Teacher's Skills Tests For Dummies E-Book

Colin Beveridge

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 420

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

If you're preparing for the newly revised Numeracy and Literacy Skills Tests, Teacher's Skills Tests For Dummies is your one-stop for both exams, providing you with subject-matter review, revision and practice tests you need to tackle the tests with confidence and succeed. Written by expert authors in Maths, English, and Education (with the credentials to prove it), Teacher's Skills Tests For Dummies provides you with: - A review of the key maths and English concepts you need to know to do well - Full length practice tests and tons of additional practice questions - Online accessible audio tests for spelling and mental arithmetic -- to better prepare you for the actual test - Tips and tricks (along with mistakes to avoid) to become a better test taker With this book -- and a bit of work on your part -- you'll be positioned to pass your skills tests and gain that coveted place on a teacher-training course.

Leseprobe

Teachers’ Skills Tests For Dummies®

Published by:John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.,The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2014

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Teacher’s Professional Skills Tests For Dummies

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/teachersskillstests to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with the Skills Tests

Chapter 1: Receiving Your Ticket to the Classroom

Tracing the Routes to Becoming a Teacher

Passing the early stations en route to Teaching Central

Pursuing an undergraduate degree

Taking a postgraduate path

Getting qualified: Teachers without QTS

Introducing the Professional Skills Tests

Taking the tests despite having the relevant GCSEs

Understanding why you have to do the tests

Chapter 2: Scoping out the Skills Tests

Discovering the Test Basics

Arranging your test

Showing up (it’s a good idea!)

Taking the test

Limbering up for Your Literacy Test

Succeeding at the spelling section

Preparing for the punctuation section

Grappling with the grammar section

Understanding the comprehension section

Nailing down the Numeracy Test

Thinking about the mental arithmetic section

Managing maths questions on the screen

Chapter 3: Studying to Succeed

Setting Yourself up Physically

Compiling your tools of the trade

Creating a space of your own

Maintaining good notes

Preparing Yourself Mentally

Studying for a reason

Keeping your head on straight

Acing your Exam: Tips for Exam Technique

Revising for Success

Mastering maths

Limbering up at literacy

Playing games for revision

Shopping for exam success

Treating yourself for motivation

Part II: Literacy Skills

Chapter 4: Falling Under the Spell of Spelling

Breaking Words Up

Sounding off! Finding out about phonics

Making pronouncements on syllables

Getting to the roots

Looking at Patterns and Rules

Considering Other Spelling Approaches

Minding mnemonic strategies

Heeding homophones

Knuckling down to remember words

Having a Go: Practice Tests

Test A

Test B

Test C

Test D

Test E

Test F

Checking out the Practice Test Answers

Test A

Test B

Test C

Test D

Test E

Test F

Chapter 5: Punching above Your Weight at Punctuation

Discovering the Need for Pace

Looking at Beginnings: Capital Letters

Kicking off sentences

Starting proper nouns

Opening a sentence in speech marks

Pausing for Breath: Commas

Working with commas

Considering commas in subordinate clauses

Finishing off with Separators

Asking questions

Conveying emphasis

Speaking Up

Seeing precisely what’s said: Speech marks

Indicating written quotes: Quotation marks

Pondering Other Punctuation Marks

Approaching apostrophes

Carrying out joined-up thinking: Hyphens

Perusing parentheses

Coping with colons

Summing up semi-colons

Having a Go: Practice Tests

Passage A

Passage B

Passage C

Passage D

Passage E

Passage F

Passage G

Checking out the Practice Test Answers

Passage A

Passage B

Passage C

Passage D

Passage E

Passage F

Passage G

Chapter 6: Getting to Grips with Grammar

Introducing Standard English

Meeting the Different Parts of Speech

Noticing nouns, proper nouns and pronouns

Visiting the venue of verbs

Messing with modifiers

Pondering prepositions

Considering conjunctions

Clawing at clauses

Fitting phrases into your writing

Working with Sentences

Viewing sentences by structure

Looking at sentences by purpose

Having a Go: Practice Tests

Test A

Test B

Checking out the Practice Test Answers

Test A

Test B

Chapter 7: Considering the Comprehension Test

Meeting the Comprehension Test

Comprehending comprehension

Seeing how you make sense of writing

Following a process for tackling the test

Getting an idea of the passages

Examining the questions

Having a Go: Practice Tests

Test A

Test B

Checking out the Practice Test Answers

Test A

Test B

Part III: Numeracy Skills

Chapter 8: Making Sense of Mental Maths

Blitzing through the Basic Arithmetic Processes

Dealing with decimals

Dividing confidently

Multiplying longhand

Working with Parts of the Whole

Finding fractions of a number

Simplifying fractions

Performing perfectly with percentages

Fiddling with further fractions

Playing with proportion

Answering Real-life Maths Problems

Making sense of money

Taking care of time

Working with weight and volume

Converting distances

Covering rates and speed

Having a Go: Practice Tests

Test A

Test B

Test C

Test D

Test E

Checking out the Practice Test Answers

Test A

Test B

Test C

Test D

Test E

Chapter 9: Stepping up to the Screen: Arithmetic Review

Playing with Parts of the Whole: Percentages

Juggling with the Table of Joy

Putting percentages in their place

Mastering Measures

Calculating complicated money sums

Tackling time

Working with weight, volume and distance

Reeling in the Ranges (and Averages)

