 I welcome everyone to the 14th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2017. Can I ask those not-you-boys over there to behave themselves? Can you please remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting? The first item of business is a decision on whether to take a number of items of business in private. Firstly, is everyone content that items 3 and 4 of this meeting is in private? Secondly, do members agree to review evidence on workforce planning in private at future meetings? Once again, thank you. The second item of business is our first evidence session as part of the committee's inquiry into workforce planning in Scotland schools. The committee is starting with a session with trainee teachers, followed by qualified teachers, to provide contacts for its inquiry. Can I welcome the first panel, which is trainee teachers and one previous trainee teacher? Before we begin, I thank you for taking the time to respond to the committee's request for views through its questionnaire and for agreeing to give evidence. This is very much an information-gathering session to inform the committee's scrutiny, and we appreciate your sharing personal experience, so please only ask questions that you are comfortable responding to. Do not feel that you have to answer anything that you do not want to. In addition, given the number of people we are hearing from today and the size of this committee, members will try to ask questions of specific attendees where possible, so you do not have to answer every question, especially if someone else covers your point. You also have the option of sending written comments after your session if there is anything that you do not get a chance to convey today. That said, can I now welcome Hala Price, trainee teacher, Kimberly Miller Drummond, previous trainee teacher, Mark Melrose, trainee teacher, Willam McLeod, trainee teacher and Caris Boyle, trainee teacher. As a standard, I will kick off with the first question, which is a quite simple question, which is asking about your motivations for becoming a teacher in the first place. Can I ask who would like to start? Thank you, Hala. My motivations for becoming a teacher have been mainly the fact that, through teaching you have this amazing opportunity to be a positive influence in children's lives. I work for children all the way through my own education in the younger years in primary school, helping out with various clubs and in the younger classes. I just loved it and that feeling with this passion that you can make a difference and you can be this positive influence in so many people's lives. Thank you. Kimberly, I will come back to you, Kimberly, later on. It seems to be fair. Probably the key motivation for me was being able to impact children in a first place. I was trained in Stirling. I should be clear about that. I went to Stirling in 2001. I do not know whether she is still calling it an area of deprivation, but at the time that is what it was. I just felt that the impact that I could have on some of the children there would influence them to get themselves out of that pattern of unemployment, leaving school and not doing anything. That was the main motivation. I showed them that you can change things and I came from a background similar to that. That is great. Thank you very much, Mark. On similar lines, we are coming from an industrial background myself. Nine years as an engineer for a defence company, I found that job stability was another key factor for me to consider. I agree that job stability was a huge way up there. I had already worked in a school for a number of years as a technician and I was assisting pupils in various ways. I felt that I could do more. I already had a degree, so becoming a teacher is a natural career progression for myself as well. Thank you very much. Finally, Gareth? It might sound kind of cliche, but I really wanted to be there for the light bulb moment. When a child has been struggling, it is just like they get it. I remember that I was that child sometimes in primary school, especially when it came to things like maths and things like that. I wanted to be there for the light bulb moment and for the child to remember. Oh, it was Miss Boyle who taught me that. Oh, so really, it's all about getting a name in light, so... Be remembered. That's great. I mean, they all seem to have similar motivations for doing it, but you're all coming from different places, really, so that's really interesting. Okay, we are going to start with some questions with Ruth. Yes, convener, before I ask my question, I need to declare an interest in that my child school is represented in the second panel, so I will be remaining quiet for the second panel, but good morning to all of you. Thinking about your motivation to become teachers, some of the evidence that we've received reveals that there's a sort of a bit of discomfort around how teachers are thought of. I'd be interested to hear your reflections on how ways politicians contribute to that, how the debates and conversations we have about education and how education is in Scotland influence that and influence how you feel about teaching as a profession. Thank you. Does anybody wish to lead off on this one? Mark? So, one part that I'd say generally teachers are saying has been quite moany. My wife, myself, says about you only ever hear about teachers complaining. I haven't gone into teaching. I have seen that myself as well, but I can't say I disagree. The reason is that it's just constant changes these days, and that's obviously coming from the Government. We've changed to the CFE, to national qualifications, which the feeling on the ground was that standard grades weren't broken. Why were they changed? That's merely needed updated. For me, I think that it's this attitude that people have towards teachers stemming from the constant changes that are coming from Parliament. Does anybody else have a comment to make on that? I found that there's been quite a lot of stigma about the perceived intelligence of teachers. It might experience that teaching is not held as a profession where you're considered to be. If you're a teacher, you're not held off in school as someone who's going to get the best grades. I personally was discouraged in school by my own teachers from applying to be a primary school teacher. They suggested that I would do a degree first followed by the one-year conversion. There is definitely the stigma that teachers are not as intelligent as other members of society, which to me felt like a real barrier to going into it if I wasn't going to be given as much respect as other professions might be. I suppose that the question back to Mark is, do you feel that what we need is a period of stability now to let teachers start with teaching? Yes. As a technology teacher as well, we've recently just been handed updated benchmarks as opposed to the significant aspects of learning, which again, just as the SQA are changing national courses and the assignments, technology teachers are finding themselves having to deal with those new benchmarks for the broad general education as well. I definitely think that that's the feeling from the schools that I'm getting as well, is that a period of stability would be really welcome. I understand exactly where Mark is coming from and I agree with him about a period of stability being necessary with regards to the professionalism aspect. I wouldn't like to be too negative. I do believe that teachers are viewed as professionals. I know that there are issues with the SQA and Education Scotland who may not be treating them as professionals. On the whole, the public perspective is very much that teachers are professionals. Can I just come in on that point? You say that you don't think that SQA and Education Scotland are treating them as professionals. Would you like to expand on that? In regards to the fact that the kind of documents that are produced, perhaps, are not documents that you would send fellow professionals, I think that that is quite a common theme. In the placement schools that I have been in, the documents that I have seen from these would not reflect professional communications between equal partners. That is very interesting. We will move on to the teacher training. We have got quite a number of people who would like to ask questions on teacher training. Liz, would you like to start us? Yes, thank you. If I just go back to my own teacher training many, many years ago, I felt very strongly that the theoretical aspect was not particularly helpful, whereas I see my own nodding to that. The classroom placements were extremely helpful. You found out whether you could cope as being a teacher and what you could do well, what you could perhaps not do so well. Can I just ask you about these two aspects of teacher training? Do you feel that the placements in schools are working and that those people who are looking after you in schools, particularly A, have sufficient time to look after you properly and B, are giving you all the right advice? On the other side, do you feel that what is happening on this theoretical aspect is good enough or you would like to see some changes in that? It is refreshing to hear that your experiences match my own perfectly with regards to the placements being the real benefit of the teacher training year. They are, by far, the highlight. I have only been in two separate schools. One is a large school and one is a small school. The smaller school, naturally, there was enough staff in there that my mentor could spend a significant amount of time with me. I benefited hugely from that. The larger school, I can only say positive things about them, but the one negative thing would be that my mentor was very busy, head of department. He could not spend the time with me. The smaller school is good. Even though I am not saying anything negative at all about him, he tried his best. With regards to the university side of things, very little of what we actually work on within the university seems to have any relevance to what happens in the classroom. For example, next to nothing on classroom behaviour management would be looked at in the university. Can you just expand on some of the other aspects of the university and or college training? Personally, I think that you are quite right to flag up this issue about classroom management. There is not within this evidence quite a few people who are making the point that they are not very sure about additional support training. They feel that the amount of time that is spent on learning how to teach literacy is not sufficient. Do you have any other comments on things that we could do better within the actual theoretical aspects of the teacher training? I think that the problem that we have with the university that I am currently attending, the likes of literacy, there would be a single week where we focus on literacy, that would be it one week, that would be the focus for that week. With the likes of the additional support needs, I believe that within my university again that was covered very well, that was a few weeks' focus again, and we had a very good lecture deliver that. I think that it helped that that lecture was in the same physical room as ourselves, which is not always the case. I think that we are here at this stage because I know that Roger has got a number of questions around about that, he would like to ask. Sorry for interrupting, but we'll jump at it. No, that's fine if anyone else wants to take the call. Okay, Karis? I only had one school base placement and I was actually really lucky with mine because my classroom teacher, she gave me so much help, and then the deputy head teacher as well, she was really involved in my placement, and I thought it was a really nice thing that the school was so inclusive. With regards to university, our workshops in the second semester were really practical and they gave us lesson ideas, which I thought was also really helpful. Again, things like behaviour management and classroom management, we weren't taught it that much, but I guess it's a thing that you can't really learn it until you see it as well. I was really lucky with my classroom, behaviour management really wasn't an issue. There's a couple of kids, but not many. Additional support needs, I know that we said we'd talk about it later, but not really taught that much at university. Can I clarify one thing just to finish on? William, you mentioned that there was just one week where you were asked to look at the literacy issue. Do you mean just one week in the whole training aspect? Yes, so far. The way the university runs it is that each week there is a focus on a given area. So, yes. To the best of my recollection, it was a single week for literacy. Did you feel that was sufficient? I think literacy perhaps I would have less of an issue with because literacy is being worked on throughout when we're doing essays etc. I would probably have more issues with numeracy because there is less chance for the university lecturers to see that we're numerate throughout. You can very quickly tell if somebody's literate when you've read a couple of essays of theirs, but numeracy is a different thing. I would maybe focus more on my own subject on the numeracy side of things, but I think going back to the basics on these would be helpful. Thank you very much. Cymru, you wanted to come in. To break it down, a uni course is generally 18 weeks theory based and 18 weeks enclasement. Out of those 18 weeks there are some holidays, so you're not sort of there all the time. One week is quite a lot of time from the point of view of the whole week being focused on one issue. You don't just have one class or one lecture on it, you have various different classes. At the uni, I was split into policies and perspectives, was one, and principles and practice was the other. You also had your subject-based classes and every single one of those lectures and seminars focused on that particular week's issue. It actually has quite a lot of time if it's after a week that's given to the issue. How about you? The structure of the bied, which I understood is no longer being run, but through the fourth year of my final year, there were options courses, which were invaluable. They were fantastic, and you got to choose two, so there were additional support needs outdoor learning, modern languages, which meant that I had a fantastic experience of cognitive and social and emotional development education and modern languages, but there are aspects of teaching such as outdoor learning, additional support needs, because I didn't select those as my first options. I have had no experience in those courses, which are hugely valuable. The majority of the people on the bied course are coming out having not experienced. Thank you very much. Daniel, you wanted to come in. Some of the things I was wanting to talk about have been touched on, but before I say anything else, let me just do the slightly glib politicians thing. Regardless of what debates happen in this place, I think that everyone in the teaching profession should be under no illusions about how important we all view your profession and just how fundamental it is to know just education about the whole of the country. My question is this. I'd just really be interested to know how, especially in the... We've talked a bit about secondary education, but in primary education, those literacy and numeracy, how well-covered do you think those aspects are for primary teacher training? I guess that would be halla, would be best place. I think that literacy, what we got taught in first year, the fundamentals of reading and writing, and how important they are, was very valuable. What we were taught then was just then reiterated, so I was taught for the first few years that reading is very good for children, it makes them creative, which was very useful in first year, but for that to then be reinforced for another two years was unnecessary. Having experience of the schemes, such as rewriting and the big writing ventures, having some sort of input into how these schemes work and how they're beneficial would have been more valuable. In terms of numeracy, we spent a lot of time going over ideas of activities that we could do. However, there wasn't enough focus on the teachers themselves having the skills to teach numeracy other than