Government proposals will allow teachers without formal qualifications to work in academies. With more than 20 such schools already in the county and more set to make the switch, it would lead to a dramatic shake-up in the profession. Andy Lutwyche, a maths teacher at Worthing High School, which is set to become an academy in the autumn, argues that the policy will affect the morale and quality of teaching – with students ultimately the ones losing out.

Last week Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Schools, announced that new academies and free schools could employ “unqualified” teachers, or those without QTS (Qualified Teacher Status), with existing academies able to apply to do the same.

Private or public schools have always been able to do this.

Teaching unions have been up in arms, as have many teachers, who both understandably feel threatened by this move. Unions exist to protect their members’ interests and teachers can only see this as an attack on the profession and potentially their livelihoods.

Teachers can’t really be blamed for fearing the worst as almost every week there is a new story belittling the profession.

With this government’s seemingly single-minded policy of saving money in evidence whatever the cost, the big issue here is that the children of Britain’s education are potentially threatened by this move.

As someone who has QTS, having done a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) more moons ago than I care to remember, and currently a mentor of student teachers this is a major worry for me too.

I’ve benefitted from having seen both sides of the story due to attending public school and therefore having been taught by excellent, unqualified practitioners. The issue here though is that the intakes of state funded schools compared to privately funded schools are completely different, Mr Gove and his Department for Education (DfE) colleagues seem oblivious to this.

A small class of motivated children at public school will be far more compliant than a large class of children with varying degrees of motivation.

Most teachers, whether qualified or not, have a passion for their subject -–that’s why they have chosen to do the job.

What the year-long PGCE course that leads to qualification does is train potential teachers in how to get their passion for a subject and learning across to a classroom full of children in a calm and safe environment, allowing the trainee to discover whether the job is for them.

Reaching potential

In my role as a mentor for trainee teachers, subject knowledge rarely crops up in conversation. The crucial part of teacher training is learning and developing strategies to manage and enthuse a class alongside structuring a lesson ensuring every child reaches their potential.

What teachers find insulting from the Department For Education is that there seems to be total denial that teaching is a skilled profession at all – in fact the lack of training that’s being encouraged actually suggests that teaching is not a profession at all.

The argument that people could learn on the job seems to ignore the issue that the classes being taught whilst the “teachers” learn how to teach will lose out, and nobody wants that for their child.

What could be even more worrying is that this could be seen as a green light for academies and free schools to save money by employing unqualified teachers. Academies have always tempted “excellent” teachers with the promise of increased wages, but as the Department For Education has recently announced, there is no extra money for academies.

The fact is that some academies have had to pay money back to the government, with many others having funding requests for desperately needed building work turned down recently.

How some teachers fear that this will be circumvented is that savings could be made by “losing” an expensive, qualified teacher, and replacing them with a cheap, unqualified teacher, thereby freeing up funds to tempt in an excellent practitioner - robbing Peter to pay Paul as the saying goes.

This is fine if your child’s teacher is the “excellent” one, but you’d be pretty miffed if they got the unqualified one wouldn’t you?

Recruiting the best people for the job is paramount, and those with the best qualifications don’t always make the best teachers, the danger being that they struggle to empathise with a child who doesn’t understand or love their subject.

There’s also the fact that those the government are targeting for teaching may not be prepared to take the inevitable drop in salary that would come with a move from industry to teaching. What could actually happen is that mediocre scientists, engineers and musicians who have no teacher training are employed as teachers, and how would that be a step forward?

I have no problem with the policy if the right people are employed after its implementation, but even the supporters admit that there are teething problems when employing unqualified teachers.

Deflating morale

With smaller and generally better behaved classes, these are far easier to cope with. I haven’t even mentioned the Government White Paper (written by the DfE) from 2010 cited by Professor Chris Husbands from the Institute of Education at London University, who stated in his blog (http://ioelondonblog.wordpress.com/) that this decision to not make QTS mandatory for all teachers in state funded schools “flies in the face of evidence nationally and internationally”.

Whether academies go down the route of employing unqualified teachers or not, this is the latest in a series of DfE announcements that deflates teacher morale, and this cannot fail to manifest itself in the classroom.

A teacher with high morale will undoubtedly deliver consistently better lessons than a demoralised one.