How many gifted graduates of our universities are currently serving on tills or typing in offices, while awaiting the day that a postgraduate certificate in education course will condescend to accept them for training as teachers?
Is the current situation on Merseyside atypical, or do we really have complete contempt for the future quality of teaching in our secondary schools and for the lives of young people whose talents we are wasting?
One example. (I could offer more.) Over the past two years, two former students from the sixth-form college where I teach, both undergraduates at the excellent school of English at Liverpool university, have been rejected from the only appropriate PGCE course in secondary school English that is seriously available to them in the city, at Liverpool Hope university. The official excuse is their “insufficient experience”, although both have undertaken a range of placements. The real reason is inadequate provision of places on oversubscribed courses.
Mark Ball Flat 6 157 Beresford Road Oxton Prenton, Wirral