a maths audit which we completed ourselves in the second year, which did very little in all honesty to improve our own mathematical knowledge and understanding. I do not believe that everyone graduating from Murray House this year has the sufficient skills in numeracy to be able to teach it to 11-year-olds at a reasonable standard. To paraphrase, there's a lot of focus on the importance of these things, but not necessarily about the practical techniques about how to deliver it. Is that right? Yeah, that would be right. Is that something that other members of the panel would reflect and agree with? Can I just pick up on some comments that Mark Scott made? You touched on the national qualifications and also BGE. One of the things that got raised in an informal session that we had is that there are some challenges both with composite classes teaching national four or five together, indeed sometimes higher as well, and also sometimes issues with S3 just because, in terms of filling up the space, are those the sorts of issues that you have found? Are there other issues that you are referring to when you were highlighting BGE and national qualifications? I think that, purely on a BGE level, the changes that we have had to face to the benchmarks recently, but within technology, certainly, as we improved from a technology point of view, we have six separate subjects that we have to cover. Broad general education does not work for technologies. We cannot cover sufficient course knowledge to remove kids on to a national level. So that's why some schools you see will start covering their nationals in third year. Some of them will try and stick to the system, if you will, and do it in fourth year. These kids are just doing it over one year, getting their disadvantaged. They are not getting the same education, specific education to their course as anyone else is. In terms of now having composite classes, with the removal of the units from national 5 and the unit assignments, it's going to become very difficult. Speaking purely at the school that I'm at placement just now, they are finding it hard, and they feel like they are letting kids down because you have to make a call very early on whether or not a child will be national 4, in which case you have to cover the added value unit as well as the other units, or national 5. What do you do if a kid is doing fine at national 5, gets to the end and then fails it? With the old system, you had the fallback of national 5, and within standard grade, you had the fallback of credit general, general foundation. It's going to end up failing pupils of the system now for me. I'm just wondering, it's a final question, just if any other subject areas would reflect those sorts of insights from any of the other panel members. Technical as well. I can agree fully with what Mark is saying, but I can't add anything to what he's already said. Squeeze. It's very helpful. Thank you. I just want to come back to how I was saying about the numeracy. Just from my own information, the qualifications for entry into the course, in terms of what you have to have, in terms of proving that you are numerate, what's expected of you? Higher maths of standard? No. I needed to have a two at standard grade maths, or you could have, I think it was intermediate two, an intermediate two, but intermediate two can be carried out over the course of four years, if needs be. It can be a very long process, which if it takes four years to get your intermediate two maths, are you in the best position to be able to teach children? Or is it an understanding to be able to convey? Focus on getting more STEM subjects into primary and teachers having the confidence to be teaching like science, whatever. What, in terms of qualifications, is expected of you there before you get entry into the course? Nothing. I didn't have any. The only requirements that you need were C at higher English and a two at credit maths. When you're actually undertaking your course, is there any provision for you to be picking up those science subjects as you go along? No. Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Calvish? Thank you, Calvish. One of our class 1 specific and one general question. The general question is following on from Liz Smith's line of questioning. Do you think the balance of what you are learning as teachers in our teaching colleges is right between practice and theory? Where would you change it? Maybe the other way of asking that question is, where would you change it? Where would you offer us some advice about how you might change that? I would increase the actual placement time in schools. I would increase it significantly. In addition, I would add variety. I've only been in two placement schools. One of which I've worked in for years. Effectively, I've only experienced one other school. How would you tackle that point that you made earlier on, Mr McLeod, about the fact that you're the principal teacher who was mentoring you in that big school that simply didn't have the time to give to you? I would say if there was some way that that could be formalised that his timetable would be amended and somehow time would be fit. I think that there is a potential issue there and that in some previous years some Gallic funding was bound to pay for teacher time to assist mentoring students. I think that it could be done that way. Can you give me some sense of the balance at the moment between placements in schools and the theory of the courses? How many weeks per year do you spend in schools as opposed to in the classroom? My current split is 50-50. It's a 36-week course, as McLeod was saying. We're 18 weeks within the schools and 18 weeks within university. For me, as Willie said, you do most of your learning on the job as a teacher. It's all fine getting the theory poured into you but that is not getting me prepared to go into a classroom to teach for well-technology, it's 20 pupils. We need more time spent subject-specific as opposed to general teaching theories. I would say that the make-up of every course is very different, so perhaps more consistency is needed. For example, with the four-year course, I had a five-week placement in first and second year followed by a ten-week placement in third year and 12 weeks this year. Whereas there are other students I know who did not experience any time in school on different courses at different universities until their third year when they took a whole year within a school. From having spoken to class teachers, I don't know if this is replicated across the whole of Scotland, but the people I have spoken to, the class teachers, said that having a student who had never experienced a placement in school to be there for a whole year was quite difficult to fit them in. Your colleagues, it varies from university to university? Yes, it varies from university to university. To experience the balance was really good to have that build-up of a smaller placement. If you are only doing it in a year, it is obviously impossible to have that build-up. You wanted to come in? In terms of theory, you start off university with a theory bloc and a lot of people on my course in particular were saying that they couldn't relate the theory at all, until they went on placement. It may be a week or two introduction session in uni, then maybe a three-week placement where you are just observing, getting to know things, and you can actually see some of that theory and practice before going in and getting to the bones of the theory might work better. Is it just now that you are likely to have a seismal bloc of theory before you have a placement? Yes. And you are suggesting that you break that up somewhat? Yes. An earlier placement would be a benefit to understanding some of the theory. Okay. I weigh the timber leg in earlier placement. In first year we had a six-week placement, but it was in second semester. I know from speaking to people on my course that first semester it was more we did psychology, sociology and philosophy of education, and it almost put some people off in the classroom. It is not necessarily things that you can apply, especially philosophy. I cannot even remember things like Plato's cave. Is that what it is? It is important to know, but it is not something that I taught in the classroom and it is not something that I applied in the classroom when I got to my placement, and it did almost discourage people to leave. So... I am upset, by the way. Can I ask one other specific question, if I may? A lot of focus is on online security for children at schools, young people at schools, and some concerns about how much my kids are absolutely standing on this, using their mobile phones all the time. Again, in your training, any focus or options or particular courses about both online security or just the use of digital medium now in a way that is completely different, I suspect, from earlier in life, shall we say, when I went to school, which was obviously a long time ago. We didn't even have computers then. Something that we were taught really early on was about professionalism online. I guess that is really important. When I went on to my placement, I actually did a lesson on internet safety and one of the pupils had said to me, oh, you should never add a teacher on Facebook. I was like, well, of course you shouldn't. We have lives outside of school and we don't care. So it was a bit ironic. My Facebook was really private because I knew it had to be, which was fine, but I think a lot of teachers do need to keep in mind that you have to be professional in your normal life as well, like life outside of school. What about children? I take very much the point about you as a teacher, but what about the children you will teach? Have you had discussions all gone? Not really at university. No. I decided to do my internet safety lesson because I heard the kids in my class talking about things like Snapchat, but none of them are old enough for Snapchat. Exactly. I'd like to add to that that in four years I've now completed my training and I've had a few talks about professionalism, about my own professionalism online and I have had no provision for any form of ICT, which is alarming. There's been no specific training delivered through the PDDE on internet safety lessons. We expect you teachers to go into classroom and teach kids all of whom are sitting with their smartphones without having had any discussion. OK. Can we just clarify what you said there about no provision for ICT? Are you saying just within the context of teaching children about it or no provision whatsoever? OK. Thank you, Ross. Has been mentioned previously that I'd like to talk about additional support needs and start off with a general question about it. Do you feel that the courses that you're on either have already or will equip you to support young people with additional support needs bearing in mind that we've got one in four children in schools in Scotland with identified additional support needs but also the challenge for teachers to have a role in flagging up where a support need might be there and need identified? Do you feel equipped and supported to do that? I already covered that personally so I personally feel that that aspect was delivered well through my university. I'd say that not at all at Warriehouse for myself. I went into my first school and was given a class with a young boy with autism, quite severe autism, for how to deal with it. I'd suggest that a lack of support within the schools as well means that many teachers that are out there teaching just now do not feel prepared to deal with the more severe cases of ASN. Kimberly? From a work perspective, I'm quite well equipped to deal with ASN but on a university course level, we did a couple of weeks on inclusion, we were taught the medical model and the social model of disability, we had all these wonderful theorists thrown at us but no contextualisation and no specific training in autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, nothing, absolutely nothing. We were sort of told, yes, you'll probably come across two, three children in your class at any given time that have got maybe an additional support need but they just don't give you unless you elect to study as a professional specialisation either autism, ASN, dyslexia, something like that, then it's not included in the course, you have to choose to do it. Can I ask why is the disparity between those responses? William seems to think that it's good and both Mark and Kimberlay are saying it's not. We are studying at different universities. That's why I'm asking. I think as well that both Mark and I are studying PGDE and is it are you doing PGDE? Okay. I think that the university has given me a really good course on social inclusion and on barriers to learning. However, there are so many specific additional support needs and each child is completely different and needs their own. You can't learn how to support everyone with the same additional support need because each child is different. I believe that whilst the university has done a good job on promoting inclusion and how to have a general understanding of the additional support needs, the support needs to come within school and be child specific. You mentioned something interesting earlier about it being an optional course in your fourth year you chose two optional courses. Does that mean that most people then going through your course will simply not have had that level of opportunity specifically for ASN because it simply wasn't something they chose in their final year? Yeah, that's correct. However, again, they've got a slightly more understanding of it and a slightly more understanding of how to support the child but again, you go into school and each child has completely different needs and you need support within the school as opposed to fixing it in university because it can't be taught generally. Is there an expectation that you will have CPD opportunities on this once you're in full-time teaching? For those of you who believe that it's not being adequate in your initial education, are you do you expect that there will be that opportunity? I've already experienced that at my first placement. We had an in-service day and we had training on autism. I do believe that it will be covered more once we actually become qualified teachers. Anybody else? Okay, thank you. Is that you, Ross? Daniel, you seem to want to come in very briefly. Just given the prevalence of especially dyslexia, do you not think can you conceive of ever a teaching class where you don't have at least one child that has dyslexia and do you think, no? That might be sensible just to have as an absolute bare minimum on ASN, yeah? A lot of children in the schools will come with a file, a pupil support file that says difficulties of a dyslexic nature but they don't have an official diagnosis of dyslexia. That's very, very common now in schools that maybe five or six children in one class will have difficulties of that nature without a diagnosis. For that clear, we're moving on to a different subject now. Thank you, convener. Can I just say, as a start-off, thank you very much for the information that you've provided us this morning. It's been really interesting and I'm sure I'm speaking at the rest of the committee because we really do value your input into this inquiry. I just want to look at as I guess a step further from some of the information that you've given us. Are there any opportunities for you to feed into the university about your experience of the course, about what you feel hasn't been covered and what you feel should be added into your experience as a teacher or a trainee teacher at the one-year course or a four-year course level? There's a very good focus with the University of Edinburgh class representatives going forward to committees and meetings with the course organisers. However, as I've been studying on the last year of the BAD, there's no more BAD, so our feedback has been essentially for the sake of it. I've been a class rep in every single year and every single year there has been no changes and no difference made based on our feedback. Or at least no visible changes. You meet the feedback, do you get any feedback on the feedback that you've given? Do you find out if anything that you've said has been listened to in any way? No, it's just that you'll