Tristram, an oath won’t change why a degree and a PGCE aren’t a status guarantee

With a pocket full of dreams and with a considerable amount of student debt, I’ve just started my PGCE. I was more than a little sceptical when I heard of Tristram Hunt’s new idea to raise the status of teaching. Here I’m surrounded by inspiring women and men who come from a huge range of backgrounds, with many skills and specialities. Frankly, these people could do whatever they wanted to do, but they’ve chosen primary teaching.

Yet, in a year’s time – after twenty-three weeks of placement in schools, several one-off training days in outstanding institutions, weeks studying theory and content of classes from geography to physics to phonics, 12 000 words of research into how children learn and what they think – we will hopefully have jumped through enough hoops to win the ‘Qualified Teacher Status’ prize. Even after all this, many training providers have questioned the ability of the one-year postgraduate course to adequately prepare new teachers, especially in foundation subjects like science, art and technology.

Unfortunately over the past decade, the number of students entering teaching at an undergraduate level has fallen dramatically, so fewer trainees are benefiting from the time this option offers anyway. Besides, the students who do breeze through their course will need to develop many qualities that can’t be taught in a year. The National Foundation for Educational Research identified that innovation, high expectations, self-scrutiny and the ability to personalise for each individual need were some of the qualities that actually made for effective teachers.

So why is a demanding career that asks for committed and talented university graduates floundering for status? For starters, nowadays, the average teacher’s workload can add up to around 60 hours a week. Alongside target setting, continual assessment and thoughtful marking, they’re expected to come up with innovative and imaginative solutions to the daily challenges that working with children throws up, including addressing many social and emotional needs. Every teaching union is shouting for workload to be addressed: Labour should be listening.

Another key factor lies in a less obvious place. As a profession dominated by women, it isn’t a huge surprise that teaching is suffering from lack of status. Research shows that many men cite other careers as more attractive, with primary teaching being seen as a ‘domestic role.’ This is evident in primary where only 12% of the workforce is male, but unsurprisingly men dominate leadership positions. Allow my succinct jumping from conclusion to conclusion, but Labour needs to get to grips with addressing structural gender inequality, as this might be one of the key ropes tying the status of primary teaching down.

I am just at the very beginning of my career, painfully optimistic and naive. I cannot imagine how Tristram’s comments might niggle at the fully qualified, experienced teachers who give up hours with their husbands and wives, sons and daughters in order to pore over assessment records and marking instead. It is not an oath that will raise their status. There are much more entrenched issues that lie with pay, workload, quality training and gender equality that this policy completely ignores. It’s time that Mr. Hunt starts looking at what practical measures really would raise the status and standards of routes to QTS, and the status of the profession more generally, instead of faffing about with the aesthetics.

What I stand to gain from the next few months working in primary schools is much harder to do and much more valuable for the rest of my career than a superfluous ceremony with an oath. I’ll save that for my wedding.

Caroline Hill is a trade union representative on the Young Labour national committee and is studying for a PGCE at the University of Cambridge.