Oct 2008 21

Illiterate teachers4

The problem with serious deficiencies in an education system persisting over a number of years is that today’s students are tomorrow’s teachers.  Earlier products of our over-centralised education system, controlled by bureaucrats and politicians instead of teachers and parents, are now becoming teachers.  The Times reports that trainee teachers are increasingly failing basic literacy tests:

"Thousands of trainee teachers are struggling to pass literacy tests that require them to spell words such as anxiety, relieved and mathematical.

More than 11,000 trainee teachers, just over a quarter of the annual intake, failed to pass the literacy test last year at their first attempt, an increase of 16 per cent since 2001.

The findings have prompted concern that new teachers may be struggling with the basic skills they will be charged with passing on to pupils."

The question is, how many teachers have slipped through the net and are now passing on innacurate spellings, dubious mathematical techniques and other mistakes to a new generation?

Related Posts

  • MartinW

    And how many journalists misspell ‘inaccurate’? Okay, it was presumably a typographical error, and this is a cheap shot. But unexpected in a piece that criticises teachers’ spelling!

  • Dave Clemo

    We’ve reached the point where these thickos, having been taught by functionally illiterates, don’t know that they can’t read, write, spell, count or think as well as their grandparents.
    Once us olduns are out of the way it will be the blind leading the blind.
    In the country of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Brown? One-eyed?
    AAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

  • Julie Fisk

    I don’t know why this is a surprise. I challenged my son’s secondary school teachers 22 years ago when they decided that “creative writing” was more important than spelling, and advised that the use of the red pen to correct spelling errors damaged pupil’s confidence.
    I actually said that if spelling was no longer important, how soon will it be before we have graduate teachers teaching our children, who are themselves illiterate? Its not rocket science is it?

  • karen

    Unfortunately, literacy deficiencies are not just confined to spelling; many young teachers can’t differentiate (or recognise) the differences between affect/effect, advise/advice, practise/practice and I could go on. Graduates are allowed onto post graduate teaching programs without having GCSE C’s in maths or English. They then hustle at the end of the year with a tutor to help them pass their literacy/numeracy exam. (I’m a secondary school TA).