make comment and... We'll go to a meeting and it will be received and they'll listen to it and they'll go oh yes, that's very interesting, that's a good point. But nothing for that. There's no follow-up. Going to meetings, is that the only way that you are encouraged to provide feedback to the University? There are other options and if you have a specific problem there are various routes you can go down to contact. But the general feedback for each class, for every single class in every single course across the University has a class rep and everyone from that class is invited to give feedback and comments to the class rep and about twice this semester you will get an opportunity to meet with the course organisers and share that feedback. Is that other people's experience too? Dundee and I would say it's completely different. At the end of every semester we do an evaluation and I've got a friend who's in the year above me and if he, his year have said something specific we changed, we always see the change. For example, we had an assignment last semester and it was on maths and science and the year before it was really kind of vague. It wasn't an easy assignment for them to do, which they all commented on said it was quite difficult and when we got it it was really specific like they told us exactly what we could write in our essay. And then with regards to placement as well the third years this year believed that the placement wasn't great timing so it means that our placement is going to be at a different time. Other people's negative experiences in the years before, benefits the year before, the year after. I would like to just agree with that. I'm at a different university but last week we were sent an online feedback form it can be anonymous to feedback our experiences on our university experience and before I started this last placement I had quite a long question and answer session regarding feedback with one of the course leaders which was very helpful she had already fed back her proposed changes and every one of them we agreed with would be a sensible change and we made extra suggestions so the university has been open and ready to receive feedback. Coming from a meeting with the lead tutor was a dismissive students always ask for that same sort of idea and they find that they were getting that quite a lot. One of the other interesting changes that has been talked about in my house is changing the postgraduate course to a two year course so rather than a one year postgraduate course it would be two years with no additional time within the school so it would all be university based and just having taken a quick poll from my cohort the agreement was that not a single person would apply to that course because who can afford two years without a wage or without any sort of repayment at all so that for me would be a big concern for looking at the future of Muddy House. Thank you for that could I just ask then and it's really valuable to hear what your different experiences have been feeding back into the universities and your experience being when you've been at schools has there been an opportunity for you there to feedback on the placement the quality of the placement how useful it was whether you felt supported we've heard a little bit of some of your experiences but I guess it's about that feedback and that learning for the schools and making life perhaps easier for other trainee teachers when they go into those establishments so I've had nothing formal with my school but they've been more than willing to take on little problems with this you could have maybe looked at helping with this a little bit more and the schools generally are more the schools have to sign up to be a placement so they're willing to take on your advice of you could change whatever it is and isn't changed I found that teachers are generally quite interested to hear your feedback that way and do you know if they take on board that feedback? I don't personally know if they go on I know other students do go to those schools but we've never really got into talking about the negativity of if they've changed certain aspects because I suppose what I'm hearing today is you're saying that the most valuable part of your training is being in school placement so that needs to be high quality that needs to be a positive experience if you're going to go on and replicate those skills that you learn there placement experience varies from department to department in the school I went to an infrastructure school and had a fantastic placement with really supportive staff the whole staff in the department were very supportive however three other girls on placement were in another department and they had a terrible thing they didn't they weren't encouraged by their mentor to speak up to ask for work to ask for feedback from staff things like that where I was my mentor was part-time and I didn't actually meet her till the third day that I was there but the PT made herself available when the mentor wasn't so it can, it can vary I was English they were modern studies and histories so it can vary department to department within the school okay Gillian, you wanted to come in for the brief supplementary for my own experience I haven't done a teaching qualification and other people in my family I know that at the end of your placement the crit is nods of recognition an experience in itself and I'd just like to ask you what your feelings are and how useful the crit process is and how much you get out of that because it maybe falls on from Claire's questioning the feedbacks there's actually that official crit that comes from your tutor and the school how useful is that as you progress forward it's fantastic I'll take Hela first and then I'll go to Cara that's okay, Cara is sorry I think it's fantastically useful particularly because your tutor doesn't come in at the end of your placement so if there are any areas of concern there's a flagged up and you've then got the rest of your placement and get them to the satisfactory rate my only suggestion would be and this has come not just from me but from my peers and everyone else within the final year of the education cohort that the possibility of grading placement might be might be quite a good one because basically what determines how good you are as a teacher is how good you are at writing an essay and all you have to do is go to a placement school and either pass or fail whereas surely that should be the true recognition of how good you are at teaching Cara, you wanted to say something in our six week placement we had a formative crit and a summative crit so in our formative one we were told where we could improve and I don't know if you guys have the dreaded folders we hid them so she would look at that while you were teaching exactly what you needed to do for your summative and we were assessed against the SPRs which I thought was quite good as well which the tutor would fill in and your classroom teacher because your classroom teacher would obviously see you more than your university tutor would okay okay, thanks very much sorry, do you want just interested in your experience of your placements I'm reflecting back when a million years ago my teacher trained the most important thing was to make sure that the urn didn't burn out we were going to keep in with the rest of the staff but my understanding is that it's much more formalised and my very first teaching experience was to go in to be told the teacher was supposed to be sporting he was off and I would just take the classes and I wonder whether because it has been more formalised have you got an expectation when you go on your placement how much time you'll be observing how much time you'll ask what expectations the school might have of you and what expectations you have of them and how explicit is that certainly at Murray House each mentor is handed a pack at the start and that outlines the time that you should be spending teaching the number of periods a week it also explicitly states that you should not be treating there's a cover teacher although that cancelling has happened but in a would you mind taking this class there will be a cover teacher with you and they're willing for you to say no what's going on with the placement system is the actual allocation of placements I've found that on two of the occasions that I've been in placement I've been told on the Thursday and then the Wednesday prior to starting on the Monday this does not give me the chance and these are both weeks that we've had assignments during on the Friday so you can imagine the stress that this adds to teachers who maybe can't they just can't get into the schools in time so it's always nice to get into your school beforehand meet the teachers sort out your timetable so you know what to expect when you go in on the Monday on my second placement I wasn't even able to go and visit my school beforehand and I think compared to my other two placements it took me a lot longer to get up and running within the department it ended up taking about four days for us to finalise my actual timetable which is effectively a week wasted can I ask on the explanation of why that happened, did the school know you were coming on that particular reason on my second placement I was shunting about from pillar to post I was told I'd be going to four different schools over the time before finally settling on the Thursday to go down to the school that I went down to the school also were only told on the Thursday that was when it was all confirmed and found out but I believe that my house I don't know how the rest of the university uses the general teaching council they have a system which they pay to use and which for me the main stakeholder on this should be the student teacher to make sure that the student teacher gets up to this good start to the experience it is not serving or in my opinion and within speaking to from a couple of other people from my house it is not serving student teachers well at all you're getting student teachers who are placed a couple of hour drive away from their placement Ember, Unia then having to source accommodation or possibly rental car for who you are this is all just adding to additional stress that student teachers don't need during this six week, five week placement that we have in schools and there's no reimbursement for you in terms of cost to you to I mean this is a big change I think I mean my lifetime but if you're travelling and notice it's a 90 minute commute which seems quite a lot on Friday for something on Monday just logistically that would be a challenge but there's not reimbursement or expenses or anything Money house do do extra reimbursement for expenses so there's my large or if you can get that within 90 minutes you will get the public transport money back so there is but it's all waiting until the end you can't put in advanced expenses claims so I know of students in my technology class who have ended up being almost in debt because they've spent all this money on transport which they don't have because we're going to be here without any money coming in and then at the end you're getting this big lump sum but it could be done with being paid up front or on a sort of staged basis as you're actually using it Morgan I would like to add I can relate to what Mark is saying I can unfortunately go one better although my I knew where my placement schools were going to be there were others on my course the first day of placement they were in college because they had not been told I can also relate stories of student teachers who didn't have their driving licence who had a they could still attend a good number of schools but this didn't seem to be taken into consideration and when you live in a rural area as I do then ensuring that suitable students get the opportunity to go to schools that they can actually reach should be critical I think secondary schools rural secondary schools I live in the Isle of Lewis I ended up going to Alipwll and the costs and the time involved there is no official method for students at UHI to claim back any travel expenses nothing nothing for accommodation nothing for travel okay Kimberlake Mates it will be you the difference between travelling to uni and the extra direct courses to travel to the school and that again is done at the end of placement nothing upfront I think there is something that we would want to maybe be asking other folk it does feel to me that it's just simply an administrative thing I can't understand why it's so complex and unhelpful in terms of your professional development you're not even able to plan ahead and the school's not able to plan ahead is a problem for both of you Thank you Can I just ask one supplementary mark did you have to arrange the placement with the GTS I mean in terms of this shambles of a situation that you've all described did you have to do that directly with the GTS or who actually did the practicalities or did not do the practicalities of this exercise so Murray House has an administrator who purely deals with the placement system but from what we've been told she has very little input that she's almost just there to needle the GTC who are the ones that actually run the system so there doesn't seem to be a great deal like you say it's pretty much an administrative system that I don't understand why it can be... It's actually aware of this and that's one of the points where he's trying to get the GTS and the universities to get some not what has together and get that sorted because it just seems completely utterly ludicrous Right, okay Ross Thank you very much In the region that I that I represent which is the northeast of Scotland we are still struggling to recruit and retain teachers so in Aberdeen alone we still have over 200 vacancies in primary and secondary school which is significant but we've been struggling to recruit people in to fill them, particularly students or those who are looking for permanent places despite putting in financial incentive as well to say you know we can give you an upfront sum if you take on the rule so when you're studying and you're looking to your permanent placement what are the barriers to taking up a permanent placement what would be the barriers for coming up to the northeast as well so we've struggled to recruit from the central I think I think that the biggest barrier is the fact that the people who are likely to be the stabilist are those who have already experienced the corporate world and they want to settle down you want to be a teacher because you like working with kids you like the holidays and you like stability if you have not already decided to be a teacher young then you've probably found yourself with kids in a mortgage how can you take time out how can you lose a year of salary unless you have a partner who's willing to go out and work in which case then you've got huge childcare costs potentially how do you get into teaching you need to be paid for the PGDE year and I don't know if you're aware but I work for the Western Isles Council they're actually paying me to go through this year which is the only way that I could even begin to go through and likewise they've guaranteed we have probation within the local authority and employment after that I think when you have somebody who's thinking about becoming a teacher then it's a nice idea but 90% will take it no further because of the financial barriers Is that written about the cost of living as well the relationship obviously the salary you get but it still doesn't meet for example if you want to come up to I'll just say Aberdeen the cost of housing the cost of rent mortgage transport travel are these all considerations that you think put people off what are we talking about students going in for PGDE are you talking about you're looking for your permanent place you're looking for your school to settle and to work for permanent I think you need to focus beforehand because I think that the way the Western Isles Council is doing it is the way to go don't look for teachers look for people who can become teachers and pay them to go through that stage because there aren't the tech teachers out there there's no point in offering somebody a couple of thousand pounds to try and steal them away from someone else I think the principles of the the principles of reform there build