Meeting the three averages

Spreading the news of ranges and quartiles

Tracking Trends

Carrying on extrapolating

Minding the gap: Interpolating

Chapter 10: Getting on Top of On-Screen Tests with Tables and Graphs

Dealing with Data Tables

Reading about regular data tables

Doubling up with two-way tables

Meeting table-element criteria

Sussing out Simple Graphs

Battling it out with bar graphs

Lining up and shooting down line graphs

Pigging out on pie charts

Seeing through scatter graphs

Grafting Away at Complex Graphs

Getting the better of box-and-whiskers plots

Adding in cumulative frequency graphs

Chapter 11: Trying out Your Numeracy Skills: On-Screen Practice Questions

Having a Go Yourself: The Tests

Test A

Test B

Test C

Test D

Test E

Checking How You Did: Test Answers

Test A

Test B

Test C

Test D

Test E

Part IV: Timed Practice Tests

Chapter 12: Practising Literacy Tests under Timed Conditions

Putting Your Literacy Skills to the Test

Spelling questions

Punctuation questions

Grammar questions

Comprehension questions

Checking Your Answers

Spelling answers

Punctuation answers

Grammar answers

Comprehension answers

Chapter 13: Tackling the Timed Numeracy Test

Practising Numeracy Questions

Mental arithmetic questions

On-screen questions

Checking Your Answers

Mental arithmetic answers

On-screen answers

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 14: Ten Top Tips for Keeping Your Head

Breathing Well

Sitting up Straight

Talking Kindly To Yourself

Making Studying a Habit

Knowing What’s Coming

Using a Last-Minute Cheat Sheet

Thinking Creatively

Keeping Your Notes Neat

Pressing the Reset Button

Focusing on the Result

Chapter 15: Ten Tricks for Acing Your Numeracy Test

Reading the Exam Question Properly

Approaching a Question in a Different Way

Managing Your Time Effectively

Guessing Quickly When All Else Fails

Writing Down What’s Important

Making Things Simple

Keeping on Track

Reading Your Answers Again

Laying Your Work Out Neatly

Doing the Most Obvious Thing

About the Authors

Cheat Sheet

More Dummies Products

Guide

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Introduction

So, you want to become a teacher? Fantastic! Never mind the friends who wittily quote George Bernard Shaw’s hilarious (not) ‘He who can does. He who can’t teaches’. Ignore the steady supply of family members who start presenting you with apples, wry smiles on their faces. Rise above the endless talk of a ridiculous amount of annual leave and the ‘clever’ comments about a well-paid job where you turn up at 9 a.m. and finish at 3 p.m.

You can pay no attention, because teaching is a great profession and being able to do it well is a real gift. To play a part in watching children and young people develop and learn is a privilege that few jobs provide.

Make no mistake ‒ the work is challenging, uplifting, frustrating and exciting by turns. One day you feel on top of the world, the next you’re tearing your hair out and wondering what on earth you’ve let yourself in for. But we can guarantee that it’ll never be dull.

You spend hours marking work, planning lessons and developing the best ways to teach a topic, but when – and yes, this really does happen sometimes – you see your pupils’ faces light up when a key concept finally clicks, it’s worth every minute.

We know that you’re going to make a great teacher – when you get past those pesky Skills Tests. And yes, we’ve heard all the standard arguments that you don’t plan to be a Maths teacher or teach English and so why do you have to revise percentages and fractions or be able to distinguish your pronouns from your prepositions?

Well, here are several reasons:

You’ll be marking books, writing on the board, sending reports to parents, creating resources and doing plenty of other writing as a teacher. You want to look as professional as possible, and so having good English skills is essential.You’ll be responsible for statistics about your classes, working out test percentages and – as you progress through your career – dealing with budgets, analysing data and discovering all manner of places where you need to be moderately sharp with your number skills.Students pick up attitudes from their teachers. Any outlook that ‘numeracy and literacy aren’t all that important’ is going to rub off on your students. We think that they deserve better than that.If you don’t pass the tests, you don’t get into teacher training. No amount of grumbling is going to change that fact, and so you may as well put your energies into studying. (That’s the ‘it’s in the exam!’ reason; you’ll probably tell pupils that quite frequently.)

We don’t plan to turn you into a Maths geek or a literature professor – we couldn’t if we tried; all we want to do is help you get through the tests and feel comfortable with the everyday English and Maths you need to be a good, professional teacher.

As you work through the book, you’ll find that you get quicker and more accurate with your answers and will go into the test confident of getting the score you need.

Good luck! Let us know how you get on.

About This Book

This book is for you if you’re planning to start teacher training and have to pass the Numeracy and Literacy Skills Tests to qualify for your course. We take you through the details of the tests, showing you how to revise in general and what you specifically need to know for these tests.

