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Accountability
Heading in the right direction
An optimistic Sir Michael Wilshaw believes that
improved leadership and teaching are delivering a
better standard of education to our children
It should be a ‘badge of
honour’ for newly-qualified
teachers to go into the mostchallenging
schools and be
incentivised to do so by the
government and by the National
College
The education system in our country
is rapidly improving – nearly 80%
of schools are now judged good
or better. More demanding inspection
frameworks, but even more importantly,
better leadership and teaching are
delivering a better standard of education
to our children.
However, while it is true that steady
progress has been made to improve
standards, it is also true that we still have
much to do to compete with the best
education systems in the world. The main
reason our international competitors do
better than us is because they do more to
invest in their teaching force. They not
only recruit good people to the classroom,
but they also spend more time and money
on professionally developing them. They
are also much better at identifying, at the
earliest possible stage, the most-talented
teachers in order to promote them into
leadership positions.
England must do the same. Therefore,
the training and support that is offered
to trainees at the start of their career has
to be of the highest quality. Unless they
are adequately prepared for the rigours of
the classroom, retention will always be a
problem and we will continue to see the
haemorrhaging of talent that has been the
blight of the profession for many years.
Nevertheless, I am optimistic. We have
never before seen as many motivated,
qualified and enthusiastic young people
coming into teaching. Teach First and
other similar initiatives have made a real
44 | Summer 2014