Teaching accreditation scheme long overdue

EVERYONE who has been through a school education or, perhaps more pertinently, has a child at school, knows that there are good and bad teachers. Yet the means of identifying and, more importantly, assisting the mediocre to become better are poorly developed. It seems odd, as former education minister Sam Galbraith observes, that teaching is the one profession where these is no system of periodically assessing fitness to teach.

Thus the request which has been made by Scottish schools minister Keith Brown of the General Teaching Council for Scotland that it should develop such an accreditation system is overdue and welcome. Given the importance of teaching, that it is about equipping future generations of adults with the skills and abilities needed to make them, their families, and their country prosperous, such a system is much needed.

Teachers may object, with some justice, that they already work to high standards and that they and the schools they work in are subject to scrutiny by the Inspectorate of Education. An additional regime of testing might, therefore, be regarded as an unnecessary, and perhaps even frightening, burden in what can be a very difficult job.

But that should not be the aim of a new accreditation system. It should be about assessing where teachers lack particular capacities or skills and providing them with the means to acquire them. In short, it should be about assisting all teachers to become excellent.