appendix i

APPENDIX I: Gale Group Encyclopaedia of Education (www. 1999) states:

60 “Critics who observe teacher training note the relative ease of acceptance into American universities. In most industrialized countries of western Europe and Japan, high school students must pass one or more difficult, highly competitive examinations to be granted entrance to the university system. These exams are much more rigorous than anything American students must pass, and they determine at a quite young age whether a student has the intellectual skills necessary for college entrance. In the United States, on the other hand, many state-funded universities have open admissions policies, which basically means that if you have a high school diploma you can be admitted to the university. While this attitude follows the American ideal of equality of opportunity and strikes many people as a more just and humane system, it produces high school and college graduates with minimal reading and writing skills. This system also produces a large number of college drop-outs.”

61 “Almost no states require, for instance, that science teachers have advanced degrees in science. Some people have even suggested that teachers be required to have a degree in the subject they teach along with their teaching degree.”

The British Government already requires trainees to have academic degrees and states in their publication ‘Routes into Teaching’:

“To be eligible for an ITT 1 programme , you’ll need to complete a degree (or equivalent) either before, or as part of, your training. You'll also need GCSE 2 English and mathematics (or equivalent). If you were born on or after 1st September 1979, you’ll also need GCSE science. In addition, ITT providers will want you to demonstrate that you’ve had some relevant experience with children.”

In Britain, you may also be working in a school already, as a seconded specialist and an ITT will train you on the job. The government states:
“Once you’ve found a school willing to take you, you complete your individual training in preparation for a final, independent assessment. If the assessor is satisfied you have reached the standard required and, in England only from May 2001, passed all required skills tests, you will be awarded QTS 3.”

62 “The Learning and Teaching Operational Plan 1999 (LTOP 1999) Monash University, Australia. Courses of teaching must take into account the developing globalisation of education, rapid advances in information and communications technology, government de-regulation, new labour-market needs, and growing diversity in the student population.”

63 "30 years ago, education was a much more simple issue, and the purpose of schools was very clear,'' says Professor Gunstone, now the acting dean of Monash University's faculty of education. ``For most people, it was preparation for university.”

64 “Professor Richard Bates, Deakin University's dean of education, says, “teachers can no longer just pass on knowledge”. Twenty years ago there used to be fairly simple parameters and agreed bodies of knowledge - everyone knew what English was, what history was, what race they belonged to. But the boundaries are becoming incredibly uncertain.''
65 Emeritus Professor Hedley Beare, who helped draft the National Education Assembly Declaration in Australia, has also recently published a text, ‘Creating the Future’. In it he writes:
“There is always, especially among parents, a kind of nostalgia for the schooling which seemed to serve them so well when they were young, but which now belongs to an outmoded paradigm. In the future, most teachers will set themselves up in professional companies and contract their services out to the school [a further development of the school of specialists!] ... So the teacher becomes a kind of educational mentor, rather than the person who knows everything... it is funny, we still perpetuate the notion that there is a teacher in front of a class who is wise, and there is a group of students who are ignorant, and it is a transfer of knowledge from the wise to the ignorant. But that doesn't prevail any more...”

66 Dr. Ken Rowe, from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). He found that:
“59% of the variation in student’s learning outcomes was due to the quality of teaching. Teachers make the difference. (ACER 2001)”