Image: WikimediaA new study reveals that 600,000 pupils in England are taught by teachers who are not qualified. Many have reacted with fury – but is this really so bad?
The world is changing – duh!, you probably know that. The era of a job for life is long gone. But the era when we won’t even have a career for life is now upon us. And that means, to flourish in this new era, and enjoy successful careers, you need to be able to adapt, be willing to re-train, to change.
Many say that you will need to be more entrepreneurial.
As Martin Bryant – former editor at Large of The Next Web and now the Community Editor of Tech North, told Fresh Business Thinking: “The idea of being adaptable, resourceful and then the desire to change and keep learning is so important, and that may mean becoming an entrepreneur, but people need that for their careers in general in the 21st century, so I would hope that schools are teaching that as a real skill.”
But teachers can’t teach what they have little first had experience of.
And that means they need support.
How can this be achieved? Ian Merricks, the Managing Partner of Whitehorse Capital says: “A part of the solution must be local community entrepreneurs, outreaching to them, getting them to pop into schools to explain their journey, in a way that makes it seem possible and achievable. Not a ‘super hero’ that ‘I could never be,’ but maybe someone who runs their own business locally and enjoys it.”
The answer then, may not necessarily mean unqualified teachers working full time as teachers, that may indeed be a recipe for disaster. But experienced business people, offloading some of their accumulated knowledge may be exactly what the UK needs.
Full-time unqualified teachers? No!
Support students from a young age, from time to time, with non-qualified people with bucket loads of experience in business and as an entrepreneur? Yes!
