore.

@saturatedlies
30 Jun 09, 4:10pm

The only Shakespeare my son has learned at senior school is "The Tempest" because it ties in with ALL the work they do on slavery, the empire and everything anti British.

What will the teachers be tested on?

Their academic ability or how tolerant they are to Social Engineering and PC nonsense.

.

This is just a stupid idea. More regulation and red tape for people to go through. I thought Whitehall were ment to be introducing cost cutting measures equal to around 1 billion. This is just another thing which in the scale of things will add little and increase red tape!

Crap teachers will always exist as they will just find a way round anything like this!

Let me add one more thing:

Let me guess. This will involve a huge, bloated quango that no-one really wants nor needs - NOR can afford - to "licence" teachers who've been doing their jobs fine for 20+ years. Jobsworths who've never been in a classroom will tick boxes and kick competent people out of their jobs because the computer says no and they fail to toe the Labour Party line.

No-one wants it, no-one needs it, and no-one can afford it.

Pretty vintage New Labour if you ask me.

Que red tape and lots of paperwork.

A white paper that titles itself for the 21st century, yet is nearly a decade into the century - and all they came up with was an MOT license for teachers? What about an MOT license for parents once every five years? To see whether they are still fit to be parents of teachable children or not?

Whether these ideas or good or bad, they're certainly substantial changes. One wonders if this is a sign of newfound enthusiasm for schools reform by the government, or desperation. The government has been concerned about bad teachers since 1997; only now is a license necessary?

Most of these ideas sound good, if potentially expensive; but after over a decade of "education, education, education," it seems slightly odd to still be pursuing such changes. Perhaps Mr Balls is trying to show he's happy to be in the job he's in, and not the one he's rumoured to have wanted.

Thank Heavens I'm retired from Deputy Headship - It was never an easy job but every time the Government is in trouble it bashes teachers. Oh! And schools don't waste millions of pounds of taxpayers' money - That's always been the Governments's prerogative with their hair-brained schemes.

What a load of Balls!

what an utterly shit solution

gosh. i never knew we had such a surfeit of teachers!

The word MOT describes it perfectly. Teachers are cars; well-oiled machines giving the party line.

re: underperforming teachers

perhaps the problem is that teachers are expected to perform rather than teach.

As a an Ex Corgi Gas Engineer that needed to go every 5 year I will tell you that this will do nothing to weed out bad teachers other that see which one passes the test, the whole point about teaching is to teach and after this country has been bombarding the class rooms with a whole lot of interfering policies inadequate and poor standards that have come from a system unworkable and that poor relation from the children and the teacher does not go down well when the government thinks that a child down south should be teached like a child up north when the whole environment and needs are so very different, teachers should be allowed to teach children in the way they see fit other wise we see what we have today a down wards spiral between classes bright children should be given the chance to move up in the school rather that endure the politic pains from interfering politicians

he's not called Edward Bollocks (or Ed Balls to himself) for nothing you know. He was teased at school about it...and now he is getting back at teachers. They will have to pay to take the test too...just to rub their faces in it.

What about MOTs for politicians & bankers? I'm sure I could think of many more if I were not so weary from reading this sort of stuff.

(Retired teacher)

Westminster has to realise it is the problem not the solution.

Westminster should have nothing to do with education / health / local taxes .. etc.. refer them down to local level.

They just can't realise less is more.

The plan for a new licence to teach will begin in September 2010, starting with newly qualified teachers

Is this not what the PGCE, GTP or BA Ed is for?

What a complete waste of time, money and effort!

OK so when are they going to MOT parents because some of them clearly are not up to the job? Why does everything in British society have to be destroyed by flawed policies? I am disgusted and you should be too!

this is another bureacracy to create unnecessary restrictions on a profession already suffering from indecisive centralised direction.

Ps @ breaking3

real classy your post, up to your old racism stirring again i see.

pathetic.

H1

There are many ways to teach successfully and success is not easily measured. This latest "initiative" is another step on the de-skilling of teachers, the discouragement of creativity and the narrowing of education. These days, quality writing is measured by how many adjectives or adverbs a child uses. Expression is irrelevant, its all about ticking technical boxes. Teachers judged as good are those that can make enough children toe this line and record their doing so in neat, orderly boxes. Those responsible for regulating teachers maintain, despite the evidence offered by dictionaries, that "satisfactory" is not good enough.

