Your career and pay questions answered by John Howson
Q
I am an Indian IT professional working for a company in the north of England. I am thinking about switching to a teaching career but lack the necessary qualifications to be a professional teacher. I am a management graduate with substantial experience in IT and banking.
I understand that the Government has introduced a plan to allow people like myself to switch into teaching and be paid a small stipend during the first year. How can I find out more details?
A
It is true that the Government appears keen to encourage new entrants into teaching who have useful experience of working in other sectors such as industry and commerce. You only have to see the amount of “can teach” advertising around to feel this switch in policy direction.
As regards incentives for potential career switchers, both the traditional graduate training course and the school-based graduate teacher programme now come with a financial support package: up to pound;10,000 for the PGCE course, in certain circumstances, and possibly more for those on the GTP.
To find out more log on to www.canteach. gov.uk or contact the Teaching Information Line: 0845 6000 991.
Q
I gained a Cert Ed in further education, after which I spent three years teaching in London during the mid-Eighties. Although I thought I still had something to offer kids wanting to learn, I returned to managing an engineering department with a Japanese multinational to refresh my industry experience.
But with the recent announcement that vocational courses would be given increased importance within the school curriculum, and still keen to work with young people, I wonder what steps I should take to transfer to secondary school teaching.
A
If your previous teaching experiences were in FE, you would need to find a school that would employ you through the graduate or registered teacher programme. This enables you to retrain in schools, and be paid while doing so. But if you have already qualified as a school teacher, you don’t need any formal retraining, although you could try one of the returners’ courses on offer.
John Howson is visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University and managing director of Education Data Surveys. Do you have a career question for him?
Email: susan.young@newsint.co.uk
