Talk:Teach First/Archive 1

To Do

 * origins of teach first
 * Spring 2002, Rona Kiley head of business and education at London First and Brett Wigdortz, a McKinsey consultant came up with the idea of adapting Teach for America and setting up a scheme in London, called 'Teach for London'. The idea being to get graduates to commit to teaching for two years and gain marketable skills for lead in what ever field they chose.  It was slow at getting started, with businesses unwilling to give support to the scheme unless the government did and visa versa.  As Wigdortz approached the end of an unpaid 6 month sabbatical from McKinsey, George Iacobescu, chief executive of Canary Wharf stepped in, providing £25,000 and things started from there.  The Government supported the scheme, Wigdortz quit his job at McKinsey to become chief execute of Teach First, and with Kiley convinced a lot of organisations to join the scheme.  The first cohort of participants were hired, starting their training in the Summer of 2003.  They numbered 184 graduates mainly from the Russell Group of Universities and headed into 46 schools in London


 * teach first week
 * criticisms
 * expand and improve course structure section
 * the references cited in the "current situation" paragraph are not linked to their sources —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.65.216.203 (talk) 14:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Request for criticism
Being a firm supporter of the scheme, I'm worried this article will appear like marketing spiel. If anyone can find articles or references from people opposed to the scheme I would be most appreciative as I have failed miserably so far. The closest I can find is : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4037453.stm but the message isn't clear. I know there are critics out there somewhere...

letter to the guardian http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1308574,00.html Pluke 10:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * You bet this article sounds like an advertisement rather than an encyclopedic lemma. The problem, not only with the lemma but with the movement 'Teach First', is that the goals are ill-defined. When is 'Teach First' a success? When is it a failure? It is easy to throw public money around, and start well-intended projects. It is harder to set clear goals and reach them.


 * In my country, The Netherlands, the ministry of Education is 'inspired' by Teach First and Teach for America, and spends an awful lot of public money to educate... 19 high-potential graduates this year. Easily triple the sum of money spent on raising ordinary teachers. The promise: 'Teach first for two years, 10 hours a week, then we'll promise you a job outside education'. The quite unhidden message is: 'Don't take education seriously as a career opportunity. Don't become a teacher'. And 19 graduates? The Netherlands has a lack of 5.000 academic graduates entering education. No graduate in their right mind wants to enter an underpaid, underappreciated and overworkloaded job - unless the economic crisis forces them to, or unless it is their road to a guaranteed McKinsey job.


 * But this is an encyclopedic lemma, not an opinion. If you want to add facts, add the number of graduates still working in education two years after completion of the 'Teach First' project. I think those numbers are in themselves both factual and critical enough. Mcouzijn (talk) 13:00, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Two bad reviews out of hundreds. Fair to mention, not fair to give equal weight. 86.139.103.170 (talk) 09:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Here is a critical article: Smart, S., Hutchings, M., Maylor, U., Mendick, H. & Menter, I. (2009). Processes of middle-class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme. Journal of Education and Work, 22(1): 35-53. (19 pages, ISSN: 1363-9080) Essentially this argues that the scheme reproduces social class inequalities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.223.103.59 (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Article rewrite
I've read through this article several times and spent a fair amount of time reading up on Teach First. Although there is nothing especially inaccurate with the article, I don't think it quite gets to the heart of what this organisation is about. Unfortunately the content does largely read like a PR piece directed at would-be participants. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of the content comes from conflict of interest editing back in September 2012, but I don't think it's worth going down that route. There is also very little in-line referencing. I'm going to try and rewrite a lot of this article. Seaweed (talk) 10:10, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Charitable status
From what I understand Teach first has charitable status, and does not receive payment per placement of any kind. "Social Enterprise" as a descriptor to me does not adequately describe teach first, and the charitable status in regards to limited payment of interviewee costs and exception under FOI seems somewhat important.Lacunae (talk) 21:56, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Autism Criticism
I have deleted the following from the criticism section:

Teach First also place success at the assessment centre day on the ability to provide Eye contact, a trait which members of the Autistic community struggle with.

