Working with the Standards for QTS

Although the Standards provide a common framework for assessing trainees, different partnerships use different instruments and procedures to deal with them. Clearly you will have to work within the framework of your institution, but it is worth considering some of the general issues associated with this area.

What form should the documentation of meeting the Standards take? There is a tension between rigour and administrative burden and there can be a difference between procedures which have a formative value in helping to move trainees forward in the Standards, and ones which do not have any developmental value, and which simply provide evidence that trainees have met a strand of the Standards. A portfolio of evidence may provide precise examples of meeting the Standards and is easy to check, but adds an additional burden on trainees. Teaching files may provide a greater bulk of evidence and would be easier for trainees to maintain but are more difficult to check against the Standards.

How much evidence is required to show the Standards have been met? There are no easy answers to this, especially as you may believe that some Standards are more important than others, so the evidence you are looking for may vary from Standard to Standard. It is, however, important for the trainees to show that they have made progress across the course in relation to the Standards.

Should trainees be graded? The Standards are a set of competencies, and the required judgement concerns whether each of these has been met. In this sense grades are unnecessary. However there is an argument that it is important to differentiate between trainees. At present, a full Ofsted inspection requires the grading of trainees, but there is no compulsion to do this every year, nor ever to communicate that grade to trainees.

How can all sides in an ITT partnership develop a shared understanding of the Standards? One of the criticisms of ITT in an earlier round of Ofsted/HMI inspection was that not all trainees or mentors had a clear grasp and working knowledge of the Standards for QTS ( Ofsted , 1999, Baker et al ., 2000). Unit 4 (section 4.3) provides some examples of working with school based colleagues to create this shared sense of understanding, but it is also important that the trainees understand them as well. It is relatively straightforward to link university sessions to the Standards or ask trainees to identify which Standards they feel have been met at any given point. Tutorials and formal written reviews should also help indicate this.

Activity 5.2.1 Putting principles into practice