More and more private tutors without Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) are finding work opportunities in the state schools of England and Wales. But what is the background to this trend, and what are the potential benefits and pitfalls?
A legislative door opens
For anyone unfamiliar with our education system, it may come as a surprise to learn that state schools have for years been employing unqualified teachers. Firstly, regulations used to permit an unqualified ‘instructor’ to be employed on a temporary basis if a school was having trouble recruiting qualified staff. Secondly, thousands of unqualified teachers were (and still are) employed on permanent contracts while undergoing employment-based training towards getting their QTS. Thirdly, it has long been cause for concern that schools have for years let unqualified Teaching Assistants (TAs) stray into teaching roles as a way of cutting costs.
In the last couple of years, however, there have been some major legislative changes which now have the potential to change the teaching landscape entirely. These changes effectively allow all schools in England or Wales to employ unqualified teachers on permanent contracts. Independent schools have always been allowed to do so, and when the Coalition government introduced Free Schools in 2010, they had this option too. But the major change occurred last summer when, under two separate pieces of legislation, both maintained schools and academies were also given the green light to employ unqualified teaching staff.
Although the government has insisted that these deregulatory measures will increase flexibility in recruitment, many teachers and their union representatives have reacted angrily, seeing the changes as denigrating the profession and encouraging schools to cut costs by employing unqualified staff.
Government endorsement of private tuition
Alongside this loosening of the legislative framework, the Department of Education has recognized the educational gains that can be made through one-to-one tuition, and so is encouraging schools to employ private tutors. And thanks to the legislation mentioned above, tutors may or may not have QTS or even a degree – it is up to the school to decide. The suggested funding for this initiative is the so-called pupil premium, a huge pot of extra money available to schools for every disadvantaged child they teach. For the 2013-14 school year, the funds set aside amount to a massive £1.9 billion, or £900 for every eligible child.
Who provides the tutors?
It was the Labour government under Gordon Brown which first got a large scale one-to-one tuition programme for schools off the ground in 2009. Under this scheme, all tutors had to have QTS, Local Authorities were in charge of recruitment, and the remuneration for tutors was set at £25-£30 per hour.
In 2013, however, the situation is rather different. As a recent article in Education Investor (Jul/ Aug 2013) makes clear, schools these days usually recruit tutors through private tuition agencies. Tuition companies apparently operate within many different delivery and pricing structures, including online provision. Fleet Tutors – which claims to be the largest tutoring service provider for state schools in the UK – provides face-to-face tuition at the rate of £39 per hour. Its managing director, Mylene Curtis, has also made it clear that the schools which employ tutors through Fleet Tutors ‘aren’t so concerned about QTS tutors, and often prefer to employ those who are experts on their subject’, which tends to mean just having a relevant degree.
Concerns over cost and quality
Although some commentators have seen the use of the pupil premium for tutors as encouraging a new egalitarianism in what has traditionally been seen as an elitist form of education, there are plenty who do not welcome this new dawn of private tuition in schools. Martin Freedman from the Association of Teachers & Lecturers (ATL), has described it as an ‘unethical use of public money’, and a Guardian article earlier this year questioned the thousands of pounds paid by state schools to private tuition firms. In this connection, the disastrous situation in the United States should be noted, where allegedly crooked private tuition companies with powerful lobbying arms secured millions of dollars in profits from school districts. In Florida, for example, the federal government passed legislation to force every single school to employ private firms.
And since QTS is no longer a requirement for teaching in schools, the quality of provision is also under scrutiny. Labour’s position on this is clear. Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg has warned unqualified teachers that, under Labour, they would either have to train for QTS, or face the sack.
The future of private tuition in schools
Most people acknowledge the immense benefits of one-to-one tuition. However, the provision of tutors in schools by private sector firms is a nascent industry, and it is impossible to judge success at this stage. Although questions of cost and accountability will inevitably be raised, growth in this sector looks set to continue – particularly if the current government wins the next election.
Private tutors in state schools: opportunities and issues | The Tutor Blog http://t.co/o9IAKUedSH via @thetutorpages
Interesting read from @thetutorpages on private tutors in state schools http://t.co/EHZRECfO1d
“Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg has warned unqualified teachers that, under Labour, they would either have to train for QTS, or face the sack.” And what, pray, does ‘training’ as a teacher actually entail other than going through yet more pointless hoops? All the (many) bad teachers whom I know cling to their piece of union-backed paper as evidence that they can teach and that tutors are a lower species of existence. The good teachers of my acquaintance all say that their ‘teacher training’ was useless. Have we learned nothing after years of pointless ‘targets’?
