As head of English at a very large secondary school in Kent, I welcome the desire to improve the core standards in literacy and numeracy of teachers.
The report went on to warn that children struggling to keep up faced an almost exclusive diet of literacy and numeracy, citing one teacher who said: "These children are pulled out of broad curriculum subjects to try to close the gap.
The MPs welcomed ministers' plans for tougher literacy and numeracy tests for teacher training candidates but said this should not be at the expense of good personal skills.
One teacher training day a year will focus on literacy and numeracy assessment for all teachers.
The current tests were introduced between 2000 and 2003, amid concerns about the standard of teachers' literacy, numeracy and ICT.
Mathematics education never succumbed to such fads perhaps because few of the trendiest educationalists were much good at the subject.The real barrier may be teachers' lack of numeracy.
Among those set to lose their jobs were literacy, numeracy, IT, arts and music teachers, Long said, as well as senior education officer roles, which he said were similar to the position of a school principal.
In contrast, teachers who ranked Numeracy and Literacy (Reading and Writing) as the top learning areas were more inclined towards traditional or adult-directed beliefs.
Pairwise comparisons (Wilcoxon Signed-ranks test) did not reveal any difference for teachers' rankings between Numeracy (Mdn = 5) and Aesthetics and Creative Expression (Mdn = 6), [Z = 1.21, p > .05], and between Numeracy (Mdn = 5) and Discovery of the World (Mdn = 5), [Z = 1.17, p > .05].
Percentage targets for literacy, numeracy, life skills and – crucially – teacher training will be set when the sustainable development agenda is formally adopted in September.
