Let teenagers train to be teachers on the job as soon as they leave school, say heads: Proposals to let 18-year-olds be apprentices in the classroom

This is back to the future.  Teaching skills were normally acquired in this way in C19

Heads are to lobby the government to allow teenagers to train as teachers on the job as soon as they leave school. The Teaching Schools Council wants the first teaching apprenticeship scheme for 18-year-olds, which would see them go straight into the classroom.

Currently, all teachers must either have a general degree or a specific teaching qualification – but school leaders say this may be locking out disadvantaged youngsters.

The scheme could see the trainees teaching in the classroom alongside experienced qualified teachers, as teaching assistants currently do.

The training would allow A-level students to join the profession without going to university, but would result in a degree qualification and qualified teaching status.

Supporters said yesterday it would help youngsters in deprived areas who want to become teachers but do not want to amass student debt by gaining a degree.

Teaching Schools Council member Stephen Munday, who is chief executive of Cambridgeshire’s Cam Academy Trust, told the Times Educational Supplement that the apprenticeship may recruitment in more disadvantaged areas.

He said: ‘I can see how for some parts of the country this could be a very positive route-way for youngsters who might not necessarily take seriously the possibility of a degree.

‘And for schools where recruiting is tough, they would see it as a positive. ‘There is a serious win-win here.’

The apprenticeship would be the first school-based teacher training route available to participants straight after A levels.

If given the go-ahead, the new apprenticeship scheme would mean that prospective teachers could be paid while they trained and worked towards a degree, which would drive down the cost burden of qualification.

Earlier this month, Department for Education figures revealed that the proportion of students qualifying for free school meals who had gone on to university had started to fall after tuition fees were tripled to £9,000 a year in 2013-14.

The apprenticeship is expected to be submitted for government approval next month by a partnership of training providers led by the Teaching Schools Council.

Sir Andrew Carter, chief executive of South Farnham School in Surrey, who is leading the apprenticeship bid on behalf of the council, said: ‘There seems to be a great appetite for some apprenticeship route into teaching. ‘About 50 schools have contacted me – some are teaching schools representing alliances.’

A teaching assistant apprenticeship is already being developed but this would be the first apprenticeship for teachers.

Schools could apply for funding from the apprenticeship levy introduced next year to help pay for the training under the scheme. Schools would have to pay for the salaries for their apprentices.

Details of classroom responsibilities for the proposed apprenticeships have yet to be drawn up.

But Sir Andrew said that an apprentice should work alongside a teacher, as teaching assistants do. Once they gained experience, they could take lessons under supervision as with other trainee teachers. ‘It will be an all-graduate profession,’ he said. ‘It won’t change that, but some could join at different points.

‘This is meant to be an additional route into teaching. ‘It is not intended to replace current routes into teaching. ‘It is meant to make a route in for different people, for some people who need to work.

‘There are no students loans involved in this.

‘Schools will need to recognise the apprentice route will brings some costs, but the benefits are that it will bring in employees a little earlier than perhaps before who could work at an apprentice level in the school.’

A Department for Education spokesperson said: ‘All new training routes go through a process to ensure they are of the highest quality and we will consider any submission made by the Teaching Schools Council with this in mind.’

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More students nationwide are learning the PC version of Islam

In May, the Philadelphia School District announced it would be adding two Muslim holidays — Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha — to the school calendar, making the district one of a growing number in the nation to recognize Muslim holidays.

A member of the Philadelphia Eid Coalition, a political action committee whose stated mission is to convince the district to declare these holidays official religious holidays, said Philadelphia’s move will “validate our young Muslim students” and prevent them from “hav[ing] to choose between education and religion.”

Her words are particularly ironic, given the organized and concerted effort to validate Islam in American schools — at the expense of truth. Indeed, the Institute on Religion and Civic Values (formerly the Council on Islamic Education) — which has reviewed world history textbooks for more than 20 years — made no secrets about its wish to foment a “bloodless” cultural revolution through promoting Islam via textbooks and, as the Middle Eastern Forum reported, “warn[ing] scholars and public officials who do not sympathize with its requests that they will be perceived as racists, reactionaries, and enemies of Islam.”

The organization boasts that its “reviews have helped improve the coverage and framing of complex topics.” Substitute “fictionalize” for “improve,” and this becomes pretty accurate.

