Aspect annual conference, August 2008

last updated:30 Apr 2009

Extracts from a speech given by GTC Chief Executive Keith Bartley to the Aspect annual conference, August 2008

Keith Bartley addressed members of the Association of Professionals inEducation and Children’s Trusts on the rate and extent of change in education; the values shared by those working with children and youngpeople and the GTC’s work with and for children.


The General Teaching Council for England: Our role in Building Brighter Futures

Good afternoon. I’m delighted to be here at an event that draws together such a wide constituency of interests and expertise but one that is united by a shared commitment to improving children’s futures.

…Read the newspapers, listen to the radio, turn on the television and it is clear that there is no shortage of opinions and interest about young people. Politicians, parents, the public at large and, most of all, young people themselves have a stake in the education system in this country being the best it can possibly be. Passionate debates and arguments about how to achieve that abound.

What I think might be agreed upon is the extent of the changes in schools and in children’s education in recent times. Given the significance of school in a child’s development, the temptation has been for policy makers to introduce new initiatives at a rate of knots and to lay down in increasing detail what and how schools should teach, in order to maximise the benefits.

Winston Churchill said, “there’s nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” I agree with him – and teachers over the last few decades have probably seen too much of it, too often in the wrong or contradictory directions, lacking an evidence base that persuades us of the need to change and too often suffering from Grand Old Duke of York reversals of policy.

But I do think that this rate of change is likely to continue – certainly the challenges facing us as educators and as a country are unlikely to recede. And while we all know the dangers of too much change - introduced too rapidly, without proper consultation, trialling and time to bed in - the broad aims of Building Brighter Futures are to be welcomed.

Shared values

That the Government has included in Building Brighter Futures a ‘statement of values’ that can be shared across the children’s workforce is I think a recognition that structural changes alone will not be the most effective way of bringing about the improvements for children that we all seek.

When I joined the GTCE early last year, I was delighted to find that it was one of the three organisations developing a statement to underpin joint working in the interests of the young people we all serve. My previous role was as Oxfordshire’s Director for Children, Young People and Families and so I was encouraged that a teaching council was taking such an interest in cross-professional matters; for me, this work told me about the strength of the GTCE’s ambitions on behalf of the teaching profession and – through teachers – for children and young people.

I was also aware that for many people the most familiar aspect of the GTCE’s work was likely to be our role in regulating the profession, reported on frequently by the media as it is. While this is of course a fundamental aspect of our remit, equally important – and intrinsic to our overall aim to help improve standards of teaching and the quality of learning in the public interest - is the work we do in supporting teachers’ professionalism and practice.  We work for children, through teachers.

For children, through teachers

We do this in a number of ways.  Some of our work is geared very directly to the end user – not the teacher actually, but the parent and the child.  Why does society insist that qualified teachers in England are registered with the General Teaching Council?
Because it is important for children.  

Children and young people deserve to be taught by properly qualified teachers who have been rigorously trained and prepared for the role.  Parents and employers have the right to know that this is true. 

Why do we regulate the profession?  Because we are a profession and because the impact of teachers is so profound on society as a whole.  

Professionally-led regulation is about teachers safeguarding the good standing of the profession – which is in all our interests – and about patrolling the boundaries of acceptable professional conduct and practice.  

But the GTCE is about raising standards of professional conduct and practice – that is a much bigger challenge than simply patrolling the boundaries – and a much more exciting one that is about raising the standing of the profession.

The GTCE believes that it is right that the teaching profession should embrace evidence-based practice and we are a solidly research-informed organisation. In our 2007 survey of teachers – conducted among a sample of 10,000 individuals on the Teaching Register – 60 per cent said that Every Child Matters had had a positive impact on supporting pupil achievement.

Every Child Matters

We also met with very encouraging reactions when we hosted a series of oversubscribed events back in late 2006 and early 2007. While teachers’ levels of knowledge about Every Child Matters varied, and of course concerns were discussed, there was strong support for the framework and its goals and great appetite for more opportunities to think and learn about the implications and possibilities of Every Child Matters.

Many teachers at these events felt that this approach to the development of the child in the fullest sense was a commitment that they shared. As one secondary teacher said, “ECM is what I came into teaching for.” There was frequent support expressed for particular aspects of Every Child Matters, including: better interaction and genuine partnership with parents and carers; greater responsiveness to early signs of difficulty or disengagement; and more opportunities for collaborative approaches to meeting the needs of particular children.

