The class of 2010.
One of the frequent complaints of the teaching profession is that they are trying to communicate with large classes comprised of pupils who have a wide variety of different languages as a first language.
You might imagine that they would welcome the provision of one-to-one tuition using teachers who possibly share the same first language as the pupil in specialist subjects such as mathematics.
Their first objection seems to be based around the fact that it is the private sector which is making this additional tutoring available.
“This idea stinks. It is all about a private sector company making money out of UK education.”
– Surely teachers are themselves ‘making money’ out of UK education, they don’t provide their teaching services for free do they?
Then we get the predictable ‘someone has nicked me job’ whine…..
“I’m a fully qualified primary school teacher, with years of experience, who has specialised in Maths support and who was made redundant. I’m now considering relocating to New Zealand so I think you can imagine how I feel about this.”
– Perhaps you didn’t want to work in Islington where there was a vacancy for a one to one maths support teacher?
But the real invective is reserved for their final complaint.
“The ethical issue is whether one can hire teachers for salaries and working conditions which would under no circumstances be acceptable in UK.”
Now we get to the nitty-gritty – for you see these graduate mathematicians, security checked, all with teaching experience are sitting 4,000 miles away in India, and the pupils communicate with them via headset and computer. All of the tutors are trained in the English maths curriculum at key stages 2, 3 and 4. The service can be tailored to each child as the teacher sees fit, and each session is supervised giving the teacher control.
The service, which is called BrightSpark Education, and was set up by UK- based entrepreneur Tom Hooper. His company employs more than 100 Indian-based tutors full time, all of which are maths graduates with teaching experience, and each tutor undergoes security checks.
That has terrified the teaching profession – they see their jobs going the same way as call centres – and for the same reasons; qualified, motivated employees who take a pride in their job for a fraction of the price demanded by English teachers.
Nor is it just maths tuition:
Homework is the latest activity to be swept up in a global outsourcing craze, with hundreds of pupils studying with online tutors half a world away in India. And firms from the subcontinent say Britain is next.
Propelled by the same forces driving India’s computing and call centre success – abundant highly-educated English-speaking workers, rock-bottom wages and technology that makes global collaboration easier – Indian firms are grabbing a slice of America’s lucrative private tutoring market.
Growing Stars, based in California, trains its 40 tutors in Cochin, south-west India – near Bangalore, hub of India’s outsourcing industry – in US culture, giving them elocution lessons to “neutralise” their British English and help them adjust to Yankee accents, said chief executive Bijou Mathew. The tutors – mostly qualified teachers with masters degrees – greet students with a perky “How are you?” – even though it may be the middle of the night for them.
If you read the original articles, you will note that not one of the complaining teachers has cited any disadvantage to the pupils, it is just reasons why they should be permitted to retain their stranglehold on young minds….
Could this be why?
The number of new teachers who fail to find permanent work after completing initial training has more than doubled in just one year, official figures have revealed. More than half – 52 per cent – of the 33,350 newly qualified teachers who finished training in 2009 had not started their induction years by the end of March 2010.
That is tax payer’s money that has been training those teachers – if there are not jobs for them, and if Indian maths tutors can do such an excellent job at £12 an hour – why are we paying to train the militant English version?
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1
October 4, 2010 at 13:27 -
“That is tax payer’s money that has been training those teachers – if there are not jobs for them, and if Indian maths tutors can do such an excellent job at £12 an hour – why are we paying to train the militant English version?”
I wonder if any of them would be enterprising enough to look outside the state and set up their own schools. The chances are slim though. They will have been taught to be as reliant on the state as any pupil is.
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October 4, 2010 at 15:18 -
great article. Outsourcing is hardly going to really impinge upon the mainstream teaching in the Uk for a long while yet as the technology for videoconference is still too expensive.
In the meantime, this will be the ‘worst’ that teachers can expect. Witht he huge number of teachers to each vacancy if this was the private sector we could expect to see median salaries fall…somehow i can’t see the unions allowing such horrible, dirty ‘market’ activity. -
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October 4, 2010 at 21:12 -
I accidently had quite a bit of involvement on the ‘free schools’ thingy that Gove churned out and whilst it’s defo back of a fag packet stuff, the NUT never once mentioned kids in the 6 or 7 meetings I had with them. Hmm, odd?
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October 4, 2010 at 21:15 -
Very ironic really…
Serves them right for blindly voting in their Fabian Masters time after time. We wouldn’t have this problem (not to this extent anyway) but for the Socialists allowing unchecked mass Third World immigration.
He! he! he! Stupid short sighted b*stards. -
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October 5, 2010 at 13:09 -
I just caught some of the education bits at the Tory conference on the telly. They wheeled on a pretty young black inner city headtecher. She told the conference attendees how she was your typical lefty, oxbridge, Marxism Today reading teacher. However she then said that her experience of (trying) to teach in state school for ten years had made her renounce her lefty educationalist sentiments and persuaded her to vote for a Tory government in order to bring in the needed reforms.
Whether the right reforms happen is debatable but at least she is an example that hope is not lost.
Although there are some good, well-meaning teachers in the state sector, they do seem to be outnumbered by the many sub-standard, unsackable, time-serving, destroyers-of-education, masquerading as teachers.
My child is doing a “Modern” History GCSE. World War II is mentioned a lot in the curriculum, but only with regards to Germany and the USA; Britain is left out! And as for the history teacher; he often tells his pupils about the latest article he has read in The Guardian and says how he admires various left wing statesmen.
One of the good teachers my kid had last year was a bright young Maths teacher who helped a lot and was very enthusiastic.
Unfortunately she left the school in summer to work at a private school. It is a shame but good luck to her.
Lastly, I do sympathise with any good teachers who are made unemployed by these Indian tutoring companies.
It has happened to me twice in my job as a computer programmer. The last time was 18 months ago and I still can’t get a job. I have sent out hundreds of applications, dropped my expected salary to way below the average wage, lowered my sights to more junior jobs and I still can’t get work. I know from my ex colleagues that more and more jobs are going to Indians in preference to people born here. Companies these days can very easily circumvent the work permit restrictions by faking a skills gap in their justification.
I think this is completely unfair (well, obviously). I am prepared to consider working for the same wage as my Indian counterpart but I am never offered the opportunity. I also suffer the disadvantage that I am tied to this country, for better or worse, bringing up my children, where housing is very expensive, travel is expensive, well, everytthing is expensive, even butter has doubled in price in under 3 years. The Indians have an unfair advantage over me and are aided and abetted by perverse government immigration policies.
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October 6, 2010 at 12:10 -
@ Daedalus
Don’t worry, mate, a few more years and we’ll ALL be able to compete on a level playing field with 3rd world standards of living.
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October 6, 2010 at 21:18 -
We outsourced (or is it ‘insourced’?) the teaching of our son to ourselves. It avoids the whole school problem. No national curriculum, no bullying, one-to-one teaching that is far more efficient that can be achieved in a class of 30 where a lot of time is spent on crowd control. Plus we get to take holidays when school is in session, although North Wales was a bit damp last month.
Teachers in UK schools are hamstrung by endless requirements, restrictions and tick-box forms imposed upon them, it’s a wonder they have any time to teach anyone.
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