Joy Pullman reports, for example, that an Ohio mother plans to excuse her child from a world history class requirement that he recite the shahada, a Muslim conversion prayer. (The Christian conversion prayer is in a subsequent class — just kidding.) And when that mother requested an independent review of the district’s textbooks, reviewers found blatant errors including a claim that Muslims historically “practiced religious tolerance” by merely levying an extra tax on Christians and Jews. The book conveniently left out that if Christians and Jews didn’t fork over the tax, they could lose their heads. Tolerance, indeed. Did Christianity and Judaism receive similar classroom time? Take a guess.

Last year, we noted that a school in Tennessee was teaching the Five Pillars of Islam during a world religion study, again without similar balance.

Citizens for National Security, an independent textbook reviewer, has also noted pretty hefty lies in textbooks, including teaching that “war broke out” between Palestinians and Israelis. Yep, they were all peacefully chatting over tea and war just “broke out.” Never mind well-documented Palestinian aggression.

Indeed, earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal noted parents' growing concern over “what they see as an overly benign depiction of [Islam].” For example, the Journal points to one textbook used in 30 of Tennessee’s 140 school districts that teaches that Islam expanded via conquest but also “spread peacefully” in many places. The textbook also notes Muslims' “religious toleration” toward Jews and Christians aided in Islam’s expansion. The 1.5 million Armenians slaughtered by Muslims during the Armenian Genocide must have missed out on this “tolerance.” Versions of this same textbook are used nationwide.

That’s not to say every school is promoting Islam. Some, as Pullman also notes, are pretty much pretending religion doesn’t exist altogether. The National Association of Scholars recently issued a review of the College Board’s new AP European history standards (APEH). Among the conclusions: APEH “warps and guts the history of Europe to make it serve today’s progressive agenda,” “presents religion throughout as an instrument of power rather than as an autonomous sphere of European history,” and “points the arrow of European history toward a well-governed, secular welfare state, whose interchangeable subjects possess neither national particularity nor faith nor freedom.”

In other words, the standards discount religion from playing a motivating factor in pivotal events of history such as the Holocaust (for evil) or abolition (for good).

It’s no secret government schools have long been indoctrinating students into the religion of the state. Before parents continue to claim that the problem may be real but their local school is “different,” they’d be wise to note just how organized and systematic the indoctrination has become.

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Private school BANS parents from delivering forgotten lunches or books - in a viral post that's dividing the internet

A private catholic school in the US is facing a social media storm after it issued a ban on parents bringing forgotten lunches in for their children.

Catholic High School for Boys, in North Little Rock, Arkansas, shared a photo of its own door sign on August 10 to Facebook, which reads: 'If you are dropping off your son's forgotten lunch, books, homework, equipment etc., please TURN AROUND and exit the building. Your son will learn to problem-solve in your absence.'

The post has since gained more than 70,000 'likes' and more than 3,600 comments with some applauding the school - which educates boys aged between 14 and 18 - for teaching students 'autonomy' and others accusing the $4,400-a-year school of 'starving' them.

The school's principal Steve Straessle told FEMAIL: 'We have had zero complaints from Catholic High parents because they know, on campus, their sons have every tool necessary to solve the problems listed on the sign. 'The policy is still in place. The sign is still in place.'

And one student, Patrick Wingfield, tod Arkansas Matters: 'It makes me think for myself and not rely on other people to do things for me. And if I make a mistake, I need to learn from it and try to fix it.'

But the new rule has social media divided.

One woman, Dani Leppo, commented: 'Because starving your children is a great way to enhance their educational development. Jesus would definitely tell your hungry child to "problem solve" his way out of it. Hypocrites.'

And a teacher, Fred Simpkins, concurred, stating: 'I totally disagree with this [...] I'd be pretty upset if I was paying a lot of money for my child to have a private school education and wasn't allowed to bring him/her something he/she forgot. I'm a teacher and guess what folks? I FORGET THINGS TOO!'

Others, however, took the opposite stance.

Tom Massmann wrote: 'Teach your high school kid a little self-sufficiency. Can't believe people are actually upset about this sign.'

And Joani Matthews remarked: 'OMG this says it is a Catholic High School for boys not an elementary school, not first grade, this is a high school for boys.

Catholic High School charges $4,400 per year in tuition fees for Catholics and $5,400 per year for boys of other faith traditions. Registration, class and book fees range from $300 to $600 each year.

In 1999, former president Bill described its principal, Fr George Tribou, as 'the best educator in my home state, if not the whole country.'

Its students performed well above the national average in its SAT scores last year; 24.9 versus the country's average of 20.

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