Teachers are working in new ways – as part of a wider children’s workforce that collaborates around the needs of the child – with the child at the centre and with a new respect for the contribution that a range of professionals make to their development – be they teaching assistants within school, or the very wide range of health and social care professionals who also care passionately and want every child to succeed and thrive.

So in addition to the necessary skills, these less certain waters call for a firm values, or ethical base from which to navigate.

Working together

The joint statement that I mentioned earlier was developed initially with the General Social Care Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council and grew out of discussions with midwives, nurses, social workers and teachers who wanted to work together. They believed this would be most effective when there was a shared understanding not only of their ways of working but of the professional values that informed their actions and decisions.

We agreed from the off that the statement should be a practical resource for all children’s practitioners. For our own part, we hoped that the statement reflected the values that brought teachers into teaching. By understanding the values that we have in common with other children’s professionals, the statement could support the cultural change that will make the day to day work we as teachers undertake with them as effective as possible.

Teaching in 2012

Consultation and engagement will feature large in the life of the GTCE in the coming months, as we consider the shape of the teaching profession by 2012, the support it will require from its professional body, and plan our own work for the next four years.

What is clear is that teaching will work as part of a network of support for children’s well being, education and development. Teachers won’t be the sole contributors to achievement – I would argue that they never have been. Working ever more closely with those from outside teaching, they will contribute their own specialist approach and knowledge to helping each child fulfil his or her potential.

More than ever, teachers will need to be able to adapt to the new situations and new challenges they will encounter. I feel very privileged in my job to encounter extraordinary examples of innovative and imaginative professional practice. But we must ensure that such practice is not limited to or locked in individual classrooms or schools. One of the many challenges for teachers will be assessing their professional development needs over time – and we must ensure that high quality opportunities for development are in place to meet these needs.

These opportunities need to be tailored to the individual; to their own development needs and to the needs of their pupils and the schools in which they work.

To continue to look to the future, I believe there are a number of key contributions that the GTCE, as the professional body for teaching, needs to make to building brighter futures for children.

We must continue to broker relationships and partnerships with other professions on behalf of teaching, which will promote and support more effective joint working and help to break down a perhaps inevitable tendency to think only from the perspective of our own specialist area.

We must support teachers’ own contribution by championing their professionalism and by reflecting back to the profession the broad public interest that we were founded to serve.

We will continue to argue for and support teachers’ learning and development.
We must continue to develop evidence in order to provide powerful advice to Government on teaching and learning policy. This won’t always mean quick wins. Assessment and testing issues have taken centre stage in recent months, but our advice to the education select committee on overhauling the assessment system was years rather than months or weeks in the making. I hope that Government will move closer to the consensus that seems to have broken out on this issue.

This evidence must be drawn from as wide a base as possible – strengthening our work with parents and vitally with children and young people will be a significant part of this.

Working with pupils and parents

… I would like to say a little about the GTCE’s approach to working with those most directly and significantly affected by our education system – pupils. We believe our work should be informed by children and young people, as well as by teachers, parents and others.

…Enabling pupils to take greater responsibility for their own learning was a key component of our advice to government about personalised learning last year. We argued that seeing pupils as decision makers with regard to their learning is an integral part of a personalised approach for all pupils. And the evidence is clear that it can have a powerful impact on achievement.

We have also sought the views of parents on a wide range of matters. Research with parents formed an important strand of our work on assessment, telling us that what parents value most is rounded information about their children’s progress and the chance to have an ongoing dialogue with schools and teachers. More recently we have explored parents’ ideas about involvement and engagement with their children’s learning, and how this can best be supported, and captured views on teaching and the public interest.

Professional learning

I believe very strongly that at the heart of bringing about lasting change and improvements in young people’s education lies career long high quality professional development for their teachers. And before I conclude I would like to share with you a model of professional development that the GTCE recently launched as a national system of recognition and support for teachers’ professional learning.

The Teacher Learning Academy has been built using what research evidence tells us makes for the most effective professional development: it allows those taking part to choose the focus of their own professional development, and supports them as they plan, carry out their work, team up with a coach, share their learning and evaluate its impact.

Although formal recognition through the Teacher Learning Academy is only open to GTCE registrants, I have been very encouraged to learn of the Academy model being used locally to develop professional learning for whole school staff. I am delighted that we are collaborating with Aspect so we can offer professional recognition on the courses that they offer for their own GTCE registered members.

…It’s uplifting to see teachers receive the kind of public recognition of their effort and achievement that the Teacher Learning Academy gives.

And ultimately, high quality professional development supports teachers to do best what we are all here for – to support the young people we work with and help them reach their potential.