Hugh Reilly: Three Rs desirable for would-be teachers

IT WAS a black day, or perhaps a very deep brown one, when I was diagnosed as a colour-blind kid. Hitherto, my primary school paintings of purple skies and yellow grass had simply been dismissed as the avant-garde daubings of a slightly disturbed Glasgow boy.

I was labelled chromatically challenged by a school nit-nurse who had rather too enthusiastically bone-combed my head, inadvertently creating deep furrows in my scalp that acted as rainwater run-off channels during inclement weather. In a classic distraction technique, she showed page after page of multi-coloured dots that, apparently, represented numbers. I enjoyed this puzzling kaleidoscopic displacement activity but it was obvious that, in terms of recognising colours, I was not in the pink.

I reluctantly accepted that my disability would prevent me from following certain types of employment. A part of me wanted to scream "feel the fear and do it", but the kudos of being the British Army's first colour-blind bomb disposal expert had to be tempered by the prospect of a potentially short career.

Last weekend, the UK government announced a shake-up of literacy and numeracy tests for entrants to the teaching profession in England. Under the current entrance arrangements, there is no limit to the number of attempts students can make to achieve a successful outcome. If the proposed guidelines are accepted, students will have only three cracks at it. Presently, one in ten students take three or more stabs at passing the numeracy assessment while one in fourteen take three or more attempts to pass the literacy test.

Call me an educational snob but if you can't write, read or add up properly, your career options should not include teaching. While headteachers have welcomed this initiative, the NUT is outraged. The largest teaching union points out that there are valid reasons for candidates sitting umpteen re-sits. Literacy tests are a barrier to students with dyslexia, says the NUT. Doubtless it is only a matter of time before the NUT turn their big guns on the nasty folk at Random House publishing who stubbornly refuse to hire dyslexic proof-readers.

Other victims of the government proposals are those teachers for whom English is not their first language. It's clearly much too much to expect a classroom teacher to speak fluently in the tongue spoken by his pupils. Lastly, and most preposterously, the NUT states that some would-be teachers fail the exams because of unfamiliarity with the online testing system (despite the existence of a dedicated website which explains the entire process).

Numeracy is tested using graphs, tables and mental arithmetic. In my opinion, any student considering entering the profession should look at a graph displaying demand and supply with regard to teaching posts. A solid grasp of mental arithmetic would come in handy when calculating how much debt will be accrued on the road to achieving unemployed teacher status.There is merit in the NUT's assertion that academic excellence does not in itself make someone a great teacher. The NUT believes that other qualities are just as important as literacy and numeracy. Teachers, they say, should be visionary. Frankly, education has suffered tremendously through the implementation of "visionary" changes. In any other walk of life, individuals experiencing visions would be sectioned under the Mental Health Act; only in teaching do their faddish ideas elicit outbreaks of synchronised chin-stroking and knowing nods.

It's true that teachers should be caring, but if they consider this to be the key aspect of their work, they should apply for one of the many social worker posts that are currently lying unfilled. A teacher with a creative side to her teaching methodologies can be a boon to disaffected children in the classroom, but possessing basic skills in spelling, punctuation and comprehension, I would argue, are more important.

There is heavy irony in the fact that English education secretary Michael Gove's call for higher standards of literacy and numeracy comes at a time when he is backing the notion of "parents going in to help" schools in the event of a teachers' strike.

I just hope that colour-blind dads don't end up teaching the kids in the art department.