Modern schooling, more than ever, is about uniformity, mundanity and the stifling of creativity.

To paraphrase what Mr Balls said above:

The whole of the country said: "It may be that we will discover some Labour Ministers and MP's who don't make the grade ... We want this to be a profession which is continually learning and developing, and that will be central to the licence.

"It's saying we want to ensure the best Ministers in every political department in every part of the country."

It's the public sector's turn.

Buried in paper is what you'll be, and there will have to be highly trained expensive "administrators" to read and interpret all the words on each and every sheet of paper. What of the appeals? How many highly trained and expensive people will be involved in that process? Is this a jobs program for administrators and people in the paper industry? It makes sense in that context.

I am a teacher in an inner city school in the US. My district is under a state interdict due to low performance. We produce a lot of paper, and our outcomes keep getting worse. Do large classes have anything to do with it? Not according to The Powers That Be, statistically class size has no effect on learning. Does poverty have anything to do with it? No, everyone can point to two or three high-poverty schools with high achievement. Why can't all schools/children/teachers perforn to that level? Student behavior? The latest thing to ameliorate that issue is positive behavior intervention, in the best case scenario parents are cooperative and participate using the same system. In my experience, most parents try, but few can sustain it, especially those with the most troubled children. They're tired out too.

A well-known professor of education recently told me that only 8% of the whole population is temperamentally suited to teaching, and that 50%, or more, of teachers currently in the classroom are poor teachers. Suppose I said that only 8% of students are temperamentally suited to school, and at least 50% shouldn't be students because they're so poor at it? Does that make any sense?

How did teachers end up as the butt of all problems in the schools? How do 15 year olds, not special needs, get to my classroom with elementary school reading skills? Why didn't someone stop them sooner? What are my chances of raising their reading ability to something resembling college ready in two years? (That's the amount of time they can be in my reading classroom, after that they must move on.) This school year, two were able to pass through, 48 were not. Nearly all made gains of two or more grade levels, but many have six, or more, levels to progress before they make the cut score, and the cut score is low. I am proud of my students, they made big gains. I am proud of myself, I received an excellent evaluation for my efforts, but my efforts are not enough. What is?

Remove teachers and who will teach? Robots? T'tinternet? In case you haven't noticed, Mr Balls, insufficient numbers are stepping up to the plate to do the job as it is.

Where are your degree concessions to encourage potential new staff to learn in order to be able to teach shortage subjects? Here's an idea - underwrite the cost of maths and science degrees instead of curtailing university places.

How does your retraining of city professionals work when ELQ funding has just been massacred? (And, no, it doesn't benefit first time degree getters - the OU is now consulting over slashing courses for EVERYONE because of shortfalls in funding, as is Birkbeck. And Manchester. Oops, no, Manchester has announced a huge axe fall already.)

When will parents be made accountable for child behaviour?

Why is 1:1 tuition being mooted for school time? Pull them out of one subject to raise proficiency in another?

When will the deficit of male teachers in primary be addressed - you know that's a large part of the problem. Right?

0/10 for policy proposal, I'm afraid.

Fantastic idea as long as they use the same system for everyone, I propose we start with MP's to ensure that the testing works.

What was ever wrong with managers assessing the abilities / success of their staff? I'm sure i've heard of that sort of thing happening elsewhere. What are heads of department / faculty / year, assistand heads and heads paid for if not to assess the abilities of their staff and fire / promote on their presumed authority?

Maybe Balls is right though. Maybe the UK should introduce a nationally administered scheme for every profession and business and totally eliminate the experienced judgement of people who have proven skill and ability in the relevant field.

Mr Balls, please watch this.

This really seems to be a great white paper which will drive up standards. Well done to Ed Balls and sour grapes to Mr Gove. He should give credit where it is due.

Teachers will have to undergo MOTs every five years to make sure they are fit to teach, under proposals announced today designed to weed out bad teachers.

Will they buggery weed out bad teachers. They will safeguard the useless 'teach to the test' box-ticking merchants who can put together beautiful portfolios of achievement that spout the mindless NuLab Edu-babble they want to hear. Truly great, inspirational teachers unwilling or unable to promote Ed Balls' sausage machine approach to our chidren's education will be hounded out or will simply vote with their feet.