the talent app look locally find people who already live there and put them through the PGDE as someone who just fills out along with the rest of my year the options courses for where we want to be next year the majority of people have chosen Edinburgh and the Lothians and either Falkirk or Fife because they're close to Edinburgh because we've studied in Edinburgh we've got this now, this network of friends and people that we know so to get up and move to the north-east of the Highlands to somewhere where they are in more need of teachers is quite a terrifying prospect when you've got this way of life that you know so I think for young people there would need to be some sort of we've done all our teaching placements in Edinburgh Edinburgh is all we know in terms of teaching but if there were some sort of council fair local authority came down and shared these are the benefits of living here this is some nice stuff and gave you an idea of what life might be like there could be some sort of oh actually that looks really nice I wouldn't mind living there but to go where in Scotland you want to go everyone goes we want to go in the place we know we want to stay in Edinburgh because it's what you know it's not so scary so do you think it's more about selling the plates? I don't know anyone who hasn't selected for their options courses go anywhere in Scotland box and the majority of people have put Edinburgh the mid east west Slythian and either Falkirk or Fife in the hope they will stay in Edinburgh and then some other people if they grew up in Glasgow have put Glasgow as an option if they grew up in Aberdeen might select Aberdeen as an option but it is about going with what you know I feel that I need to say Aberdeenshire is beautiful at this time of year we have humpback whales on our beaches we have mountain spirit access to skiing it really follows on from what Hela was saying there's a case around having fast tracked courses in order to so it comes back to the issues that Willie was saying about getting people who have maybe come from other sectors into teaching and recognising that have the family responsibilities but Hela has mentioned as well that there are incentives would housing maybe be supported housing for that first couple of years I know that some local authorities have offered that would that make a difference in terms of if there were some regions that actually some local authorities that maybe offered help with accommodation particularly in those high cost areas I'm just interested in what you think A lot of people on my course are my age, I'm 19 so the thought of having to get up and move so far away from your family might be quite nerve wracking for a lot of people I think that does have quite a big influence on where people might choose a lot of people would maybe choose to go home because they could live at home again and it wouldn't be as expensive as renting somewhere like Aberdeen Humpback whales I'll keep it in Hala just ignore her The teach first game sends you off to a school you don't get a choice and I've got a few friends who are going off to do that now in England they've been sent away to the schools at neither most so perhaps actually having the choice which we all like having the choice but maybe having the choice is actually not really viable if you need the teachers maybe you need to go for your probation year because it's a guaranteed job maybe we just need to be sent off somewhere and go this is where you are for a year it's a year you can enjoy it or make the best of it Funny and awful he says that to Hans will we then mark I think you see here the difference between the elders and the youngers I can fully understand your young year want to get out if you want to experience it but for anyone who's not in that position anyone who has children you have to take into account that you've lost half the workforce maybe even more I'd echo those points as well if I was given a placement a probationary year up in Aberdeen which I'm sure is lovely but from Portobello I've got beaches as well much better you're right I would end up probably dropping out and trying to find a job for me you've got to look at where you're recruiting teachers from who up in Aberdeen Shire is running postgraduate courses is running the BED courses you need to take teachers from that part of Scotland already potential teachers train them up there because if people come down to here if they're from Edinburgh there's not a great chance that they'll go up there need to be sourcing people from up there it's not really that far some of the issues around retention of teachers I'm looking particularly at a phrase here that I'm not terribly sure I'm understanding properly and how are you put a submission and you said the stigma of teachers not being not very academic was a demotivating factor what did you mean by that? what I mean by that is I mentioned earlier that I personally was discouraged from doing a BED from becoming a teacher because I got told you're too bright to be a teacher by my own teachers which is a bit ironic but there is this perception of particularly among my peers Edinburgh is a very academic university but the BED primary course isn't regarded as a real course you go and meet people and you go watch your studying I go primary teacher and they go oh right okay and there's this perception that because you're a primary teacher you can't engage with political conversations you can't engage with real world issues because it is entirely and probably with the makeup of a university where there is this very academic focus I can understand that it might be more of an imbalance but there isn't a teacher are not regarded by the majority of I don't know my equivalents at Edinburgh University by people older than me as it being as valuable a profession as it is there's not the recognition that teaching is actually an incredible influential and important position which I don't know where that's been lost but I don't think that teachers are valued enough I'm coming back and just to this is the last question you'll be delighted to know so if you have any comments you want to make in response to them this is an opportunity to do so certainly I have to say it's interesting hearing this among the general public that I mix with I've not heard this qualification before this concern before my teachers raised it and I do visit quite a lot of schools so I'm interested to see where this is coming from is it the perception of the university rather than maybe the public perhaps there is this sort of I think I found with people on the year below me who doing the MA where the Marry House is working in collaboration with other parts of the university there doesn't seem to be the collaboration the primary education part of your degree so it's primary education with history primary education with physics and the primary education part isn't really recognised by the other houses in the university perhaps it is just the young people and there is this sort of like stigma that if you go to a party and you go I'm a primary teacher everyone looks down on you a bit and that is something that I would say that of course there is definitely a feeling of detachment Marry House isn't part of Edinburgh University Marry House is Marry House and Edinburgh University is Edinburgh University there is that feeling just moving on from that there's a current theme here about pay maybe panel would like to comment on that about pay levels especially within the PGD I took coming from industry private industry I took a significant hit on my wages to move into teaching which I'll never recover unless I get up to department head level I don't think up at the higher end six years in it's too bad I think the lower scale you're really struggling the no money in the PGD year I think when you look at nurses get bursaries some sort of bursary scheme for teachers and and your probationary year as well it's about £22,000 to £23,000 that's not going to attract anybody that's people say the high flyers those that come out with their top degrees they're going to be headhunted by private companies they're going to be looked at by people who are able to offer them significantly more money than what the Scottish Government is offering and while I accept that as a public servant you will not earn as much I think you could probably look at something a little bit higher than what said us in it Does the rest of the panel agree that in front of us are people who are keen to be teachers and are clearly very intelligent people who could get a career elsewhere Yeah, a panel of five That's because that's the panel of five that we selected That's the only five people in Scotland that decided to become teachers You could have a look and see how many people are deciding on coming out with degrees that are quite easily changed into becoming teachers through postgrad or going on to the b-ed that are not choosing to go down that route I was turned down from teaching physics at Edinburgh University purely because I did not have any units for optics within my degree I had worked for seven years in the laser centre of excellence which was purely working with optics and I was turned down because it was not part of this degree You've got people coming out with degrees who are getting turned down for going into PGDE courses Yeah, we're now talking about two different things to be fair, we're now talking about two different things we're talking about Salaries we're now talking about some of the inconsistencies around the process and I couldn't agree with you more sorry Colin, I didn't mean to interrupt I was just going to ask if the rest of the panel agreed with what Mark is saying about it's the early years salary that's the real problem and that in the later period or after five or six years the Salaries are reasonably competitive Just to kind of broaden this a little bit still sticking with the pay you've already heard my views that you should be paid for the PGDE year I believe that you should have an introduction to teaching year before that where you're effectively working as a classroom assistant but at the same time you're familiarising yourself with the course content you might even be achieving qualifications so I believe that you should be paid as a year one as a classroom assistant type role year two as a PGDE aligning to probation I do not think that you should try going down the line of competing with industry because you can't industry will always pay more than teaching but industry does not have the benefits we've already talked about the holidays we've already talked about the opportunity to teach children you've already talked about the potential for a structured career progression stable employment these are things that are attracting us not high wages don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for lower wages but I am agreeing with Mark that the focus needs to be at the beginning because if you're in a position where you're middle age and you're going through PGDE somebody's supporting you so if you decide that the teaching is not for you you can walk because whoever's supporting you through the PGDE is they've clearly making enough money that you can go and do something else as well I kind of I don't disagree but I feel that we are actually quite lucky that we're graduating from university and going into a salary there are a lot of people that have done degrees and they can't find jobs after it so I believe that teaching is really good that we do get the salary from it from such a young age I think that as a young person about to start a paid year of work the starting salary, if you are young you have no family, you have no commitments particularly there are many people I know who are living at home next year as well I think that that starting salary is quite good and however what I'm actually concerned about is what happens when you reach the top of the pay bracket what then is there to motivate you to stay in the profession because as much as I love teaching for the rest of my life because there needs to be some opportunity for progression which is regarding promotion which came up with several of the submissions that came in what is the issue about promotion I'm not aware of any issues with promotion I've seen people move up through the skills on that note and I'll draw this session to a close can I sincerely thank you for that that was a very very interesting panel see you wouldn't get that in industry but seriously thank you very much for your time and we'll be taking great cognisance of what you were telling us today thank you very much we'll have a short break now until we change panels I welcome the next panel which is a group of teachers the committee wanted to hear a range of perspectives and so we're very pleased to have before us a wide range of experience including a Gallic medium teacher head teacher, supply teacher and teachers from primary and secondary school before we begin can I thank you for taking the time to respond to the committee's request for views through its questionnaire and for agreeing to give evidence as I said to the first panel the information gathering session to inform the committee's scrutiny and we appreciate your sharing personal experiences so please only answer questions you're comfortable responding to in addition given a number of people we are hearing from today and the size of this committee members will try to ask questions of specific attendees where possible so you don't have to answer every question and please given how many of you there are please don't try and answer every question especially if someone else has covered that point you also have the option to write in comments after your session if there's anything that you do not get a chance to convey today that said can I now welcome Emma Newton teacher as a Bill Marshall head teacher Judith Williams teacher Karen Vaughan teacher Angela Kelly teacher Linda Robertson teacher Dr Sean Harley teacher and Christor Pendergrast who's a teacher a standard I'll kick off with the first question which was the same first question that I asked that very impressive panel that we had before could you tell us what your motivation was for becoming a teacher who was just to start Judith children I always wanted to be a teacher from about the age of 7 and just working with children no day is the same, no hour is the same you're never looking at your watch to see when the coffee break is you're always looking at your watch to see how much more can I fit in before the coffee break comes so it's a great variety the children and your colleagues yes, okay thank you very much Sean I was brought educated by the Marys Brothers and at one point I was sort of falling with that line and I saw the sort of occasional element of that and while I didn't become a Marys Brothers myself eventually I pursued that line because I thought it was a worthwhile pathway to plan my life with and again it was all about teaching young people and inspiring them and helping them to develop well I was a crossroads in my life and I decided that there was actually more to life than making money and working for somebody that makes money so I decided that at that point that I might go and try something different so I am a newly qualified teacher all right, great stuff does anybody else want to comment I became a teacher because I loved the head teacher that I had when I was at primary school I went to a small primary school and I was very interested by what he did he was very enthusiastic about his job he spoke about his jobs around the world and I saw it as a great career coming from a background where nobody had that experience he really inspired me and I still keep in touch with my original head teacher from primary school it's amazing how often we hear that a teacher inspired us to do the same thing I was going to be perfectly honest and say that I came through a computing degree and I soon realised towards the end of it that I wasn't a true computing geek after all and more of a people person and I was a kind of where do I go from here and of course the default fallback was oh become a teacher so hands up I did do that for the sake of not having another clear direction however very shortly into my career I did realise that there were a lot of kids there that needed help that no one