The Emergency Training Scheme for Teachers: An Adventure in Administration
| Published date | 01 June 1948 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1948.tb02641.x |
| Date | 01 June 1948 |
| Author | M. A. B. Jones |
The Emergency Training
Scheme
for
Teachers
An
Adventure
in
Administration
By
Miss
M.
A.
B.
JONES,
B.A.,
B.Sc.(Econ.).
I
T
was
clear, even in the
years
preceding
1939,
that there must be considerable
extension in the educational field. The war, which brought not only the cessa-
tion of school buildq but destruction
or
damage
to
hundreds
of
schools, a
very substantial diminution of entrants to the teaching profession and a serious
interruption
of
school
work
through raids and evacuations,emphasised the urgency
of reform as early as
1943,
when
a
White Paper was published. Its chief indica-
tions, afterwards carried
into
the
Education
Bill of
1944,
wme these:-cxtended
provision fcr nursery education, the lengthening of school life
for
all children
with the completion
cf
reo:ganisation, together
with
a decrease in the size
of
classes, the introduction of a system
of
compulsory pafi-time education.to eighteen
years, the provision
of
adequate technic4 and adult education facilities, expansion
of the Youth Service and of teacher-training.
Of
these reforms the last was naturally fundamental, since upon
an
extension
of the teacher-training system
all
the rest are essentially dependent. Building
development plans might
ga
forward, and did: but the primary need
was
to
begin upon training new teachers immediately. The existing training mlleges-
limited in number and
in
accomrnodation-could be expanded for a somewhat
larger intake of students, but could not be expected
to
cater for the very
con-
siderable increase that
was
needed. Moreover, this process of training nonnally
took
two
years. Apart frob this, however,
was
a profound feeling, more particu-
larly among Xis Majesty’s Inspectorate, that the teaching
in
the schools was too
limited
in
its objective to keep pace witb the needs of
a
changing world. Some
excellent
Hrork
along new experimen.ta1 lines had been achieved both in schools
and colleges, but the
sum
total was insdcient to revitalise the system
as
a
whole.
A brder vision, the infusion
of
new
life into the traditional
channels,
a
rwolu-
tion
in
teaching methodidl these were necessary
and
were not forthcoming,
while recruitment to the profession came solely
and
directly from the schools
themselves. Moreover, the schools could
not
provide
a
much larger body
of
young
recruits to the profession. The numbers
in
the seventeeneighteen age groups
were diminishing (a result
of
the depression years
of
the nineteen-twenties and
nineteen-thirties),
and
the opportunities
of
other work both for boys and
girls
had increased and were often more attractive. For all these reasons, a bold
decision was therefore taken: to establish an emergency training scheme which
would draw from oldec age-groups who,
though
perhaps lacking
in
formal academic
background,
might
bring a wealth
of
experience from other fields, and to make
the
training
course shorter
and
more extensive.
The
decision
was
made prac-
ticable by new salary scales and the wider adcption
of
the principle of offering
increments for service considered valuable, which had long operated in the
technical teaching world. And since
so
many of the new trainees would obviously
come directly from the forces, the service increTents which would accrue
to
the
returning teacher cou!d also be applied to the new entrant, and the full cost of
training, including adequate maintenance grants to students, might be met as part
of
the normal post-war opportunities
to
be dfered
PO
ex-service personnel.
92
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