Groan..! Here we go yet again. Teachers must be bashed and blamed and monitored and coralled and demoralised and told how to teach and vilified and mistrusted. I could go on but I`ll spare you.

Its all about the govt being seen to be "tough". The teachers are an easy target and this policy will be popular with the Daily Mail/ Sun readers/BNP and UKIP voters Brown and Balls are desperate to befriend. Hence yesterday`s announcement about "local housing for local people". The very depths of cynicism I`d say.

Pardon my rant, but its so exasperating.

"new plans for one-to-one tuition for every child who is below the expected level at 11"

As the "expected level" is the average level of a few years ago, the aim seems to be that every child must be average or above. Hum, let me figure that . . .

The dog's bollocks ...not.

As someone whose daughter had to suffer an entire wasted year of school life, aged 4-5, due to an appalling teacher, I agree that there needs to be a means to sack obviously failing teachers (this teacher is still there, 5 years later, despite the fact she is notorious throughout the school, though she has - mercifully - been removed from being in charge of a class and now assists with other people's instead).

That said, as a teacher, I see no point in making the many suffer for the sins of a few. Teachers have to waste enough time jumping through government-designed hoops already; there is no point making obviously excellent teachers wste their time or our money proving this fact.

Basic teacher observations by a competent person who knows the staff rather than some overpaid ignorant outsider should be enough to ascertain who can teach or who can't. Failing that, actually - shock horror! - responding to parents' complaints/worries about individual teachers should help to pinpoint the (very few) bad teachers actually in need of this remedial action.

This measure will just (a) waste time and (b) annoy good, long-standing teachers and put off good graduates from entering in the first place. T|hus actually reducing the overall quality of teachers.

What a stupid policy.

What's the betting that whichever 'special adviser' came up with this corker has never actually set foot in a school (at least not since they left school themselves, probavly not that long ago...) and doesn't have children, either.

I don't know whether I heard a different speech from others here, but I am pretty sure Balls said that senior staff in schools (with ultimate accountability staying with heads) would assess staff for this licence, not outsiders. As long as they are able to do this based on teachers continuing to meet the professional standards over time rather than some stupid one-off check or observation then I can't see why the vast majority of teachers would worry.

However, while this makes it less of a concern, it also makes it a complete waste of time as they are supposed to assess their staff through performance management, support teachers if they are struggling and ultimately take action to remove the very small proportion who simply cannot do the job despite support.

I don't know what everyone's getting so het up about. It's not as if this government are going to be around long enough to see it through.

Ofsted reports, school-led quality control, classroom observation, performance targets, professional development review and target setting, HMI, SATs results, league tables, (defunct) National Curriculum rigidity and now five yearly MOTs....."The scheme comes in response to concerns among heads that it is difficult to sack underperforming teachers". I think the greater concern is out of control government interference and increasingly nervous education "initiatives". I was lucky enough to spend 30 years teaching but thank my lucky stars I´m retired and free from the intolerable pressures all teachers now face both inside the classroom and from inside Whitehall. I actually sleep at nights now!

A lot of teachers do terrible damage and need to be fired asap.

At least this gives a polite way of doing so.

Newly qualified teachers face two years of meeting specific targets (40 during training year, and even more in their NQT year), under close supervision by three in-school mentors, a university tutor and a head of department. Senior staff will frequently observe teachers and give feedback on their performance. Results in exams are traced back to the teacher responsible for the group, and compared with targets for those students (both from SATs and teachers' own assessment).

To add a further layer of assessment onto teachers' already-enormous workload is unnecessary, but also worryingly reminiscent of Chris Woodhead's still-going blather about 'most teachers' being sub-par. I would say plenty of mechanism exists for teachers who are struggling, and the focus should be on supporting them rather than forcing them out of the profession. Not even the dreaded OFSTED can do that.

Still, the rest of the proposals don't sound anything like as bad as what Mr Gove would do if he had the chance. I don't know how many teachers I'm speaking for when I say to him and the rest of the teenager-haters that I don't want to create an environment where 30 heads look at me to wrestle a student to the ground if he gets out of his seat, or search their bags at the beginning and end of the day; I want to teach them.. I also don't want to force parents to agree to school contracts. (If their agreement is 'forced', it's not a 'contract' anyway.) The more we hear from them, the more the Tories' absence of a clue pales into insignificance against Labour's domestic policy missteps.

