The TES cites the results of a recent Sutton Trust poll in an editorial about plans to introduce a Royal College of Teaching.

A Royal College of Teaching is a splendid idea: an independent body committed to improving the status and professional development of teachers that will also give them a professional voice and a greater say in policy issues.

Naturally, when it was first mooted many teachers clasped the concept lovingly to their collective bosom. The education community was rallied, consulted and surveyed and a blueprint for the college was set out.

This blueprint was launched in February in the middle of the school day, a somewhat puzzling move by an organisation purporting to represent the profession, prompting teacher John Blake to quip on Twitter: “I hope all the meetings of the Royal College of Teachers are held at 2pm on Mondays. I’ll bring Year 9 with me.”

Despite the initial flurry of enthusiasm for the idea, the shine is already beginning to wear off. A recent poll of 1,163 teachers commissioned by the Sutton Trust for the National Foundation for Educational Research found that 17 per cent opposed the plan and 41 per cent were unsure.

When teachers may already be members of a union, the prospect of shelling out for membership of another organisation – currently proposed at £30-130 a year – is unappealing. However, members of the NAHT headteachers’ union overwhelmingly backed it at its annual conference earlier this month. Last week, too, the Heads’ Roundtable thinktank called for the college to be implemented and for membership to be compulsory, making it sound suspiciously like a rerun of the General Teaching Council.

Read the full article here.

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