The saddest thing of all, however, is that although there are many excellent independent tutors whom anyone with an ounce of nous could spot at a mile, many head teachers will prefer to stick with some form of ersatz ‘quality control’ by electing to be provided with tutors from some sort of large organisation such as Fleet, with its concomitant extra overhead and administration costs. This is a backside-covering exercise pure and simple. Any head teacher who had the wit and wisdom to select his own tutors without using an agency would get a service that would be a more cost-effective use of this ‘premium’ than squandering it on slick corporate presentation. The tendency towards ‘big is beautiful’ is definitely to be deprecated in this situation.
I am a tutor, and would like to think that over the last 9 years my pupils have benefited from my efforts on their behalf. I am not QTS, but before I retired, I was involved in training at different levels, and with different age groups, and with differently qualified groups for 40 years or so. Add this to 9 years of tutoring predominantly, but not entirely, pupils for GCSE, and I consider I have significant experience in developing rapport, establishing learning needs, and providing necessary support to help any individual or small group of pupils in a range of subjects. I am less keen on teaching whole classes, as this requires different skills, mostly not related to the transfer of knowledge and encouragement of learning. I have to admit that the majority of my pupils DO want to learn, (mostly because that need has not been satisfied at school), and that makes life easier. I have written to 2 local schools (in Cornwall) offering my services but did not receive the courtesy of an answer.
As someone who works at a tuition agency only employing qualified teachers, its interesting to hear the other side of the coin!
During my 5 years in inner-city classrooms we often had mentors come in as volunteers, most commonly in my last school, which was sponsored by a large bank. I would supervise the sessions, with 20 kids being mentored on a one-on-one basis by young people in the finance industry. In many ways it was very valuable: the students got to interact with young professionals and find out about potential careers that could be open to them. What they could not do, however, was identify areas of need and address them with appropriate measures, then check in a meaningful way if they had actually gained the new skills and knowledge. I suspect the unqualified tutors coming in are likely to fall into the same camp.
Matthew- of course schools will go with the large provider, rather than try to sources potentially dozens of tutors themselves. At the end of the day, the agency is providing a service. As to your comment about QTS being a “piece of union-backed paper”, I can assure you that it is a rigorous qualification, and something that bears full academic scrutiny. This is why the agency I work for insists on having it as a basic qualification.
I wrote to about 20 schools in my LEA, did not get any replies.
I’ve been tutoring for around 10 years, firstly at University during my PhD and since then to GCSE and A-Level students.
I started a PGCE in 2011 and didn’t enjoy it; I didn’t finish the course. There is a massive difference between teaching and tutoring and people often put them in the same bracket. Teaching is an incredibly hard job, shown by the number of people who quit within the first few years. The teaching is a minor part, they have to be crowd control experts first and the amount of paper work is a joke.
A lot of students go to a tutor because their teachers aren’t good enough or they don’t like them. Standing at the front of the class teaching 30 kids is worlds apart from sitting in a room 1 on 1 with a kid who wants to learn. You do not need to be a teacher to do this. In fact, students sometimes prefer to go to someone who is not a teacher. They want to be able to talk to someone without any fear.
Having QTS status does not necessarily mean that that person is any good at teaching, it just means they have completed the course. I’ve seen it so many times. You can get on certain courses even if you don’t have the grades by doing conversion courses. I have met many new primary school teachers who can’t spell or use proper grammar and can’t do long division.
Even worse, I have met many inexperienced secondary teachers who don’t even have good subject knowledge and are asked to teach subjects out with their speciality. The PGCE courses are a money making exercise for that college or University and the supervision can be non existent.
I have tutored some students recently who are going back into education at college and the level of teaching they have been subjected to is abysmal. They are given notes downloaded from a website, in 1 case, not even the correct syllabus. They were being taught by a teacher who isn’t qualified in that subject. Others have been told to just google it! In another case, a girl was paying thousands for a course and was told to google it.
As someone mentioned above, it’s all about providing a range of skills to the student. I believe that I can help a student unravel a topic that has been causing him or her problem for years in an hour.
There will be lots of tutors who aren’t good but equally there are lots who are. And just cutting them off because they don’t have the letters QTS beside their name is foolish. There will be many enthusiastic and good tutors who could help some greatly and it could all be wiped out. Each case is different and should be treated as such.
As soon as the government stick their nose in you can guarantee they’ll make a mess of it. Out of touch.