Can we please get rid of this government before they fuck this country up even further?

What Balls needs to answer is: Has any Labour "initiative" actually borne any fruit? And be honest now!

I'm an NQT finishing my first year of teaching in the UK. Non-stop government meddling has made this profession a joke. MOT? You mean after a three year degree, a one year PGCE certificate and an NQT year? .
I work a 10-11 hour day (usually have 10-15 minutes for lunch). I teach in a small, crowded classroom with 32 childen, at least half a dozen of whom have pretty severe behavioural and/or emotional and/or academic issues (thanks to "inclusion"). Add to that incessant distrust and sneering from the public and politicians, and it's a great deal for bang on 20,000 grand a year.
Good luck Government on finding these new brainy, thick-skinned, super teachers (also known as mugs). I'm out of here. Teaching is much more enjoyable, manageable, and rewarding abroad.

I have never ever known what all this teaching thing is all about, to be quite blunt, when people as qualified as I have never been able to get into the profession through one excuse after another, yet there are plenty of people without teaching credentials of any kind in the private sector, where all these Cabinet Ministers emanate from.

I would like to know when they are going to licence the mental health problems who inhabit the Palace of Varieties; whose going to deal with them? They need to be certified, let alone licensed.

Humbug.

I share the general view of commentators on this article that these latest proposals are just another load of Balls, in more senses than one. I should like, however, to draw attention to one aspect which others have not addressed. While I approve of one-to-one tuition for those pupils who fail to reach a minimum standard, I cannot help worrying about the fate of those at the other end of the spectrum. A friend of mine has a very bright 11-year-old child who has been fortunate enough to attend two day schools organised under the auspices of the government's Gifted and Talented programme. He found it a very enjoyable and rewarding experience, but this is two days out of 200 in the school year. For much of the rest of the time he is bored stiff at the slow pace of his normal classes and, to cap it all, his parents have had to fork out £25 for each of the day schools. I gather that just over 14% of those rated as the brightest at 11 by their primary schools fail to achieve the magic target of five 'good' GCSEs. This is a disgraceful waste of talent which the country cannot afford and if the least able deserve free one-to-one tuition, so do the most able, whether the 'anti-elitist' brigade like it or not.

Can we have the same rules for Government Ministers?

In the USA if the President wants to appoint someone as a Secretary for a Government Department then they have to go before Congress and satisfy Congress that they are capable of carrying out the job.

I don't think Frank Dobson would ever have become Minister of Heath if his suitability and credentials were ever scrutinized.

bedmiandrew - hat off to you sir!!

erm, what about MOT's for the people who give them places on their courses? some of the people who have become teachers probably should never had the chance. However, some are probably now making a good go of it. After five years teaching I am damn sure that most people would be fairly decent teachers anyway.

The government needs to take a back seat and let headmasters and teachers sort things out. Nobody knows their school and their children as well as they do.

But, the government can not help but interfere and reform, reform, reform! Britain is rapidly becoming a fascist/psuedo-socialist State. I am mad as hell and i can not take it anymore!!!

Democracy in the UK is a complete joke. the best thing i could get out of the UK is a pgce and then immediately leave!
To think, I used to be proud of my country but right now its like the biggest farce i know. Rule Brittania is a sick joke on the masses, singing "we shall never be slaves" HA! thats a damn good joke!

We are looked at as nothing but Serfs living on our Masters land, and thats what we are becoming, the British are becoming spineless, spiteful people and will sooner turn on each other than stand up against authoritarian rule! thats a fact.

What a great idea... Perhaps we could have something similar for governments, where if they don't perform after five years, we have an election so we can vote them out of power?

Wait, we already have that, but Gordon Brown won't call an election because he knows Labour will lose. In fact, I seem to recall him telling us that this would be a 'disaster for the country', which is rather ironic considering the disaster of a government that he presides over.

Well, here's an idea for any Labour bigwigs out there. Why don't you stop spending our money on socialist white elephant projects that are doomed to failure from inception, and call a general election so we can decide for ourselves whether we like you playing loose and free with our cash.

About time. But, it should be an independent assessment!