Toni Fazaeli, chief executive of the Institute for Learning, challenges the apparently impoverished notion that QTLS is an “FE qualification”, claiming it is an award that confers “professional status” upon FE teachers (FE Letters, October 22). Such status, we are told, is achieved not only through initial teacher training and qualification, but through an “exacting” standard that requires FE teachers to “carry out at least 30 hours of continuing professional development each year”.

Most post-compulsory teaching practitioners would welcome enhanced conceptions of professionalism given FE’s hackneyed status as education’s Cinderella, but I must take issue with the arbitrary minimum of 30 hours. This, by my reckoning, equates to 42 minutes per week of professional development. I challenge anyone to argue that is sufficient to meet the needs of today’s diversity of learners.

Tony Fort, FIfL M.Ed, Blackburn College, Lancashire.