else was going to help and I was very much always being drawn to the more challenging areas of teaching so not the kind of general masses but the ones where we don't get it right for them so can I just ask your personal level of doubt you weren't a geek and you were a people person oh yes absolutely Angela did you have your hand up there I actually had a bit of a negative experience in one year when I was in primary 5 and the teacher actually was a friend of my parents outside of work and as a result I was a hesitant reader and I was asked to read onto a tape every night at home and it would be played in plaster next day and the children had to put their hands on their head whenever I hesitated and this was supposed to help me become less of a hesitant reader and speaker following that my younger brother four years later had the same teacher and he had been diagnosed with dyslexia band B which is not terribly serious but serious enough and he had a horrendous time with that same teacher now although my parents had gone to the council and had teachers etc nothing really moved at that time that was when I became very interested in additional support needs and how those children who maybe don't are not top of the class and maybe don't shine and haven't got confidence and self worth how do you bring those children to the forefront and who will be their advocate if they can't speak for themselves and that was why I felt very driven towards teaching I'm sure Ross will have some questions for you later on about that that's really interesting I think the motivation to work with young people is fantastic I think it's a real privilege to be able to work with young people on a day-to-day basis just the energy and the enthusiasm they've got for life in their studies is really infectious the other thing similar to what other people were saying was two teachers in particular through my own experience, my art teacher and my technical teacher that were a massive inspiration to me I'm dyslexic as well and for me it was a big thing to be able to see that I was successful at something and I wasn't struggling I was always quite slow at reading at school and I always felt a bit of pressure and I felt when I was doing those subjects that a bit of weight was taking off my shoulders so I quite enjoyed being able to help other young people to do that as well and particularly in my sector being a Gallic medium teacher the motivation to try and promote Gallic and try and instill the enthusiasm that I've got for the language was massively important a wide variety of reasons but all with children at the heart of them that's great Colin I guess the first question really should be about retention of teachers what factors are making teachers take decisions to retire early or to leave the service and what would encourage them to stay I have been teaching for 33 years I've been a head teacher for the last 12 I have thoroughly loved my career but I've resigned and I leave in six weeks I have loved it I would advise anybody to go into it as a career but I am utterly exhausted and it's been the breadth of social and emotional demands as well as management demands on me which have reached that point social demands can you expand on that a little you're interacting with as well as the interaction with the teachers it's interacting with families often families who are quite in extreme difficulties themselves that has a social and emotional impact on you also the social demands within education I think to be part of an education or part of a school now calls upon you to be involved in the wider community and that can cause you to be really pulled upon in lots of different ways for social events after school, at evenings events but that's all part and parcel of building the community which is important but it is also quite exhausting so other teachers now I feel guilty in many ways that other teachers look at me and say I think you do a good job but I wouldn't want your job so I think what we need to do is try to redress that and when I'm saying that I became a teacher I saw another teacher who influenced me I need to do that positively in the other way as well but it's generally the work-life balance I think that's how to kill time What would have made you take a different decision? Chance to stop, refresh share the workload reduce the workload Is that a discussion you've had with the local education authority? It is, yes I had considered a year's career break but at the end of that I think that would have left a school that was kind of hanging and not really knowing where we were going but a few years ago a career break would have been helpful just to refresh, to go somewhere else to see other things that are happening Then? If financial it didn't suit me because I'm the main wage earner in my house and I've got children who've just gone to university and that obviously has demands on you as well I know how much much expense it is Sorry, it was Angela Having spoken to colleagues who are in middle management level several of us feel that what has been asked of us is no longer sustainable We feel that we are not seen as professionals we're not trusted as professionals we're left to be we're very, very highly accountable for everything that we do so if for instance we attend a twilight session in my local authority there are very few training courses that take place during the school day you have to attend that after your working day If you attend a course you're then expected to train the staff back at your workplace on what you have learned Then you've to go into your GTC update and you have to talk about action and impact of having benefitted from that training through your council so that takes a lot of time to be typing it up Then in order to actually have the action and impact take place you're getting a working party together so that three or four hours twilight that you've already done out of your in your own time you're then having to build on that and there's more and more demands on the point that I've got staff saying I'd actually rather not go on that course because they know that going on the course is not just organising the childcare for them to be able to do that after work that there's then going to be this continued pile up of work and responsibility put up on them Also some staff who have then done that successfully had very good cat training in-house with their staff Other primary schools from the learning community are in our school so it builds again and again and again and there are no benefits there's no one coming saying thank you very much we value what you have done there is nobody coming back to say that to you it's very much presumed that you have this unlimited amount of time at your disposal to do this and that's out well out with your 35 hour week Clearly our benefits it's just that there's no benefits No benefits to you Why have you not seen as professional by whom? The community in general actually having started teaching 15 years ago and I'm now back in the same school that I started teaching in as principal teacher even the approach of parents towards teachers can vary from school to school but there is actually a lack of respect towards teachers and particularly middle management senior management and what some of my colleagues have commented on was nearly a decade ago when head teachers had to begin introducing themselves and allow their staff to call them by their first name that actually a lot of parents then took that on and head teachers are addressed by their first name across the playground by parents parents have every right to come in about their child's education and what's happening and if something's gone wrong but increasingly we're seeing parents arriving on the doorstep expecting to be facilitated in an appointment right then and right there and different schools have different processes for how that's dealt with but there is a lack of consistency where we've had children come to our school and the parents said well the previous head teacher always would speak to see me immediately so there's a lack of consistency in how issues are addressed in schools whether head teachers should be providing appointments on this spot or whether they should be made giving a time frame for parents to cool off or whatever may be necessary but we are finding parents coming in and quite demanding of parents time or senior management time forgetting that those teachers should be in class teaching and that the time for appointments should be out of school hours again the time for appointment for out of school hours we can just bring it up with Ross the paperwork for ASN children as you quite rightly said there's one in four in every class and in my experience actually there's slightly more than that the paperwork for identifying a child's need and making sure then the teacher knows how to work with that and provide a learning programme for those children it's a huge immense task and the teachers are not you can be trained in autism you can have gone to a course on autism but every child with autism has different needs and their spectrum of needs can be immense and often the needs of the parent is also immense so the time that teacher then has to take and making sure the parent is fully informed in what you hope to achieve with that child what they can be doing at home to support their child through that that's again hours and hours of paperwork, discussion, feedback that is not taken into account it's overwhelming and I think often many staff are feeling like they're juggling and they're not trying to prioritise becoming more and more difficult because there are so many high priorities and you don't know which one to tackle first or which one can be left for a few days if we reach it can I just ask sorry but can I just ask that we try to keep our answers a bit shorter and also that we don't repeat the answers that somebody else has given us because we have got a lot to get through I just wanted to back it up to say coming from industry I have never worked so hard teaching and I can't imagine working till 67 at that level some days you just can't even go to the toilet or have lunch I mean it's that so to be at 65 I can't imagine working at that level that's why you can't keep teachers Emma, you would want to come in there I mean I spoke to my colleagues before I came and they all said that none of them will work till they're 67 most of them can't see themselves working past the next 5 or 10 years and it is the workload and the stress in my particular school we've had changing management and that's resulted in changing curriculum models, changing planning methods everything's changing so this year's been a bit of a flux year but the expectations are so huge you could work I mean I could work 100 hours a week and I wouldn't get it all done to the level that I would be happy with and you have to draw a line I mean I can't see how I would continue working full time till I was 67 it just won't happen Thank you, Karen You're a supply teacher I believe I have worked full time at various points in my life and I've worked part time at various points in life and I've had career breaks to industry as well I have actually made the conscious decision more recently that I refuse to work full time because it's not sustainable from a health point of view from a family point of view it's not about the money it's really a case of I want full time part time permanent work and believe it or not I'm actually really struggling to find that and that may be an option that I might not be able to keep in teaching because full time is just not an option for stress and burnout as everyone said So there's a struggle with part time permanent work like a job share type thing Yeah, alright Maybe I've said a bad word but you know for a teacher to be in for a part of the week and then another teacher to be in for the other part of the week If that generally there's very few cases of it working but again I think it does vary greatly from authority to authority but again with a family I can't go to another authority so you're kind of limited The top issue here it's really the workload Do you think that the remuneration is adequate at your levels? Eilet, do you come in first On the last point I've had a very different experience from Angela I've been in the same job share for 17 years in primary and I think that's why I'm still teaching is because I've been able to have that balance between my home life and my school life and the fact I've been sharing with the same person makes a huge difference because obviously we know each other very well but the workload is a huge issue and I think the fact that the curriculum for excellence changes regularly there is no stability there doesn't seem to be a long term political strategic planning we seem to be reacting with short term ideas where tons of money are thrown in and we're all expected to learn them and embed them but then the next one comes along before we've had a chance to catch our breath so for me that's a huge issue within teacher attention that I'm just not sure I can put up with another curriculum change another new initiative look we're coming round again to that one that one happened about 15 years ago here in two weeks so we'll certainly be asking them about whether it's better for a stable programme I think I'll just echo that point it's the problem of change and direction and possibly leadership and I don't mean necessarily within the school and beyond that I'm talking about SQA and whoever's making the decisions around curriculum for excellence and it's not that I would say teachers have an issue with change particularly but they want change that makes sense because they are clever, intelligent, rational professional people and they feel that this change is actually taken away from all the things that you've heard so far from this panel and the previous panel of witnesses they want to be in the classroom and that change is taking them away from the classroom and by the way even though there are changes we still have to change more because it's still not right and they are seeing the prospect of further change and they're saying look I'm backing off from this because I'm at the point now where I've got enough perhaps my pension plan will sit nicely I can leave because all the people at the top end of the age range are thinking of leaving and also another thing I would suggest is to do with the salary in relation to opportunity for promotion when Macron came in they took away the principal teachers and the assistant principal teachers and they moved to faculties and faculty heads now that was a major change in my school was one of the first to do that the implications of that in relation to the workload is for example I'm in charge of a technology faculty I've got computing I've got what we call techie we've got business so I'm in charge of something like 17 to 20 different courses now that's my business to manage requisition, deal with teachers probationer teachers student teachers coming in and all the other things that go with it and then the change and then you put in place a change and then there's another change and on and on it goes and this one person pointed out absolutely no way would that fit into our contractual hours and if teachers pulled back from that most of the things which they're trying really hard to try and keep up with in the trust that it's going to come right you know if they were to pull out from that changes would just fall flat in their face so there's a lot of fantastic goodwill by teachers to try to deal with the workload issues and the possibility of not getting promoted on because the people aren't there to do it so that's money and workload okay just before I move on to Tavish obviously there's a number of issues that have been raised here what method is there of you being able to raise these issues with your education authority you know further up the chain and then get some response to see you know for them A to recognise the unhappiness of what you're talking about and B for them to respond to it wonder actually raised issues with my union representative and that for me is the way that it's gone so there's huge changes just been made to national 5 computing science for 2017-18 and 2017-18 curriculum will start in my school three weeks time so it's