A miffed-off former MIfL

The Institute for Learning (IfL) is no more. The unwanted 'professional body' for FE teachers, foisted on them by the last Labour government was finally laid to rest at the end of October 2014. In reality, most of the one-time captive membership had largely drifted away when Gove ended compulsory registration in 2010. Round about the same time, the DfE - following recommendations in the Wolf report into 14-19 vocational education - also accepted that the anomalous situation whereby FE teachers couldn't teach in schools, but school teachers could teach in FE should end. However, this was dependent on FE staff obtaining Qualified Teaching and Learning Skills Status (QTLS) - something that Post 16 teacher training qualifications didn't automatically confer. As with much Goveite thinking, details were sketchy as to how this would work out in practice and pronouncements from on high seldom reflected either conditions on the ground or the substance of subsequent regulations put out by the DfE. Yesterday, I found out how... As a post-16 FE qualified teacher I recently started working in a local secondary school sixth form on maternity leave cover. In spite of showing both my degree and PGCE paperwork to the HR people, I was bemused to learn that I was classed as an unqualified teacher: some mistake, surely, I thought - after all, I'm teaching 16-18 year-olds studying AS and A2 courses. Ah, came the reply, you haven't got QTLS status, and pending confirmation of this from something called the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) you're 'unqualified' in our eyes. A few emails later and the awful truth dawned. The IfL might have gone, but a new quango has risen in its place, literally in fact - ETF has the same address as the IfL, and is in the business of charging £485.00 for those FE qualified teachers who want to work in school on parity of pay with school teachers. But the thing that sticks in my craw - alongside the threat of being paid less if I don't undertake the supposedly 'voluntary' process - is that I'm teaching the same courses to students of the same age: the only difference is that they are sitting in a school's sixth form classroom, as opposed to one in an FE college. Gove and the IfL might have gone, but their influence lives on, unfortunately.