EduCareer StaffBlog"Rinjin Blog" | "EduCareer"Supporting your career in English teaching in the Japanese school system

Teacher Licensing

2009/10/08

I read an interesting article the other day about teacher licensing. The article said that from next year all teachers in the UK will be required to have a valid teacher's license which needs to be renewed every 5 years. In the UK at the moment teachers are required to have completed a PGCE course and a year of teaching placements before they become qualified teachers, there are no "licenses" like those in the United States. The new plan in the UK involves teacher assessments over the 5 years which will then determine whether the teacher can keep their license or not. The argument of the article was the introduction of licenses simply creates more bureaucracy in an already complicated system. However, the process of monitoring and assessment should in theory improve the quality of teachers because those not meeting the standard will not receive or be able to renew licenses and therefore be ineligible to teach. Which led me to think, how do you judge a "good teacher?" Is peer assessment the best way to judge a teacher's performance? How do you deal with poor exam results? While this new ruling in the UK will probably not affect many teachers in Japan, if you are a British qualified teacher it may be worth looking in to how to register before the September 2010 deadline. I guess the biggest issue for teachers here in Japan would be how the assessment will be conducted if outside the UK and whether teaching time in Japan will be counted towards any minimum teaching requirement. How do yo ufeel about teacher licensing? Please let me know your thoughts and I will try to include them in my next blog.

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