difficult because everybody's so busy where do you go and everybody's aware of it but teachers are so used to the changes going through that they just they just cope with it and they try and manage it themselves which coming from industry isn't the right way of doing it I can see that they should be getting project managed somewhere but it's not Emma, then Angela, then Krista My union is well My union have a system where you can record the hours you work every week and then they then take that back and every year we hear that we work more and more hours but there's no shift top down nobody's saying what can we do nobody's saying how can we reduce your workload all they're doing is giving us more workload and more expectations I suppose the point that I was trying to make then is if it's a union that you're speaking to what do the union do with the information that you've given them who do they go to speak to they come to the meetings like this with you and with COSLA would there a mid-year place of call not be the education authority but it's the same across the whole of Scotland this is not it's not unique to my school or to your schools it's the same across the whole of Scotland every teacher whether they be primary or secondary the expectations on what you do are huge and as Isabel said we have a social element now to what we do I will quite frequently be in conversations with parents at six or seven o'clock at night about issues that they they have with their children which really have nothing to do with me as a teacher but they feel that as the child's teacher I should be able to solve these problems so there are methods for us to report this it's just it seems to get to a certain level and then nothing's done OK, right very briefly please, Angela and then Krista and then Bansalanda we have the EIS working time agreement all the teaching staff meet once a year and they agree how their 35 hour week will look what that will look like what a good one looks like we often talk to the children and it's the same idea however the staff now come to that meeting and it's very much a paper exercise and often the head teacher will already have pencil drafted in you know, hours that he would suggest we do spend on forward planning or on assessment or family engagement but they're not doable the social aspect that Isabel brought up again bagpacking at weekends to raise money for school funds etc that's kind of become the norm the normal expectation sorry Angela, sorry sorry it was just the final point on the money and on teachers very much the good teachers don't tend to do it for money however again going back 10 years if you took responsibility for a curricular area there was a small increment if you took children away for the weeks excursion with the primary seven week away there was a small increment in salary that you could apply for to your local council that is no longer the case in my local authority I'm not sure about yourselves but there is no monetary incentive there for people to run extra-curricular clubs lunchtime clubs or to be the coordinator of curricular area right, okay, thank you I agree with what Angela said about the working time agreement we've just had our meeting and it's very much a paper exercise as well it feels like you're shuffling ditchers and when you asked the question my first reaction was I actually don't know sure, I think that's part of the problem sometimes I don't think teachers have got an outlet does it have to escalate to the point where we're talking to trade unions and I think sometimes you've really, only the only option you've got is to run the risk of just sending an anti-email and you don't actually have that opportunity to voice concerns at a lower level where they could maybe be sorted at the point that I was making I mean, is there some mechanism where teachers within a local area can talk to their education authority and get, because at the end of the day you may well say some of this as government changes it's causing the pressure and stuff like that but your immediate body is your education authority do you not have any method of communicating with them telling them what your problems are and try to get some resolve for them I don't know if we do know what changes would happen if we've already taken part in that process I did attend a web seminar with the SQA on the new national 5 changes for computing science and I think there must have been about 100 computing science teachers throughout the country attended online and basically you're just told those are the changes there's no way of feeding back they're not interested in a dialogue I'm going to move on now Tavish sorry before Tavish starts can I just ask everybody to keep things as tight as we possibly can and not necessarily feel that you have to respond he always says that before I ask a question because he knows I waffle on and he's quite right to I wonder if I could ask one specific question of Visible Marshall as a retiring head and then a general question about teacher training and the evidence that we were taking earlier on a retiring head you can be wonderfully objective about this now there are proposals to give schools head teachers more autonomy will they help or hinder all the issues that you've been raising this morning I'm a resigning head rather than a retiring head I apologise very important distinction it is because I'm going off to find a different career and I'm in a fortunate position in the stage of my career where I can do that what would you what could we do if you're head right now would you be able to address for example the point about national 5 some of the changes there your principal teacher comes in and says we can't even get the SQA to listen if you were in this theoretical world if you as a head could lift the phone to the head of the SQA and say this is not acceptable my school is not able to do this unless you do X, Y and Z would that be the kind of change that might help a head in there for a school I'm at a primary level so I don't directly affect but in terms of speaking to the local authority yes I speak to the local authority the biggest issue that I've spoken to the local authority about in the last year and with staff as well is about recruitment not having enough people to do the job which then pulls people away from the job they should be doing to cover the other difficulty we've got is if something is coming directly to the schools at the moment I don't have enough headspace to deal with that without it being over bureaucratised so the spirit of that where extra money is being devolved to the school is I think the way ahead as a group of teachers teachers need to get better at saying we're going to do this instead of because teachers are fixers when you're asked to teacher to do something they'll do that on top of what they're already doing so we need to do that because teachers are fixers when you're asked to teacher to do something they'll do that on top of what they're already doing so we need to empower our teachers and I say that frequently at staff meetings what are we doing this instead of but then we need a culture at a wider level and school level to say this far and no further or this is replacing this rather than this is as well as so it could be something that would be beneficial but only if it's instead of rather than more on top of the wider question I wanted to ask was about the evidence we took on teacher training and particularly about placements because our earlier brilliant panel all reflected the importance of teacher training and the placement part of it and they cited numerous problems of how that works in practice what's your professional take on that and what are the things we could do to make that a lot better so as being a newly qualified teacher I had all the same problems that they had I was quite lucky in that I had a charter teacher status teacher as my probationary year who was amazing to be mentored by but even then they still don't have time really to mentor you properly but the GTCS running having people commuting two hours one way and now the other way and three hours one way it just adds to the stress and not having any money to cope with that I can go with what was said and some schools are expecting you in some aren't they if I could go a little bit wider it was very interesting what they said and some of the problems they talked about classroom management will want to be in the classrooms and they were wanting to develop the art of the classroom teacher and that's why I heard them saying now for me there's a problem in the way that we're actually pulling together our teachers it was mentioned fast track and that made me shudder a little bit because what we find is we get people that go do a three or four year degree in a subject area and then they do the one year of teaching and to me that's where the challenge is so we you're learning your friends, you're learning your English you're learning your history at university level but the scientific art of the teaching is trying to be encapsulated in that one year's training and they neither get a good job of the science of the training the professional body of knowledge that informs their practice or the art of practising and I feel there's something disproportion about that now one person this morning mentioned the idea of two years I know that there's implications for financial but if you could put that aside for the moment just what kind of teachers do you get at the end of it and there's another thing I would suggest to you I would favour a BED I would favour a four year professional degree to make you into a teacher because you have to mature into it so when you come out the door at the other end you're ready and all those little problems about classroom management and all those other things they're not coming as surprises how to do a register how to supervise corridors how to deal with some of the additional support needs and how to deal with change and to understand the theory of how learners learn and the theory how teachers teach to apply it to find your level and the art of saying with that pupil and that group there's a way to go and I can take from my toolkit but they don't get enough time to build up their toolkit in one year so I think there's an issue there about what they're doing and I've got one little concern that sometimes I as a faculty principal I have taught some absolutely despite what I've just said outstanding people have come in it is given they're trying hard to recruit and I've noticed from the statistics of the documentation that we're given that there's under recruitment in many areas I don't feel that from some of the people I've seen come in they're selective enough they're taking people into teaching that perhaps a more stringent filtering system would say you don't have what it takes to be a teacher to stand up in front of these groups into the individual needs of a collective classroom I know that's a hard one to filter through but there are fundamental problems with that assessment of whether that person will not make a teacher is at the end of that course or at the beginning first of all the way is just there with the one year course they're filling, they're getting bums on seats and perhaps that's a bit unfair but I've seen one or two come through for whom I would have said I don't think that's somebody who is suitable for teaching from the word go and that's not even within my own faculty but you say that I doubt very much that's only teachers that you get one or two people that come through that aren't for the job Christopher, would you like to? Coming at this from a slightly different angle obviously being in Gallic media education but I don't know if you're probably aware that there's a Gallic immersion for teachers course being going on I've had some recent experience with that and I've spoken to quite a lot of students on it and the feedback I've heard and the results I've seen have been quite mixed I've had a few success stories but I recently had a student that was on placement for it and there was barely a word of Gallic spoken and the feedback I'd got from students was that there was nowhere near enough actual focus on the language seems to be a lot more focus on the achievement of a masters level qualification pedagogy and things like that that certainly seemed to be fit for purpose I'd spoken to a friend of mine who had learned BASC and worked in the BASC country where this model was adopted for him and he told me that the course that this was based on in BASC would be 12 months long with 12 units and after each 12 unit you would have to set a test to prove that you met that certain criteria and only after you passed all 12 units would you be deemed fit enough to work in BASC media education and I just don't see the same level of standards being applied in Gallic Okay, thank you very much, Talish Ross Just very quick before I come on to ESN, just picking up on what you'd said previously, Sean, I'm wondering specifically you were talking about the sheer amount that you have to manage what is then the balance for you between teaching time and the amount of time you spend simply managing your departments? I'm lucky because I've got a lot of mileage on my clock so I can walk into a class and I think I have got the art of the teaching and I understand my subject area so I feel my standing in front in the classroom time isn't as demanding as perhaps a teacher in the beginning of their career but I am also lucky because I have fantastic teachers who work with as part of my faculty and I delegate and they willingly take on extra responsibilities and that's one of the ways that I manage because they're highly motivated they're very professional and as we've said they take on extra responsibilities perhaps because just the joy of the subject area they can see where it's going to go perhaps it will enhance their promotional chances because they're building up their experience portfolio and things like that so that's how I manage because everything gets a bit slack at times and sometimes I do get caught in the hop but I'm lucky because of what I've just said but I have people that work with me and I go and get advice and so on and so forth and prioritise Slightly falls on from that but specific question I'd be interested in Andrew's thoughts on this but anyone else we've had feedback in the past from teachers, particularly newly qualified teachers very quickly it gets to a point where you have to go into management or you cannot progress any further and in relation to additional support needs I was wondering what your thoughts were on ASN teaching being a promoted post in itself I actually think that that would be fantastic I think it's long overdue I think the BED could easily be you do your four-year degree with a particular emphasis on additional support needs throughout what Sean was saying earlier the teachers were coming out the trainees had mentioned earlier as well you're coming out with skills that you've honoured yourself from through your own educational experiences and you may not be the most numerate but you're then going out to teach numeracy for example the universities definitely need to do more with that but additional support needs over and above everything else and it has to be taught more concisely indefinitely within the colleges and we're seeing NQTs coming out who really are quite frightened by some of the behaviours that they're seeing in the classrooms and very unclear on how to begin approaching that, never mind planning a personal learning programme I think that that has made an important distinction here, back in the traditional days it was you got an extra increment on the salary if you were having a responsibility for additional support needs that was attractive at the time and if you're going for a solely more of a focus people support job then yes that makes sense however when you look at the classroom nowadays pretty much every single teacher in the school is an additional support needs teacher because whereas before maybe you had maybe one or two in the classroom with statement needs or whatever or very specific needs you've now got in a classroom of 28, you've got about 15 of them all with individual programmes, statements, records of needs things that you need to be aware of so every single teacher