The General Teaching Council has set about its new role on chartered teachers with a will - but so challenging have the universities found it that they’ve had to call in an unchartered school mathematician to explain the formula behind it.
It seems that, in order to accredit prior learning: One module being claimed requires 2,500-3,500 words plus evidence; two modules 3,500-4,500 words plus evidence; three modules 4,500-5,500 words plus evidence; four modules 5,400-6,600 words plus evidence; five modules 6,500-7,700 words plus evidence, and six modules 7,200-8,800 words plus evidence.
One venerable teacher education institution found this so baffling, it joked with students that it would award a prize to the teacher who explained what formula the GTC must be using.
A South Lanarkshire teacher found that, where G is the general content and M is the number of words in the content specific to a module, then G+M is 3,000 words and so on up to G+6M which is 8,000 words.
G must therefore be 2,000 words and M 1,000 words. So the target length for any claim is clearly T=10 to the power 3 (2+n).
But given the broadly expressed number of words required by the GTC, Mr Algebra points out that each claim for accredited learning has an allowable range, E, around the target length. So E=T, or E =10,500 words. Thus the length, L, of a claim in words should be L= 10 to the power 3 (2+n) +- E.
We hope this is clearer than anything the GTC has been able to come up with.
