Should New Zealand be letting inexperienced and unqualified teachers loose on children in our toughest communities?

That’s exactly what Teach First is doing. The programme, in its inaugural year and modelled on Teach First UK and Teach for America (TFA), selects top university graduates, gives them six weeks of training, and then throws them into low-decile schools.

So what happens when students are subjected to inexperienced and unqualified teachers? Two recent international studies have shed some light on this question
.
The University of London’s Institute of Education recently found that students in schools with Teach First teachers did better by one grade in one subject on average, compared to schools without Teach First teachers. The researchers controlled for other factors that might have accounted for the differences in student achievement.

Another study, released last week by the U.S. Department of Education, used the gold-plated research method – randomised controlled trial.

Students were randomly assigned to a TFA educator or another teacher for math. By the end of the year, students with TFA teachers were 2.6 months ahead in math. TFA teachers were more effective than both novice and experienced teachers who came through traditional teaching routes. Students do better at math when they have a teacher who is good at math themselves. It is baffling then that TFA teachers were less likely to have a math degree. But here is a possible explanation: TFA teachers “scored significantly higher on a test of math knowledge than their traditional teacher counterparts.”

It seems that Teach First teachers overseas have a general scholastic aptitude that makes up for a lack of a degree in specific subject areas, and indeed for teaching qualifications. This is because the programme is highly selective. In the UK, only one in eight applicants are admitted to the programme. In the U.S. study, 23% of normal teachers graduated from a selective university, compared with 81% of TFA teachers. It is the selectivity of the Teach First programme that is considered the hallmark of attracting bright and passionate teachers.

In New Zealand, experience and qualifications are valued. The starting point on the teacher salary scale is dependent on qualification, and moving up the salary scale happens almost automatically each year until the top of the scale is reached.

The results emerging from Teach First certainly raise questions about the relative value placed on teachers’ experience, qualifications, academic ability, and passion.