in theory then should be a promoted post because that's the line you're going to go down just because of the sheer volume and the mechanics of doing it all and to try and keep on top of all that even although you've maybe not got responsibility for doing the IEPs yourself but you're asked to sort of feed into it from the support department and things the sorry I've lost track of what I'm going to say being a support teacher is different to having a mainstream teacher who's got maybe 15 kids in your class and you haven't got the first clue for a lot of people who are struggling and then that's where we have to go to our support colleagues and we are going to say I don't know how to do with these 15 in the class because he says B and he says A and they can be in the same room at the same time but they are and what am I to do with it and then they're the ones that are going well I've not really got time to talk you through how to try and do this so it's kind of a vicious circle that all goes round really going back to the evidence that we had in the previous session very much was that NQTs are coming out with a wildly inconsistent level of knowledge in additional support needs depending on simply where they went to university is that your experience as a newly qualified teacher or as folk who work with NQTs all the time I think what you need to be careful about is the aggregation of children with additional support needs we've got social needs, we've got educational needs we've got behavioural needs so somebody might come out very well trained dyslexia or autism but then be thrown by a child who has behavioural needs or emotional needs we've got nurture bases in our school to deal with emotional needs children are highly skilled and teachers are highly skilled in that and taking it forward that's different from dealing with a child in your class who has a sight problem so I think when we're talking about people training with meeting ESN needs for pupils we need to be well aware of that breadth of experience that's required very much where you're trying to find the balance between giving all newly qualified teachers that broad level knowledge and points that have been brought up in this session in the previous one about the need for specialist staff because even a specialist additional support needs teacher has just discussed the breadth of support needs there someone, we've had evidence before of a young person who was deaf finding that the support staff they got knew everything there was to know about autism but they weren't attestately simply couldn't hear different needs but finding that balance what Sean said you know over a PG course it's very difficult to give teachers experience of all that over a four year BED you've got a greater chance of getting children the breadth of children's experience to the teachers okay inclusion if that was possible the transition from primary schools to secondary schools is extremely difficult and I don't think enough money or time has been spent on dealing with the mental health issues that children with additional support needs go through moving from a primary class in school into a secondary class in school I know that one of my pupils is now entering through a canteen entrance to his high school everyday can't come in with the rest of the pupils because of his electric wheelchair and the ramp that he's needed to get in and out I do think that inclusion needs to be more doing and less talking about you know we've decided that inclusion is for all and we're going to have fully included schools, mainstream schools with children being included but the money needs to be put in to support those pupils whether as individuals or as in small groups okay we'll move on you're sorry right Liz thank you Mrs Marshall can I draw you back to a comment you made about recruitment that's something that's extremely important and you implied that there are some issues when you're recruiting staff could you tell us why you think that we have some issues about recruiting sufficient staff I think there is a perception that it's a very rewarding job but there's also a perception that it's a very difficult job and it is a difficult job I'm concerned that the media portrayal of education is often the extreme you know we see the television programmes where children are very badly behaved and the focus is on the very badly behaved children I think it's important we get the PR out there that the majority of children aren't what we see as these kind of extreme children I think salaries what was mentioned earlier at the early stages of somebody's career is important I don't think there's a differential there between somebody moving into a promoted post I would also like the return of the chartered teacher where teachers were rewarded for staying in their classrooms and being good models I think that was a very good area where teachers could come into teaching and stay in teaching without going into promoted posts as management posts in terms of getting people in as well my two children my two sons are at university just now having just left secondary neither of them want to go back into school as teachers because they see teachers working very hard being badly treated by members of the classes so I think asking 18, 19-year-olds to choose to become teachers is very difficult if they've not had a good experience of school themselves thank you for that, it's very helpful obviously within some of the evidence that we've had presented to the committee there are some concerns that at times particularly when it comes to dealing with the shortage of teachers in specific areas we're not very good about allowing teachers who might be extremely well-qualified and very successful teachers from other jurisdictions to be able to come and teach in Scotland and we had what I thought was very interesting evidence this morning from Mark Melrose when he told us about the skills which he had had but because one unit wasn't properly recognised there was a major issue for him and I find that extraordinary that somebody can be debarred simply because they've got very good skills have you or any of your colleagues as heads had this issue come up when you're trying to recruit people that might be offered from elsewhere but we've got constraints on GTCS registration I've had positive experiences for people who have done the conversion course or the returners to teacher course as well where they've come in they've perhaps trained as teachers I've got a teacher working with me just now who trains the teacher, has taken a career break she's brought back an extra life experience and that's been very positive I'd like to see that extended yes, I think that's very positive and I think Mark's experience of recruiting people with skills from outside school are very important my own career has been from school to college to school and I work with people who've come in later in their career and I think they've brought huge benefits to the school bringing in that working from outside education perspectives into classroom and into management roles as well and could I just finish on the point do you have any specific recommendation to make as to how we would extend that and open it up a little bit I think offering people the opportunity to go into schools on some sort of secondment to see if it was for them would be a good idea okay, thank you very much thank you yes, one more question that actually follows on from some of the comments from Sean Harley and Linda Robertson I think you mentioned the structure of the course I also have questions about curriculum for excellence and its implications on teacher training I think curriculum for excellence is very ambitious but I think that also places challenges on teachers because it is open, it's not prescriptive do you think that teacher training currently prepares teachers adequately to teach to curriculum for excellence and if there are gaps what are they and how would they be addressed if you ask a hundred teachers what is curriculum for excellence I suspect you would have a hundred different answers to me what curriculum for excellence is about is the business idea of undoing the box of the classroom that was driven to the SQA exams in the hope that when you get out of school there is a connection between what you learned in school and what you are trying to do curriculum for excellence is saying open up the school open up the classroom open up the pupils and see that this is a whole gestalt of experience that the pupils are moving forward with and that we are being we are contributors to that as well as the boy scouts and the girl guides and the skiing holiday could you tune me back into the specifics of your question again prepared teachers for that context and expectation that you just described I don't think it does but I don't think it could to be honest with you because I feel that this is part of the maturing into the profession process and I think that that will take time because I think that the profession themselves are working to mature into it until the professional body they are moving into has got a strong sense of what their identity is with regard to curriculum for excellence it's very hard to then to sort of convey that to trainee teachers and so on so the answer is no but I don't see that as a fault particularly of the training programmes that makes sense I don't think I could have done it at 22 I'm coped because I have got knowledge of industry and an understanding of my subject area so that I can cover all the areas that the curriculum for excellence is for in computing science covers Linda you also made a very interesting comment that from your industry background you felt that curriculum for excellence needed a project manager and indeed Sean you said you weren't quite sure who was in charge do either of you have a good feeling of who is in charge of curriculum for excellence and who is controlling its implementation no internet who's in charge of the internet it's one of those things it's a hybrid of different perspectives and ideas and innovations and so on and so forth I mean from your perspectives do you feel it's under control no the changes to the curriculum for excellence I think schools are doing the absolute best to make it to try and recognise what it's trying to do and to build the pupils experience around those ideals of the curriculum for excellence so in as much as it's not they're not freewheeling they're looking to the reference points of the documentation and the guidance and the best practice to try and pull together a programme that's going to move forward with the ideas and aspirations of curriculum for excellence so it is under control that way but I'm not sure we're all necessarily interpreted in the same way just for the record when I said that and I take your point I think schools are doing a phenomenal job about managing that but the process externally doesn't feel under control is that how people feel I wonder if there's a case for a non-political body being in charge of education because every time we get a new Minister for Education they want to make their role they want to make themselves feel as though they've had an effect so they change things and do they necessarily change things for the benefit of the pupils all the latest PISA results would suggest not so is there a case for having a non-political body in charge that doesn't change every time a Minister changes one final question just in the previous evidence session a very specific point around the deliverability of NAT4 and NAT5 in a single year and whether or not you could actually teach what you needed to teach within that year was raised I was just wondering what the reflections are of this panel on that specific point I think most of you were in the room when it was raised there's been changes in computing science because there was too much in the new national 5 computing science so the changes are good but they've not been planned they've just been given to us to be implement so coming from a project manager of big IT projects I would be going back to my project manager and telling them that I can't actually implement them in three weeks but they are good changes so the new national 5 for computing science should be able to be done in a year but to the specific point about some kids being disadvantaged by what needs to be taught in a year is that something that people in this panel would concur with or not? I think most schools do start their national 5 course what they start it now I'm going to move on to Gillian now you're not the first group of teachers that we've spoken to we've done quite a lot of sessions after that we've had teachers in the Parliament and Katie and myself had a panel of teachers a couple of months ago and one of the things that came out from what they said was around the importance of early years education and having children being exposed to education before they come into primary school a lot of those teachers came from schools in quite deprived areas where there was high instances of poverty and I wonder if I'd like to know we don't know which schools you're from so I don't know where you're actually teaching but do you agree with those teachers that by getting children involved in education earlier that that might make an impact on a lot of the classroom management issues that you as primary teachers have to face and a lot of the things that for example Angela has mentioned about the pastoral issues on top of it and I'd like to know your thoughts on that I think there is a case that we need to go earlier than anti preschool and that I think a lot of the checks I don't know for sure but a lot of the checks by health visitors that used to happen, your yearly checks before you start school aren't happening anymore and so they're not able to flag up children so that by the time a child comes into preschool at three there's already three years where action could have been taken they could have been referred to a vulnerable twos group for example so I think yes in order to close the attainment gap that needs to start earlier than school I'd be interested to hear from other people your issues on that cos it was something that came across very strongly from those teachers that by the time children go into nursery education that really a lot of the learning could have happened before that especially in the areas where there's extreme poverty I agree there's a lot that could happen before they get to nursery however and so that's a huge issue if we're saying that we need to have teachers in nurseries for these children from three how does that work if we're taking them out of nursery because the funding's not there or we just don't have enough teachers or there's no longer a requirement for a teacher to have contact with a nursery child every single day of the week I think we'll talk about two different things here but what you're talking about is the sort of like the conditions of the home and the early rearing of the child before we get to the nursery stage my next point but what I'm saying is that we'll do everything I think it's part of the same question cos the question was teachers within the early years environment how does that impact and can we do it earlier yes we can do it earlier you could have teachers working in fully qualified teachers age six months if you wanted some schools do have these nurseries focus of the current government is to put more into early years education to address some of the things that you've been talking about today we are aware of that but in my council area after the summer holidays each nursery will only have a 0.5 teacher so that teacher will only have contact with children half of the time the teacher the teacher was very good as well in linking to having a teacher in nursery was very good to link to health visitors and speech therapists and there was backwards and forwards training so that the speech therapist could train the teachers and the learning assistants in how to help from their skills and similarly we could link that whole process into education so that multi agency working is vital and I think we've moved away from that unfortunately to the deficit of the children to get parents involved in the early education as soon as possible so that that then continues throughout the years and in our school