It is unsourced original research. Neither of the articles it references support the argument that requiring eye contact is somehow prejudical. Autism spectrum conditions are a serious issue but I fail to see how a teacher that cannot make eye contact will of any use whatsoever. It is well within an employers rights to ensure that a potential employee is capable of doing the job in question. It's an unsourced claim that uses two semi-relevant references to pass itself off as legitimate and unless someone has a strong argument for re-instating it it doesn't belong in the article.


 * I disagree that it is wholly unsourced, the first citation clearly states that eye contact is regarded as a positive trait in selection process by Teach First. I don't know where you've got the idea that people on the autism spectrum *cannot* make eye contact, and how this has any bearing on their ability to teach. As far as I know Teach First are not the employers, merely a charity that recruits graduates. I agree that it is the duty of the recruiters to ensure that potential candidates are capable of doing the job, but that they also should have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to allow candidates from neuro-diverse backgrounds into teaching. I agree the second source is weak, and that a direct citable source saying "Teach First has been criticised for regarding eye contact as a positive trait by so and so groups" would be ideal. Quick and non in-depth internet searches seem to support the assertation that eye-contact is a cultural preference, and so probably is prejudicial (http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073534226/363131/gam34226_ch02.pdf [would you fail to see how an asian teacher would be any use whatsoever?]) Another worry is that such criteria propagate into the graduates taken on by this selection, who are teaching hundreds of thousands of students (some estimates put about 1 in 100 of the population on the autistic spectrum), who then propagate the eye contact preference in the classroom, to the detriment of autistic students. Requests for criticism are still outstanding, however I accept that the points raised err too much on the side of original research, until better sources are available. Thanks for your input, that the eye contact issue might have cultural dimensions as well as ableist dimensions was not something I'd considered, something to look into for some better sources.Lacunae (talk) 13:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

89.248.27.73 edits
Geolocation data from IP2Location (Product: DB4) IP Address	Country	Region	City	ISP 89.248.27.73	United Kingdom	England	London	Teach First - More London

if this information is accurate, please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations#Am_I_allowed_to_edit_articles_about_myself_or_my_organization.3F

Reverted edits 14 July 2014 from this IP WP:BFAQ, some of the information might be useful, but such a significant change from an ip associated with the charity should be worked out on the talk page first I think, not to mention I think some of the material was irrelevant and/or marketing material.Lacunae (talk) 15:34, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Lacunae (talk) 08:07, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Teach First representative
My name is Jeremiah Mahadevan and I work with the Teach First communications team. This page has seen a number of past edits carried out by Teach First employees without express authorisation from the charity; these arose out of a lack of understanding of Wikipedia's guidelines and conflict of interest policy - apologies for this, it won't happen again. We've decided to take a more active role in informing the content of this page and any other pages that may be related to Teach First, and so have registered an account expressly for that purpose. I will be working on a list of suggested edits to the page, submitting more sources, clarifying sections that currently read poorly and correcting a number of errors. Once this is done I'll post it here on the talk page. Before doing this, I thought it would be best to give advance notice of it, and also to offer our assistance with any queries editors might have about Teach First. We'd like to follow the right protocol this time, so please do let me know if we're still falling foul of it in any way.TeachFirstComms (talk) 16:38, 20 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi, I'm glad you've looked at the conflict of interest policy and will be developing the page following best practises.Lacunae (talk) 17:22, 20 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi Jeremiah, welcome to wikipedia and I'm glad to see Teach First are finally cracking down on this. Pluke (talk) 00:05, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Re-addition of material removed
I've readded material removed by user Stesmo, as I think the demand for 3rd party sourcing for the information provided was unnessesary, as 1, unlikely to exist and 2, the information is mostly verifiable on the Teach First site.Lacunae (talk) 19:08, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Request for feedback from Teach First over factual errors
I'd like to request feedback from Teach First over any factual errors.Lacunae (talk) 20:17, 31 August 2015 (UTC)