Teach 'n' Learn: A plan made in America

A bold US initiative has persuaded thousands of graduates to put their careers on hold and teach for two years. A similar plan is starting here. Will it reduce shortages? Nicholas Pyke reports

We have already copied their magnet schools for inner-city teenagers and their Head Start programme for deprived toddlers. Now the Americans are inspiring a scheme aimed at one of the most basic problems of all – the shortage of teachers in troubled urban areas.

We have already copied their magnet schools for inner-city teenagers and their Head Start programme for deprived toddlers. Now the Americans are inspiring a scheme aimed at one of the most basic problems of all – the shortage of teachers in troubled urban areas.

Over the past decade, Teach for America has persuaded thousands of college graduates to postpone careers in the private sector to spend two years working in some of their country's toughest schools. It has been successful in making it cool to go into the public sector, and thousands of bright young people have flocked into teaching. Next month will see the launch of a British version, which until now has been called Teach for London. Its backers say they will persuade 250 graduates to spend six to eight weeks of their next summer holiday training to be teachers. In September 2003, they will begin a two-year contract in a London secondary school.

Although it is yet to gain the formal approval of the Government's Teacher Training Agency, there is no doubt that the scheme will go ahead. After all, the Department for Education and Skills has already agreed to fund half the start-up costs, including the expense of training and supporting the graduates.

The plan has been dreamed up by two influential business lobbies, London First and Business in the Community (BITC) – one of Prince Charles's charities – along with McKinsey & Company, the management consultants. It had backing from Stephen Timms when he was schools minister. And his fellow members on the initial steering committee included Andrew Adonis, head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, David Puttnam, chair of the General Teaching Council, and David Bell, the new Chief Inspector of Schools. The London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, and the capital's local education authorities were represented. Even Rona Kiley, the wife of the capital's American transport tsar, Bob Kiley, is involved as London First's manager of business and education.

Everyone is clear that an effective initiative is badly needed. The capital remains desperately short of teachers, despite an apparent improvement in the vacancy rate. William Atkinson, head of Phoenix High in Hammersmith, one of the boroughs taking an interest, has identified recruitment as the single biggest problem that he faces. At the moment he has eight vacancies in a staff of 45. Last year, he was short of 15. He believes that getting bright graduates into school, even for a short time, is a good move.

But the initiative raises some interesting questions, not least because it appears to cut across the Government's struggling Fast Track graduate-recruitment scheme. Formally introduced two years ago, this was an eye-catching attempt to introduce an A-stream of bright graduate teachers who would move straight into inner-city schools on good salaries. In theory it should have accounted for five per cent of recruitment; in practice, interest has been weak. As a result, the training costs for those taking part are around £50,000 a head rather than the £4,000 average.

The new scheme may well suffer from the same lack of interest, particularly given the strength of the South-east economy. This is a concern acknowledged by McKinsey's consultants in its confidential report for London First and the BITC. They were also worried that London's commercial sector might not be willing to pay the £1m or so that they think the scheme requires. Business has been notably cautious about putting money behind officially sponsored education wheezes in the past.

"This scheme has some novel features, such as providing the training during the summer break, which I have long advocated," says Professor John Howson, an educational statistician and recruitment analyst. "That said, it's totally untried in this country. The crucial factor will be who they get to run it. It needs to be someone who understands business and understands the teaching market." He points out that, if the scheme succeeds, a sudden injection of 500 new teachers into the market will be a major commercial concern for the teacher supply agencies that keep London's education system afloat. The schools chosen to take part will be those with a third or more of their pupils on free school meals.

So far it has been welcomed by the head-teacher organisations, which were, wisely, invited to help draw up the scheme. "We're giving it strong support," says John Dunford, General Secretary of the Secondary Heads Association. "They're following the US model, but not slavishly. The situation for teacher recruitment in London is such that a scheme like this is very welcome."

