THIS week’s proposals are welcome insofar as they will increase the support available in schools. But they do not get to the nub of the problem. There are simply not enough teachers, particularly in our primary schools If we want to reduce workload but still ensure all lessons are taken by well-qualified staff, we need more teachers. In the primary sector, only four out of 30 developed (ie Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member) countries have pupil-teacher ratios higher than Britain’s. In Denmark, Hungary and Italy, there are 11 pupils per teacher. In Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden, the ratio is 13. In England and Wales, it is 23.
If you are trying to create marking and preparation time for primary teachers, you need more teachers. It is sleight of hand to pass on teaching duties to assistants.
The Government makes exaggerated claims for the number of extra teachers it has funded since 1997. It suggests the increase is 20,000. But its own figures show a rise of only 5,100 in full-time qualified regular teachers. To get to the supposed 20,400 rise, it has had to add part-timers (6,900), unqualified staff (5,600) and school-based trainees (2,800).
Teaching is a skilled profession. It is not enough to say that teachers will set up a lesson, and supervise an assistant. This means some children will just be being minded while teachers do marking and preparation.
The Government suggests it would be difficult to recruit extra teachers, making the point that there are shortages already. But there is no difficulty in recruiting to primary training; the main problem is holding on to the trainees.
In the summer spending review, the Chancellor allocated an extra pound;12.8 billion to education a year by 2005-6. Plenty enough, you would have thought, to have instituted a rolling programme to increase the number of teachers in primary schools at least.
Taking on an extra 20,000 primary teachers, for instance, might cost pound;600 million. The total teachers’ pay bill is pound;12bn. Instead, the Government is going for the seemingly cheap option of getting assistants to take over classes.
Alan Smithers is Sydney Jones professor of education and director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Liverpool University
