Field Studies Council response to the Department of Education teacher training plan
In response to the Department for Education's announcement on Initial Teacher Training Strategy Implementation Plan, Dr Steve Tilling, FSC’s Director of Communications, said: “FSC welcomes the attention that the DfE are giving to teacher training and the opportunity for organisations such as ours to work with the new Teaching Schools. However, we remain very concerned that fieldwork and outdoor learning will be neglected in future training. In particular, we believe that the apparent decision to jettison all central government guidance – including the outdoor teaching case studies that exemplify good practice – will lead to a further weakening of fieldwork training.
We have registered previously our disappointment that the proposed new Teacher Training standards to be implemented in 2012 will do little to induce, encourage or support out-of-classroom training. These changes may hasten further the decline of numbers of teachers with the skills to teach outside in subjects such as science and geography.
We urge the government to look again at the Outdoor Science report published earlier this year by the Association for Science Education. This includes several recommendations aligned to teacher training including a strengthening of standards and the creation of outstanding ‘Outdoor Science’ case studies. Without these actions UK science may lose its fieldwork tradition, a point made very strongly in the ASE report by Professor Steve Jones – one of the UK’s foremost scientists."
Department for Education announcement
Department for Education Training Outstanding Teachers
Thursday, November 10, 2011
