Administrators’ body protests against latest government initiative
The Secretary of State for Education has announced a new Masters qualification: the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL), and further steps to strengthen Diplomas and raise school standards.
Now I’ve no problem with that - except that the group of people who really deserve the option to take further courses and qualifications are school administrators. At the moment, while teachers have a whole raft of qualifications available to them, there is but one major programme for admin staff - the National Certificate in Educational Administration.
Plans are afoot to launch a diploma course which follows on from the Cert Ed Admin, but it is some way from completion.
While administrators have just their one course, the secretary of state has recently launched.
• new Extended Diplomas to enrich options for young people and make the new qualifications even stronger;
• an extension of the National Leaders of Education scheme, where strong Heads help other schools, from 120 today to 500 in the next five years;
• a new Transition to Teaching programme backed by top businesses which could recruit hundreds of extra teachers a year with valuable science, technology and engineering experience gained from industry.
• A new Masters qualification specially designed for teachers – the Masters in Teaching and Learning which will roll out the programme mainly to teachers in the first five years of their careers to build on their initial teacher training and induction.
• More experienced teachers will be trained and act as in-school coaches to teachers on the programme.
What is even more of a slap in the face is the fact that the administrators QCA recognised programme is not automatically funded by the TDA, whereas the new courses will be.
The Cert Ed Admin course, which is validated by the Institute of Administrative Management and recognised by the Council for Administration, focusses to a large degree on efficiency in schools, and is indeed the only course that brings the notion of efficiency into education. There’s details on www.admin.org.uk
The SEA which runs the course for administrators is planning to protest to the government about the way administrators are ignored each time such announcements are made.