Early day motion tabled by primary sponsor Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat), on Tuesday, 15 December 2009, in the House of Commons. It is signed by 34 members in total.

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TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT AGENCY REVIEW OF OUTDOOR SCIENCE TEACHING

That this House welcomes the Government's decision to ask the Training and Development Agency to review the Qualified Teacher Status standards; notes that the number of school students choosing to study physical science subjects post-16 has fallen over the last 25 years and that many studies have indicated a major decline in positive attitudes from students towards science; further notes the report, Initial Teacher Education and the Outdoor Classroom produced jointly by the Field Studies Council (FSC) and the Association for Science Education (ASE) and its recommendations, commonly known as the Malham Protocol, which seeks to reverse this trend; recognises that outdoor learning helps young people learn about assessing and managing risk and is an inspirational approach to teaching science; further notes with concern that there are currently a number of barriers to improving fieldwork, including Initial Teacher Training, which is not working effectively enough to help produce sufficient numbers of high quality teachers with the confidence, competence and commitment to teach outdoor science to the next generation of children and young people; further notes with concern that Qualified Teacher Status standard 30 only requires that trainee teachers should be able to identify opportunities for out-of-school learning, with no requirement for trainees to plan, organise, take part in, and lead outdoor learning activities; congratulates the FSC and the ASE on their work to improve teacher training; and calls for Qualified Teacher Status standard 30 to be strengthened in order to provide an incentive for fieldwork to be used as a teaching method.

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Secondary information

Type

Early day motion

Reference

472 

Session

2009-10

Other sponsors

Robert Key

Lindsay Hoyle

Lynne Jones

Andrew Miller

Andrew George

Subjects

Teachers Science

Link

View this Early day motion on www.parliament.uk