Teacher Training in Vocational Education

The UK Skills Commission has published a report examining whether teachers are being trained with the skills to deliver the emerging vocational curricula at the heart of 14-19 education. The report claims that the current system is biased towards academic education and fails to recognise the crucial role of vocational education.

It makes several recommendations to improve the standard of vocational education including:

• The introduction of a ‘universal Qualified Teacher Status’ for all teachers across 14-19 education.

• The development of an incentives scheme to help employers provide placement schemes for teachers of vocational education.

• The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) and Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) should establish an institutional mechanism for Accrediting Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) and validating it against academic qualifications.

• Greater discretionary powers should be given to LLUK to ensure that flexibility can be built into Initial Teacher Training (ITT), particularly for work-based teachers.

• The government should reform careers education and information, advice and guidance (CE/IAG) to take account of the growing vocational curricula and ensure that ITT equips teachers with an understanding of vocational pathways.

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) should be an entitlement for all teachers.

Interestingly a key point from this week’s budget was the allowance of an extra £15 million to extend enterprise education into primary schools and further education colleges – on top of the £55 million already dedicated to enterprise education in secondary schools.

To read the whole report from the skills commission follow this link: http://www.edge.co.uk/media/uploads/Downloadable/a74529f3-09ba-494c-a3e0-2369f688e261.PDF Or to access the budget 2010 click here: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget2010.htm