As you may or may not be aware, I am working for the Tower Hamlets Council, and today I had an induction day into how the council works, which was very interesting and useful knowledge.

Basically London (and the whole of England) is seperated up into Boroughs or districts that take care of the residents and businesses in the enclosing community. It’s a bit more than that though. In NZ, the governement dictates how things are going to happen in each of the sectors – health, education, etc, and carries out all the leg work. Here in England, the governement still dictates what is going to happen in each of the sectors, but it is up to the Boroughs to carry out the leg work. The benefit of this is that each of the Boroughs can tailor how they’re going to implement policies and strategies to to fit their communities. The downside is that every Borough is different, and although there is similarities everybody implements things their own way. This means that there are variations with how each of the sectors are, and the quality of each of the sectors in different Boroughs.

One way of making sure that each Boroughs are doing what it’s supposed to be doing is the government audits them every year, and every few years they do a thorough assessment from the top level right down to the community. They also have the Beacon Scheme where Boroughs get awarded stars out of 4 as to how good they are. Tower Hamlets has a 4 star Beacon award. Bear in mind that Tower Hamlets has a lot of low socio-economic families where many families incomes are around £21,000 a year. That’s pretty much equivalent to NZD$20,000 for a family. However there’s been some really good community schemes put into place to help these people, and the outcomes have been high-school leavers overall having better grades than many of the other children in other Boroughs, reductions in overcrowding living spaces, and other such positives. One of their sayings (if you like) is all of these factors are contributing to the way of children’s lives, but not an excuse for us not to do well by these children.

The other point that stuck out for me from the day is how enthusiastic even the ‘big-wigs’ are about doing well by their community. They want their staff actively learning, not just sitting behind a desk, and they don’t care how long or short your in the position for. If you’re a person who’s striving for your own personal knowledge, then you’re in a different mindset than someone who’s sitting behind their desk day after day.

There were a few different newbies to the Council in the room from different areas – archetecture, accounts, teachers, and others. There were two other members of my teaching team there as well, so we got to have a good catch up about what actually happens in the area in terms of how people are trained to work with children etc.

The basics of the conversation is that the levels of certificates in early childhood go from 1-4, 4 being managerial type assessments. However levels 1-3 are approximately the same amount of depth as what New Zealand teacher would learn in their Certificate of Early childhood (a one year basics course which has mostly been phased out because the government requires much higher standards).

The courses are assessed similar to Unit Standards whereby the student rings up the assessor and tells them they’d like to sit the oral assessment. The assessor comes down and asks the questions about the unit (for example health and safety) and ticks them off when they answer the question correctly. If they don’t answer the question correctly, the assessor gives them the right answer and ticks it anyway, because the assessor gets £20 per person they pass, and nothing if they fail. Consequently not many people fail.

One of the girls used to be an assessor, and amongst her conversations with other assessors she was the only person who had morals enough to fail somebody. So yeah, the system is pretty bloody screwed, hense why there is a desperate need for qualified experienced, know-what-they-are-doing teachers in England.

The positive side is that the governement has put in some regulations similar to what NZ in terms of phasing out the crappy qualifications and bringing in more highly skilled qualifications. How else are you going to get the quality of your schools up? You have to teach the teachers how to be awesome teachers!

It’s weird. In NZ, my degree is pretty much Average Jo for what is expected, and everybody’s pretty much on the same level. Come to UK, my degree is leagues ahead of the Average Jo in my field and qualifies me to work in some much higher-up positions than I would get if I were in NZ. Crazy. No wonder NZ teachers are highly prized on the open market.

~*~ More for the Interested ~*~

Tower Hamlets Beacon Awards

Tags: Degree, Educators, London, New Zealand Teachers, Study, Teachers, Tower Hamlets Borough