Woodhead attacks poor teaching

POOR quality teacher training is failing schoolchildren, chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead warned this week.

In his Standards and Quality in Education annual report for 1995/96, Mr Woodhead said teaching quality was not satisfactory in half of primary schools and two-fifths of secondary schools. He said that 3,000 head teachers were incompetent.

He said that the Office for Standards in Education's findings made it apparent that some graduates lack the basic skills they needed to teach. Although Ofsted's inspections had found "much satisfactory and good practice" in teacher training, there were still "serious concerns about standards of literacy and numeracy, and indeed, about how well students are trained."

An Ofsted inspection into teacher training for English concluded that "many students do not themselves have sufficient knowledge of the English language to teach the language requirements of the national curriculum".

Mr Woodhead also blamed a lack of teaching "competence and confidence" for particularly poor standards in information technology.