in particular we've been trying very hard with parental engagement having play days where the parents are in actually shadowing what the nursery staff are doing watching how to read a story with expression using props, using puppets and we've now led it into the primaries so the group that we started that three are now in primary one and the parents that are actually working have sent a gran or an ante along 20 minutes a week and they're involved in storytelling with the children using magnetic letters, boards etc so that parents are learning how to do literacy at home and that it's not from the local authorities that decision that's made the local authorities that at school level it was actually on our improvement plan three years ago and it's how we've managed to sustain it and then take it forward and have more of an impact and we hope to use obviously some of the pay funding to continue to make that more sustainable. I think I'm very struck by you know when I think when I started teaching it was the norm at intervals and lunch times you went down and you talked to your colleagues by the time I left that was already changing but my sense is that the pressure on teachers now are even more massive than when I left and I'm trying to get and there's a lot said to us about there's not enough support staff or classroom assistants are reducing there's less learning support all of which brings pressures on the teachers but I wondered and there's what bits are there is it also the case that some of the pressures are on you are there other bits of support that would make a difference I mean is as admin support changed and when I anecdotally we've heard that teachers are more likely to have to do photocopying than my generation would wouldn't even be photocopying my generation but you know that somebody else did that those practical things that allowed you to focus on teaching is that the case or are the greater pressures almost all about teaching and the curriculum and the lack of support in terms of learning as opposed to the managing of the process around learning I'm lucky I have a full-time people support worker because I have a child who needs a full-time people support worker but if I need photocopying done or resources made up or forms completed for going on school trips I have to do those and they have to be done within the context of everything else that we have to do as a teacher when I first started people support workers would cover boards they would do wall displays, they would do the photocopying that doesn't happen anymore certainly not in my school and is that because they're stretched there aren't enough of them people support workers and the ones we do have are allocated to children who have specific needs which is what they should be used for I suppose the other thing that I was struck by reading the evidence both from yourselves and from others was the gap between the theory of what was happening in the school and the reality I think you mentioned there's not much garlic getting spoken in there's issues around supply teachers therefore the subject specialists are teaching to the school and the supply teachers are doing for S1 test 3 which presumably is a consequence for subject choices to what extent do you think that that's true that theoretically you've got to learn to support person but they're used for covering primary school or whatever can you give us a sense of that where that actually is in terms of how it's impacting the ability of the school to deliver what it's supposed to be doing today the support for learning teachers covering my class which means that the children that she should be working with today won't get support from her because there are no supply teachers we have the same issue with supply teaching staff and our learning support teacher will be asked to go and cover classes around the learn when there's no other cover that can be found but also the lack of supply we find hits us especially with visiting specialists our visiting specialists provide our macron time and so regularly you're teaching more than your classroom hours because the visiting support teachers are filled and you can't get supply teacher and quite often staff will come to work over and over again when they're not well and they get more and more unwell until they're off for a week whereas maybe if they've gone off for a couple of days but they don't want to go off because they know that'll leave the school short of a teacher can I ask if that's locked anywhere because you know this thing about further down in secondary school people not being taught by subject specialists or you know the theoretical learning support always being covered is that locked anywhere so that a local authority would know the gap between what's actually what should be the provision and what's actually the provision within a school appendix one at the end of every week outlining how much cover I've provided and how much cover the head teacher's provided I'm in class committee two days a week management three days a week but often a day, a day and a half a week is done on class cover and the management work are then doing them on time at home I would also say that we've got staff awaiting 17 and a half hours cover back for not having had my crone I've got two members of staff that are owed 17 and a half hours Local authorities as well they gather statistics we're asked to phone in if we're short covering where we have can't cover internally who would cover internally so they're logging that centrally Is there a kind of a trigger point where the consequence is that this first year class never gets a physics specialist or science specialist because somebody's in long term sick Does it trigger anything anywhere? Primary level it means heads and deputes are supplying class contact or daily cover for classes so we have to do them out with school fit I know from my own school that they can't get the cover I mean they really go out and they actually send emails do you know anyone who has retired who would be willing to come in first of all as a French teacher to teach French but any teacher to teach to cover that class so it's not that the schools aren't trying desperately to give the pupils the experience that they should be getting even though a teacher is off or as close to as they can get that's a quality experience they just can't get the cover because it's just not there Computing science can't get teachers so in my school there would be a supply teacher Computing science teacher covering first and second year classes and I would be putting resource in for that so I'm just a nearly qualified teacher doing resourcing a supply teacher class on my own at the same time and again coming back to admin and I haven't figured out how you buy stuff in schools yet if anybody would like to tell me how to do that could they let me know somebody would tell you I'm dual qualified in maths and computing and obviously supply is my main the number of times that I have been desperate for supply work and I've not been phoned and it's to the best of my knowledge it's not because I'm a rubbish teacher or anything like that in our local authority for example teachers who are a dying breed it does have to be said that have been on long term sick but I'm known throughout every school in my authority and exactly as you're saying you use the sort of great find you're saying right Karen sitting at home doing nothing, a texter last night she can come in and do like fill in this double higher computing period and the kids aren't going to miss out and the general response is we've got to wait until they're off three weeks okay there's political things in the middle level that maybe schools have no idea about so would this, sorry can I just clarify this but then is that a decision that the school would make the local authority would make the government would make I mean where would a decision such as that come from to be fair we're very unclear it seems to come from the local authority and from what I can piece together from what people are telling me in my local authority well I actually interact with three local authorities cos I'm kind of bang-smacking the middle of three of them but in all three they have a similar thing that they won't buy the cover in until it's been a certain amount of time or they're like well we've got a surplus in this and they're over so we've just got to use them we're not allowed to get you in and the when the supply rules changed to have like I'm at the top of my pay scale now but most of the time I am juggled so that I'm always paid at my first entry point of my pay scale even though they need my experience and my expertise of presenting students for exams in both maths and computing regularly to fill in the gaps so there are a lot of supply teachers out there who are willing to go and do more and would come back to teaching but it's the politics and the support the support of school gives you a supply teacher very horrendously and you are seen as lowest of the low you are seen as not a real teacher and yet we're the ones that everyone's calling for to help them just get through a school day okay thank you for that Christa just coming at this again from the perspective of agallic medium education in very specifically secondary as you were saying it's quite difficult to recruit Gallic teachers, you're obviously drawn from a smaller pool it's harder to find teachers and sometimes that means hiring good teachers that don't speak a lot of Gallic or don't speak any Gallic with the aspiration that they'll learn that but what the issue is is how do they find the time and how is that facilitated and imagine all the kind of challenges that we've heard today and then imagine on top of that personal life trying to learn a language on the fly as well it's really really difficult and I think maybe we would have to look at something like relief cover or something like that to facilitate something happening or maybe even look at some sort of joined approach that could work across authorities or nationally about how we could actually support teachers to do that because I know a lot of my colleagues they're going to night classes and things like that and they are striving to do stuff but it's such a challenge and a strategy that we can all draw upon and certainly not a consistent one across different schools OK, the last question is from Claire Hawke I just want to go back a little bit if I can but just a very brief specific question you have all in various ways raised concerns about stress additional workload pressures on your additional hours you're all local authority employees am I right? Are your local authorities putting in? They have a duty of care as your employer so what supports do they put in for you? We have a helpline that you can ring and it'll offer you six counselling sessions That's who I meet regularly and I've discussed issues with her and I find that very useful and that's an individual local authority level that's available to us to talk about ways forward but again, there are very limited things that we are recommended to use the counselling hotline I don't know about the authority particularly but I know there's lots of helplines and they're out there but I think that the first port of call is who the head teacher of the school in the senior management in terms of that support that's the absolute first port of call if it's getting to the point where you have to go to the external agencies then something's been lost between you being in the classroom and being able to manage your role and I've found various experiences but generally speaking I find my experience has been supportive within the school so I've never had to call on the external agencies within the authority The first port of call is always your colleagues and colleagues are very supportive of each other and we have a really good social group within the school who support each other then you've got your management team and your head teacher there comes a kind of squeeze in the whole process you're the jam in the sandwich I've quite taken aback by immediately you say outside phone lines, helplines is there a way for you as teachers as head teachers to feed up the management chain and local authorities that this is a concern you need to do something on union representatives we've met with the head of schools and we've discussed that we met as a meeting to problem solve it was very difficult to find solutions that were easily accessible Our local authority has quality improvement officers now when they manage to get a time on their timetable they will come out and see you but it could be several weeks after and then you express your concern that's it The question about feedback to the student teachers I'm not getting a sense here that your concerns are being listened to or addressed I don't listen to in terms of addressed I don't know really what resources there are beyond that but certainly we have raised them they've been listened to Do you say that to the critical issues that the resources available to local authorities to deal with the issues that have been raised is that what you're saying There is a critical issue about what resources are available to local authorities as a profession as well we need to collectively agree on how we can go forward in what we need what our needs are The point that I raised initially was that local authorities as your employer have a duty of care to you Do you feel they're carrying out that duty of care to you as teachers? I mean there are processes we can do we rely on our colleagues to teach us but I think the fundamental problem is the workload is so great that it wouldn't matter if the local authority do listen to us there isn't a lot that they can do there's not enough of us as a profession there aren't enough teachers there's not enough resources that they can do to us but it does as you say it comes down to there aren't the resources but they have a duty of care to have they do have a duty of care absolutely but you have to be in the level advocates what are they going to do if they don't have the funding to put in 10 more teachers or they don't have 10 more teachers to put into your school it's kind of a vicious circle until the money and the teachers and the funding are in place they have a supervision system and one thing I have suggested is that we should have some sort of supervision system for teachers where there's a regular counselling approach used I would agree with you I come from an Arsyn background clinical supervision is a very valuable tool in terms of personal development and dealing with difficult issues with colleagues but I think this is a much bigger issue than just dealing with you I think there's an organisational feeling here I'm nodding the agreement with everything that's been said but I know in my authority they did two investigations into workload and they spoke to teachers and they had panels and everything and it didn't change the workload in one bit, in fact it just got worse and worse so perhaps maybe they're trying to exercise their duty of care by finding out what exactly is going on in the schools where there's no specific action that's taking place and then there's no feedback about where's the specific action that just kind of gets lost Okay Well, just before I thank you I think there's something that we need to make clear here and I think that some of it has got lost in that last wee thing there the duty of care, as Claire said but also the local authorities are the people who make the decisions of a number of classroom assistants a number of supply teachers and I accept that they work under a budget but it seemed to be that they were always being missed out here in terms of being held responsible for anything like this and I think that responsibility has to lie that's why I asked the question about this as a Government, as a local authority or is it within the school because there are different levels of responsibility that lie at different places and I think we have to make sure that we don't but can I thank you very much for that that was really, really helpful it's given us a lot to digest and after the next few weeks when we've got the other panels in I'm sure that our report will make for interesting reading okay, thank you very much again and I close the public session