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have a good knowledge of the language, or if their training provides adequateinstruction for them to acquire this knowledge.Recommendation 3: Professional Development for teachersTeachers like professional development and see it as an essential part of theirjob. However many teachers are still not receiving any in-service training. In somecases Head Teachers have said that they find it difficult to release teachers forthese courses as there is nobody to take their classes while they are away. More inservicecourses and workshops need to be made available for teachers, and theseneed not cost a great deal of money.■■ Heads need to recognise that in-service workshops provide valuableprofessional development for teachers, and this has to be taken intoconsideration when allocating staff timetables.■■ Alternatively, workshops could be organised at weekends so that teachers donot have to miss classes to attend them. However, a balance has to be foundbetween work time and teachers’ home life. Introducing more non-teachingdays into the curriculum could be a solution to this problem.■■■■■■Attendance at professional development sessions could be legitimised bylinking participation to promotion.Experienced teachers could be encouraged to present workshops at theirschool which would be open to teachers within their district.Good teachers could be identified and asked to teach model lessons to agroup of students, so that other teachers might watch and learn from them.■■ Teachers need to be encouraged to carry out action research projects incollaboration with others. Findings and recommendations could be beneficialto the school or wider education community as a whole.Recommendation 4: Promotion opportunities for classroomteachersOnly a third of teachers think primary English teaching offers any sort of promotionopportunities. If the profession wants to attract high quality applicants andretain the best that it has, then efforts have to be made to offer more promotionopportunities. This might involve organising training courses in educationalleadership for teachers selected by their school. Once a teacher had takenpart in the leadership programme they would be eligible to apply for posts ofresponsibility either at their current school or at another one. Leadership postsshould carry additional salary increments to incentivise them.Recommendation 5: Teacher satisfactionMost primary English teachers are happy they went into the profession and do notwant to change their job. In order to maintain this level of satisfaction, employersare going to have to work hard. The profession is marked by poor levels of pay inPrimary English Teachers | 85