Teaching Council

Fausto Miño

I feel I am being hard done by the Teaching Council. Anyone else have similar complaints?
I have been accepted to do an MA in Spanish this september, despite it not being my degree subject. I sat an exam equivelant to a final year BA spanish exam (did well in it) and have lived in a spanish speaking country for two years, working, and writing reports in spanish.

I want to do the pgde in education in sept 2010 so I can teach spanish, my long term desire. The Teaching Council have said that an MA will not suffice, rather if I had taken spanish as 30% of my degree it would certainly be acceptable.

They have indicated that I can appeal my case on an individual basis, but only AFTER doing the masters. They will withhold the info about whether its acceptable or not untill after ive gotten my self into huge debt to do this.
For no good reason only that they can,

Anyon else have similar stories?

rainbowtrout

Fausto Miño wrote: »

I feel I am being hard done by the Teaching Council. Anyone else have similar complaints?
I have been accepted to do an MA in Spanish this september, despite it not being my degree subject. I sat an exam equivelant to a final year BA spanish exam (did well in it) and have lived in a spanish speaking country for two years, working, and writing reports in spanish.

But what was the exam? An entrance exam for the masters? If it's not a recognised qualification it doesn't matter what the exam is. Living in a country/work experience does not automatically confer fluency in a subject and the standard required to teach it and while you might have the standard necessary unless you have the relevant qualification on paper the teaching council won't recognise it.

Fausto Miño wrote: »

I want to do the pgde in education in sept 2010 so I can teach spanish, my long term desire. The Teaching Council have said that an MA will not suffice, rather if I had taken spanish as 30% of my degree it would certainly be acceptable.
They have indicated that I can appeal my case on an individual basis, but only AFTER doing the masters. They will withhold the info about whether its acceptable or not untill after ive gotten my self into huge debt to do this.
For no good reason only that they can,

Anyon else have similar stories?

That's standard practice from the teaching council. You must have a degree in the subject, a masters is not acceptable.

pathway33

you are better off forgetting about the masters and spending your money on getting 30% of an undergraduate degree in spanish modules. Ordinarily that's 55 credits which is 1 academic year roughly. Colleges are increasingly taking occasional students into their modules. Then next june you send your credits and degree to the teaching council with the fee and they will assess it.

Make sure you have a good spread of modules up to 3rd year that cover the leaving cert syllabus to honours level. Again there is no guarantee this plan will work because generally the teaching council will not give a definite answer until you provide the exam results. good luck

p.s what's you second subject?

Nead21

Dont mean to be smart OP but living in Spain doesnt a Spanish teacher make....if that was the case, couldnt we all be english teachers??

short answer, if you dont have a degree in it, the TC wont recognise it regardless of how competent you are

Fausto Miño

Thanks for the advice pathway, Ill certianly be looking into it, altough it may be too late.
Nead; Im not disputing that just living in a spanish speaking country shouldn't make you eligible, of course you should need an academic qualification.
It's the teaching council's weighing of 30% of a degree over a masters that I have a gripe with. You can do spanish as a subject, scrape a pass through exams (not hard) and hardly speak the language (lots of graduates cannot) and be considered more eligible than someone with a masters (which requires fluency and indepth knowledge of the language and production of a dissertation).
That is not fair nor is it good for future post primary students of spanish.

Nead21

i never said it was fair...very little about the irish educational system or the TC takes into account the future welfare of students unfortunately.

Eccles

Sorry to hear that Fausto (guessing after a brief Google not yer real name !I can imagine some racing female pulses here if yer the real McCoy).Typical TC BS!!!There's a litany of complaints about them.Their very existence is a farce...They do NOTHING of any use whatsoever and EVERYTHING they do seems to be a hindrance or expense to teachers -oh wait ,they 'allow' us to get paid ...(Al Capone probably sent more subtle 'requests for payment' than their initial correspondence .)

PS If Stephen Hawking tried to get a job teaching Science in an irish secondary school he'd probably be dismissed as a waster and told to forget about it as he didnt have the required Biology modules ....Gotta love the TC...

Miss Lockhart

I don't know much about masters in general.

What kind of a level are they at usually? I mean, I (possibly wrongly) would have thought that they were of a high standard and entailed indepth study of a subject area and required a high standard for entry.

Also, although a degree is at least 3 years long, you only need 30% of one to satisfy the TC, so would a masters not be of a similar standard to this? I know it would vary between different masters programmes, but perhaps at least certain ones would be comparable?

I myself haven't a clue, I'm just genuinely curious.

hot chick

Miss Lockhart wrote: »

Also, although a degree is at least 3 years long, you only need 30% of one to satisfy the TC, so would a masters not be of a similar standard to this?

Of course a masters in a subject should qualify you to teach the subject. That's just plain common sense.
But in my experience the TC are not interested in being reasonable or in helping teachers in any way. They are quite simply an incompetent bunch who stick ridgedly to whatever is written down in front of them. They are not interested in progress or in taking note that maybe there is scope to allow for a masters to confer eligibility to teach a subject the way a degree does.

A friend of mine (in the process of registering with TC) showed me a list of special needs qualifications the TC gave her last week. It was about 5 years out of date. Don't even talk to me about those robbing idiots.

namoosh

Couldn't agree more, its just another revenue gathering exercise by the govt!

mrboswell

namoosh wrote: »

Couldn't agree more, its just another revenue gathering exercise by the govt!

Thats it - jobs for the boys. This year there were over 1700 NEW registrations, never mind those who are registered since 1996.

This year alone, new registration revenue =153,000 Euro.

TC does NOTHING for me and IMO nothing to improve the quality of teaching.

TC has no control over what teachers teach once they are working in a school. Schools are using registration as a selection criteria for specific subjects and then getting teachers to teach other subjects - this is happening all over the country.

I'm job hunting but as soon as I get full time position I won't pay the registration unless the DES stop my salary - otherwise the TC can sing for it.

This 30% figure keeps cropping up - IMO I'd say well less than 30% of Teachers think the TC is any use..