Head teachers 'should be licensed'

The NASUWTsaid it wants to discuss its proposal with the opposition after Tristram Hunt, Shadow Education Secretary, proposed a new Licence to Practice for the profession.

Chris Keates, the union's General Secretary, said:

"If the proposal for Licence to Practice signals a commitment by a future Labour Government to restore qualified teacher status (QTS) as a requirement for all teachers in state funded schools, to introduce, within a national framework of pay and conditions of service, a contractual entitlement for all teachers to continuing professional development and to re-establish a proper system of professional regulation which ensures that all headteachers have QTS and NPQH and are accredited to lead and manage schools, then this is a basis on which progress could be made.

"These would be important preconditions to introducing a Licence to Practice."

Hunt said: "Just like lawyers and doctors they should have the same professional standing which means relicensing themselves, which means continued professional development, which means being the best possible they can be.

"If you're not a motivated teacher - passionate about your subject, passionate about being in the classroom - then you shouldn't really be in this profession.

"So if you're not willing to engage in relicensing to update your skills then you really shouldn't be in the classroom."

Ms Keates said that head teachers should not be excluded from any new regulation.

"As in medicine, a Licence to Practice in teaching should apply to headteachers and not just teachers, as it does to consultants as well as junior doctors. It should apply to state and independent schools. Doctors in the private sector must also be licenced."

She added: "It is deeply debilitating and demoralising for teachers that any attempt to have a public debate about developing the teaching profession and the quality of teaching inevitably is hijacked by commentators and presented as a system to ‘root out incompetent teachers’ and present our public education system as failing.

"No group of workers, least of all teachers, deserves to be treated in this way. No wonder resignations from the profession are high and recruitment to teacher training is falling."