Blackboard idealism

Teach First—the scheme that recruits graduates from elite universities to teach in inner-city schools for two years—is turning into one of the most successful social movements in the country and helping to reinvent the idea of post-university public service. In July it was announced that the scheme will grow over the next five years to 850 graduates per year, up from the current figure of 380.

Teach First recruits top graduates, mainly from Oxbridge and the other "Russell group" universities, and trains them intensively in the summer after graduation. The students-turned-teachers are then placed in mutually supportive groups of up to seven (almost never singly) in lower-attaining secondary schools in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and other conurbations.

Teach First was launched five years ago based on the Teach for America scheme in the US. This year's 380 students were recruited after a tough selection process from nearly 2,000 applicants, all projected to get first-class degrees or 2:1s from top universities. An extraordinary 5 per cent of the entire graduating cohort at Oxford applied this year, attracted by the two-year challenge, the social mission and the CV boost offered by the training and classroom experience at the sharp end.



Demand from schools for Teach First teachers is equally strong. This year London secondary schools alone have made requests for 900, although only 251 are available. Drop-out among Teach First teachers is as low as their impact is high.

Bethnal Green Technology College, a London east end school recently subject to Ofsted "special measures," was a fitting venue for Prince Charles to announce in July that he will become the patron of the organisation. The school's 11 Teach First teachers, five of them Oxbridge firsts or 2:1s, have played a key role in the successful turn-around of the school by headteacher Mark Keary. Several have stayed beyond the required two years and are destined for early school leadership promotions.

In educational terms, it is hard to overstate the importance of Teach First. Schools can never be better than their teachers. Teach First is providing underperforming state schools with a flow of the most talented, dynamic graduates which hitherto only private schools have enjoyed.

In my 1997 book A Class Act, I highlighted the flight of top graduates from state school teaching over the previous generation as a critical factor in England's educational malaise, and in the deepening gulf between between state and private education. Only one of my Oxford friends or acquaintances in the early 1980s went into state school teaching, and for him it was a toss up between a Hereford comprehensive or becoming a priest. Our successors are now competing to get into Teach First.

More than half of the first cohort of Teach First teachers have stayed beyond two years. And the frequent Teach First gatherings I address are like latter-day revivalist rallies: outpourings of altruistic intensity from the most articulate in the land.

As an exercise in public service reform, Teach First is also an exemplar. In place of the old monopoly of the year-long PGCE, Teach First does its own training and runs itself. The government meets virtually all the costs but otherwise keeps its distance.

Teach First is also reinventing public service for young people—and doing so, in social terms, from the top down. If Teach First can provide 850 graduates a year, why not 2,000? And what about Youth Work First or Social Work First? This year 12 per cent of Yale's graduates applied to Teach for America—the potential is there.