At the Teacher Development Trust our mission is to foster the sorts of powerful professional development that help children succeed and teachers thrive. We know that this happens when teachers are treated as autonomous professionals acting in a collaborative way, investigating and improving their own practice for the benefit for pupils.
In July 2014 we called for government to financially support the set-up of a new ‘Royal’ College of Teaching. We feel now, as we felt then, that until we value, support and accredit the sorts of in-classroom excellence at least as much as we do leadership and management, teaching will never enjoy equal levels of status or success as other professions.
For this reason, TDT has been working hard to initiate and grow the Claim Your College campaign for a new College of Teaching. We have been working in close partnership with the current College of Teachers, the Prince’s Teaching Institute and SSAT in order to produce a new proposal which has been released today (2nd Feb 2015) and submitted to the Department for Education in response to their World Class Teachers consultation.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, with an enormous groundswell of support for the idea of a member-led, independent, voluntary professional body for the teaching profession. There is remarkable alignment between political parties and a willingness across the profession to compromise and unite for the greater good.
Commenting on the release of the proposal our Chief Executive, David Weston, said:
“We are at a crucial moment in the history of the teaching profession, ready to come together to do ever more for the young people in our classrooms. The Claim Your College coalition has received extraordinary interest from the great majority of teachers consulted alongside unions, subject associations, universities, school improvement organisations, third sector organisations and others across the education sector.
It is essential that teachers are at the heart of the College of Teaching. It must be designed, driven and run by teachers and it will only be effective if it is relevant, high-status and provides true professional progression for teachers. By working together as a profession, through this College, we can help every teacher to be continually better at helping the next generation.”
You can read the full proposal, the press release and the growing list of supporters at http://ClaimYourCollege.org
The Trust will also be submitting and publishing our response to the rest of the World Class Teachers consultation paper as well as a separate response on behalf of the CPD providers we work with on our GoodCPDGuide.com database.