There are similar sentiments from the rival National Association of Head Teachers. "There's a great deal of goodwill behind it," says General Secretary David Hart. "But like all these things we need to be aware of its limitations as well as its potential. If we manage to give graduates a fulfilling experience of teaching in schools serving the most deprived areas, it would be daft not to support such a scheme. But it is by no means a substitute for the need to recruit and retain teachers on a long-term basis. The Government is not off the hook."

There is plenty of hard work to be done before the July launch, and a number of questions to be answered. It is not yet clear, for example, who will be doing the training. Senior figures from London's Institute of Education are mentioned, but officially the institute is described as just one of a number of organisations bidding for the work. It is not yet known how much the trainees will be paid, although it is likely to be between £16,000 and £20,000 a year, depending partly on the view of the classroom unions. Then, surprisingly, it needs a name. Despite some early publicity, it will not be called Teach for London because, for reasons they haven't explained publicly, the Teach for America people don't want their brand associated with the British venture.

Most important of all, London First and BITC have to persuade Britain's graduates that a spell in the classroom is fun, and that it can be a real professional benefit afterwards – something that the government's multi-million pound advertising budget has so far failed to get across.

"We're going to give them the tools and support to make a real difference in the lives of disadvantaged children. They will have real responsibility," says Brett Wigdortz, the former McKinsey consultant who will eventually be the chief executive when the scheme gets a name. Who knows, they may even decide to be teachers for life.

The American Dream: A combination of altruism and self-interest

By Jon Marcus

Instead of using the business degree he received last month from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, to find a high-paying corporate job, Jason Merker has signed up to work for Teach For America, agreeing to spend at least two years teaching low-income, inner-city elementary students in Washington, DC.

"This just felt right," Merker told an American news magazine. "And the skills are extremely transferable, whether I'm coming up with different ways to teach kids how to read or coming up with different solutions for a consulting client."

This combination of altruism and self-interest is the basis for Teach For America, which has placed 8,000 bright young US university graduates in 524 urban and rural schools that traditionally have a tough time finding good teachers. In exchange, they get grants to supplement their teaching salaries, free training, waivers from traditional teacher certification requirements, and nearly $10,000 toward repaying the loans they took out to pay for university tuition.

Eighty-eight per cent of these participants complete their two-year commitment, though fewer than half continue to work as teachers after that commitment ends. Even this is considered a success, however, at a time when the United States is facing a projected need for 2.7 million new teachers over the next 10 years.

The shortage of qualified teachers is most pronounced in high-poverty urban and rural districts, and is blamed for a growing achievement gap between low-income and high-income students. Nine-year-olds in low-income areas in the United States are already as much as four grade levels behind 9-year-olds in high-income areas in reading ability, and are seven times less likely to graduate from college.

Teach For America was dreamt up by a Princeton University senior named Wendy Kopp in 1989 in response to these inequities. Her idea was underwritten by private corporations, foundations and the government, and in its first year recruited 500 recent graduates. This autumn, Teach For America will place a record 1,700 new teachers culled from 14,000 applicants.

Many of these applicants admit that they were motivated more by the estimated 36.4 per cent decline in the hiring of university graduates in other fields than by any particular urge to teach. But whatever their incentive for joining the programme, Teach For America recruits have generally been highly rated.

A recent Stanford University study, for example, found that students taught by Teach For America recruits in Houston did slightly better at mathematics and in reading exercises than students taught by other new teachers.

"Of course, as with any programme, there have been some TFA recruits that did not perform well in the classroom, and this is likely to continue," the report said. However, "the highest-performing teachers were consistently TFA teachers, and the lowest-performing teachers were consistently not TFA teachers".

In a separate survey of principals in schools with Teach For America recruits, 65 per cent said that having the recruits was advantageous, 77 per cent said the recruits were above average in their effectiveness as teachers, and 92 per cent said the recruits had had a positive effect on students. But many also complained about the number of recruits who quit when their two-year commitment was completed.

education@independent.co.uk