Dear All,
I would welcome your advice.

The Teacher Training Agency have invited bids for funding to support
teacher training providers to run 'teacher taster' courses for people who
are interested in a teaching career, but would like to know more. This is a
'goog thing'.

The courses are to be targetted at potential trainee teachers from minority
ethnic communities: another 'good thing'.

To quote from the invitation to bid:
'the majority of participants would be expected to come from a minority
ethnic background'. No problem there.

Taster course places cannot be offered to applicants who have already
applied for initial teacher training: this rules out people who are not
sure about teaching, but have applied for a course to keep their options open.

There is a catch, and i think it constitutes racial discrimination: 'Any
courses with less than fifteen particpants will not be deemed viable and
will consequently not receive any funding from the TTA'.

Why is this a catch?

1.      We have considerable experience of running taster courses, and have
never before attaracted more that four participants

2.      A 'majority' of fifteen is eight: in order to qaulify for this scheme we
must be able to gaurantee twice as many minority ethnic 'punters' than the
maximum total number of punters that we have achieved.

3.      We recently ran a 2 year recruitment programme ( generously funded by
the TTA) to attract minority ethnic graduates from London and the West
Midlands to a PGCE course at Exeter. It failed. to te best of our
knowledge, potential trainees who live outside the far South west are very
very unlikely to choose that region for their training.

4.      The resident minority ethnic communites in the far South west (Somerset,
Dorset, Devon, Cornwall) are small; the resident GRADUATE minority ethnic
presence is smaller; the residient , graduate, and looking-for-a-new-career
presence is tiny.

5.      Virtually every sector of the public services is now (quite rightly)
courting minority ethnic applicants in order to progress towards its (quite
propr) recruitment targets.

I don't think we have a cat in hells chance of getting fifteen punters for
a taster course.

In effect, therefore, minority ethnic potential trainees in the far SW are
denied access to TTA supported taster courses in their region.

I can't talk to the TTA about this becasue I did not notice the note on
page 6 of the paperwork that says enquiries after 8th July 'may disqualify
the bidder'!

Suggestions needed urgently!

wishing you all well deserved changes and rests,

Nick Givens
Lecturer in Education,
School of Education and Lifelong Learning,
University of Exeter,
Heavitree Road,
Exeter,
EX1 2LU,
England.
tel     (44) 1392 264869
fax     (44) 1392 264792