When people sign up for formal teacher training in Singapore, they’re treated from the start as paid professionals and not unpaid trainees, and “that has been working really well for us,” said Siew Hoong Wong, Director of Schools at Singapore’s Ministry of Education, addressing the third day of the “Teacher Quality” conference in Helsinki, sponsored by the Pearson Foundation and the Council of Chief State School Officers.All teacher trainees are given full pay as a “serving officer” while they are in training, and after they begin teaching they get rewarded with performance-based pay. “We tell teachers: ‘When you join us, you can grow with us professionally,’” he said, because the country wants teachers to “look forward to a rewarding profession for 30 or 40 years without getting jaded.” As part of that, teachers for the past two years have received a three-month sabbatical after finishing six years of teaching, a measure he described as costly but important.
In Hong Kong, one of the biggest issues in education is a lack of trust including between teachers and parents, said Magdalena Mok, a professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. This has been caused in part by the closure of many schools due to the territory’s low birth rate, leading to job insecurity for teachers and administrators. There were 717 schools in 2003, and that number had been reduced to 500 by 2008, she told the conference.
One of the themes of the conference’s third day was striking the right balance between accountability and trust, after delegates heard how Finland – which ranks high in international comparisons – has given plenty of leeway to its teachers. “What is the tipping point between freedom and accountability?” asked Patricia Wright, Superintendent of Public Instruction at Virginia’s Department of Education. “I believe in accountability, but if we’ve got highly qualified teachers we need to trust them to do what they were hired to do.” She also discussed how Virginia faces a challenge to teach English to a growing population of non-native English speakers; students needing such instruction were once largely located in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., but are now spread throughout the state.
R.D. Sahay of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development said his country has close to 1 million teachers, is making efforts to increase funding for education as a percent of gross domestic product, and has set a goal of universal primary education in 2010. Yet he said India faces a big issue of inadequate physical infrastructure for education, including poor roofs on school buildings and inadequate toilet and drinking-water facilities in schools. This helps contribute to a large absentee rate among both teachers and students.
Finland has a long tradition of in-service training for teachers, and invests about 30 million euros a year for it, said Kristina Volmari of the Finnish National Board of Education. Yet the government has drawn up plans to invest another 8 million euros a year in this program, because it has found that only 70% of teachers and principals participate regularly – and an even smaller proportion in northern Finland – partly because they have to travel large distances for such training. If located too far away, such training is too expensive for municipalities because of the cost of transport and lodging for educators who attend.
Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, outlined how quality teaching depends on many factors, as shown by the conference discussions so far. He discussed his previous administrative roles at both a top-performing school district in Virginia and a troubled one in New York, and cited the contrast in several areas including parent involvement, quality of facilities and attractiveness to top teachers.
“It’s the totality of all these factors that make the difference, not just one,” he said.
One of the themes of the conference’s third day was striking the right balance between accountability and trust, after delegates heard how Finland – which ranks high in international comparisons – has given plenty of leeway to its teachers. “What is the tipping point between freedom and accountability?” asked Patricia Wright, Superintendent of Public Instruction at Virginia’s Department of Education. “I believe in accountability, but if we’ve got highly qualified teachers we need to trust them to do what they were hired to do.” She also discussed how Virginia faces a challenge to teach English to a growing population of non-native English speakers; students needing such instruction were once largely located in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., but are now spread throughout the state.
R.D. Sahay of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development said his country has close to 1 million teachers, is making efforts to increase funding for education as a percent of gross domestic product, and has set a goal of universal primary education in 2010. Yet he said India faces a big issue of inadequate physical infrastructure for education, including poor roofs on school buildings and inadequate toilet and drinking-water facilities in schools. This helps contribute to a large absentee rate among both teachers and students.
Finland has a long tradition of in-service training for teachers, and invests about 30 million euros a year for it, said Kristina Volmari of the Finnish National Board of Education. Yet the government has drawn up plans to invest another 8 million euros a year in this program, because it has found that only 70% of teachers and principals participate regularly – and an even smaller proportion in northern Finland – partly because they have to travel large distances for such training. If located too far away, such training is too expensive for municipalities because of the cost of transport and lodging for educators who attend.
Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, outlined how quality teaching depends on many factors, as shown by the conference discussions so far. He discussed his previous administrative roles at both a top-performing school district in Virginia and a troubled one in New York, and cited the contrast in several areas including parent involvement, quality of facilities and attractiveness to top teachers.
“It’s the totality of all these factors that make the difference, not just one,” he said.
Small world...I just found out this evening that my second cousin, Paavo Rantanen, knew Kirsi from his years on the Nokia board, and helped Henna get elected to the Parliament, where she served before being named Minister of Education.
ReplyDeleteSusan Badger