Pupils to assist in teacher recruitment?
The children’s commissioner for England has said that more schools should involve pupils when it comes to recruiting new teachers.
A survey has revealed that 87% of children feel they know what makes a good teacher and two-thirds would like to be more involved in the recruiting process. Despite these figures, at the moment only 18% of pupils are reported to be involved when a new teacher is selected for their school.
Those in favour of pupils playing a more active role in teacher recruitment argue that young people are a school’s customers and see lots of different teaching styles over the course of their education. Taking this into consideration, it makes sense to make use of this experience when recruiting staff.
However, groups who are opposed to putting pupils on the interview panel fear that this would undermine the authority of teachers and think it’s another example of how teachers are given fewer rights simply because they work with children.
If students did become part of the recruiting process, it has been assured that they will be given proper training and support and it would be less about putting them in charge and more about simply bringing a different and valuable point of view to the process.
Do you think that involving pupils in the process of recruiting teachers will help schools to find quality staff or will this move completely undermine the authority of teachers?
Quite right too – of course they should be involved. we also train groups of children to observe current teachers’ lessons and give feedback. Those who ‘fear that this would undermine the authority of teachers and think it’s another example of how teachers are given fewer rights simply because they work with children’ simply do not understand that Trust and respect must underpin education.
The question is posed wrongly. I don’t believe that either statement is true. Pupils will not help school find quality staff. Their involvement in recruitment need not undermine the authority of teachers. The authority of teachers is undermined much more by crass, stupid and even dishonest senior management and by politicians, most of whom wouldn’t touch a state school with a bargepole. An interesting point was made recently that when wars go wrong we do not hear politicians berating soldiers – why is it different in education.
For further information, we created a Poll on our facebook page with the same question in mind: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eteach/125298134985