In a rush to fill the teacher of teachers, many countries sacrifice the quality and standard of teachers by hiring people who have not undergone any formal training.” A quality universal primary education will remain a distant dream for millions of children living in countries without enough trained teachers in classrooms, ” said Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO. In a rush to fill the chronic global shortage of teachers, many countries sacrifice the quality and standard of teachers by hiring people who have not undergone any formal training.
Teachers are the crux of any education system. They are the building blocks of our career. A qualified teacher is the most valuable gift a student can get in his or her life. They help us reach our goals. States have worked hard to meet this goal. Despite notable progress and some innovative ideas, there is still more work to be done. One of the greatest challenges is the need to place good teachers in underperforming schools and high-poverty communities.
It goes without a saying that teachers need to be qualified. Teaching is hard but students can be harder. A teacher needs to be aware of the challenges he or she might face in a classroom. Working towards a qualification prepares you for this. It is not fair on the part of the unqualified teacher and their counterparts to hire them without any proof that they can meet a national minimum standard. The number of frontline staff without qualified teaching status (QTS) employed by academies and free schools rose by 2, 600 to nearly 8, 000 – meaning nearly 6% of the 141, 000 full-time teaching staff at both types of school lack teaching accreditation. In contrast, teachers without QTS make up 3.8% of teachers in state-funded schools overall. A recent study states that there is an alarming increase in the number of unqualified teachers all over the world. Job opportunities over the next 10 years have will vary from good to bad Most job openings will result from the need to replace the large number of teachers who are expected to retire. Shortages of qualified teachers will likely continue. As a result, schools will sign teachers from other states and districts with a higher pay.
Teaching is not something that you drift into without fully understanding what you are doing. It is a sheer mistake to think that since you have attended school, you have the experience to become a teacher. Like any other profession, teaching requires a bank of knowledge and skills that cannot just be picked up as you go along. If I go into hospital I want the doctors who treat me to have already completed the training before they turn their attention to my case.
Putting well-intentioned instructors in front of a huge classrooms and tagging them as teachers will do no good to students or even themselves. Teachers, better than anyone else, can relay how teacher shortages and a lack of training are making it just about impossible to deliver a quality education. Training is an evident part of a teacher’s career. During the past 20 years, research has confirmed that a teacher’s effectiveness is the single most important school-related factor associated with a student’s success. Teacher effectiveness can be cultivated through high quality traditional and preparation programs and rigorous state licensure. There are some guidelines one must follow for evaluation of teachers.
