Open entry for teacher trainees?

Press, 10 March 1988, Page 7

Open entry for teacher trainees?

By

JENNY LONG,

education reporter

Radical changes to primary teacher trainee selection methods have been proposed by Christchurch ’eachers College, after public criticism of the present method.

; The new proposal would givt teacher trainees open entry to college for an ntermediate year, provided they had Sixth Form Certificate in four subjects with grades of five or be ter in each. Trainees would be selected at th 2 end of the intermediate year, said the college's principal. Dr Colin Knight. ( The open entry would replace the interview? and quota system, which meant interviewing all applicants who met the present application qualifications of a Sixth Form Certificate in one or more subjects. I Dr Knight said entry requirements needed to change, to re lect the academic skills, particularly in English ai d mathematics, which trainees required. Members of the Teachers College Council yesterday si pported the proposals. T ley will be forwarded tc the Education Department, which must approve any change. Open entry was seen as

a big change, with implications for staffing, and also for the future of trainees not selected at the! end of their intermediate year. Some members said there should be some cross-crediting ! of results with other tertiary institutions. 1 Too much faith- had been placed in the interview as a method of selection, when its lack of reliability was well known, Dr Knight said. ! ■ "The college receives complaints each year from parents, principals and applicants about unfair discrimination against applicants from particular types of schools.” i Some grounds for concern did exist in that a very low percentage of applicants from single-sex girls' schools or from coeducational schools in lower socio-economic communities were successful last year. Dr Knight said. However, the percentages were only a guide, and a fuller picture would look at the total numbers

of students encouraged by each school to apply. Teachers colleges should be responsible for selecting trainees, rather than Education Boards (for primary trainees) or the Education Department (for secondary and special education trainees), Dr Knight said. “If teachers colleges are to be accountable they must be given authority to select their own trainees," he said; The completely changed selection procedure was not a criticism of selection panels, whose members had done a good job, but was a response to a situation which had been unsatisfactory for some time. Dr Knight said. Many principals were ■unhappy about the amount of time they had to spend writing reports on applicants, and some felt there was little correlation between their assessment of students and selections made by panels.