Andrew is your guide for the literacy side of things, taking you patiently through the tricks of spelling, punctuation and grammar. From him, you discover the following:

Ways to make sense of the madness that is the English spelling system.How to use your existing knowledge of language and grammar to build new knowledge that you need for the Skills Tests.Language skills that benefit you for your career as a teacher and for life.

Colin is in charge of numeracy. In his chapters, he shows you:

How to deal with the mental arithmetic test without dissolving into a panic.How to pull apart word problems and turn them into sums you can do.How to make sense of complicated graphs and get simple answers from them.

We also provide several sample exams you can use as part of your revision to see how you’re getting on, and to give you a flavour of what the tests are like – and the whole book is full of worked examples so you can see both the answer and how to get there!

Foolish Assumptions

Making assumptions is always a risky business, but knowing where we’re coming from may put you at ease. So, in writing this book, we assume the following:

You know your basic arithmetic: how to add, subtract, divide and multiply small numbers.You’re able to read and write in English at a basic level. It goes without saying, we hope, that all the rules, guidance and so on that we provide relate to Standard English. Nothing’s wrong with colloquialisms and the like in everyday life, but they ain’t gonna get ya no points in the Skills Tests.You want to do well in your Skills Tests as a step to becoming a great teacher!

Icons Used in This Book

Here are the icons we use to draw your attention to particularly noteworthy paragraphs.

Theories are fine and dandy, but anything marked with this icon tells you something practically useful to help you get to the right answer.

Paragraphs marked with this icon contain key points to take away from the book and the essence of each subject.

This icon highlights mistakes that can cost you marks or your sanity, or both! Others have made these errors so that you don’t have to.

Beside this icon we provide useful exercises so that you can try out what you discover in a chapter. The more you practise, the easier the actual test is sure to be.

If you prefer you can safely skip anything marked with this icon without missing out on the main message. But you may find the information useful for a deeper understanding of the subject.

Beyond the Book

For a more realistic experience, visit www.dummies.com/go/teachersskillstests to access audio versions of the spelling and mental arithmetic questions, similar to those used for the actual tests. You can also check out this site for the latest updates on changes to the tests. Why not also visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/teachersskillstests for more quick and easy tips on how to brush up on your test-taking skills, giving you the confidence you need to sail through your Literacy and Numeracy tests.

Where to go from Here

Head to Chapter 2 for an explanation of what you're likely to find in your Literacy and Numeracy tests. If you're in a hurry to see where you are, you may want to jump straight to the timed tests in Chapters 12 and 13. On the other hand, if you have plenty of time before the exam, you may prefer to start with Chapter 3 and set yourself up with a detailed study plan.

You can also use the index and Table of Contents to find the areas you want to study. This book is a reference – keep it with your study gear and turn to it whenever you have something you want to look up!

We wish you the very best in your Professional Skills Tests, and hope this book helps you to pass the exams in style! Good luck – both with the exams and with your career as a teacher.

Part I

Getting Started with the Skills Tests

For Dummies can help you get started with lots of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more and do more with For Dummies.

In this part …

Learn to leap through the right hoops to become a teacher.Find out exactly what you need to know to sit and pass the Skills Tests.Sit down and study: perfect your revision technique and get mentally prepared.Keep yourself calm, stay motivated and succeed!

Chapter 1

Receiving Your Ticket to the Classroom

In This Chapter

Exploring your options for training as a teacher

Understanding the need for the Skills Tests

Like just about anything worthwhile in life, becoming a teacher takes work and needs you to fulfil several requirements. One of these, whether you like it or not, is that you have to pass your Professional Skills Tests.

You may be a superb sports coach, a maestro in the music studio, an excellent exponent for English literature or a genius in the geography classroom. You may be able to inspire your pupils with enthusiasm for equilateral triangles, devotion to design technology or passion for the painting processes of Jackson Pollock. You may, in other words, be God’s gift to the teaching profession, but without passing your Skills Tests you aren’t going to reach even the first rung of the teaching ladder.

In this chapter, we lead you through a quick tour of the paths that you can take to become a teacher, providing information about what’s required of you along the way. We also explain why you have to pass the Professional Skills Tests before you can enter a course of Initial Teacher Education (ITE).

Tracing the Routes to Becoming a Teacher

As the rather unpleasant saying goes, ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’. Likewise, you have more than one way into the teaching profession (and fortunately they’re all less messy and less damaging to the poor felines). Your task is to find the way that best suits you and your circumstances. If you’ve yet to make that decision, this section can help.

Passing the early stations en route to Teaching Central

No matter which route you take to becoming a teacher – and we outline plenty in this section – you encounter a number of common stops along the way:

GCSEs: Having a Grade C or better at GCSE (or equivalent qualifications from other countries) in English and Maths has long been a pre-entry requirement for teacher-education courses.Professional Skills Tests: You’re reading this book, of course, because you need to pass the Literacy and Numeracy Skills Tests to be accepted onto a teacher-training course.A degree: To be a teacher, you require a university degree. You either need to hold a degree in advance of deciding that you want to become a teacher, or to earn one as part of your ITE.Qualified Teacher Status (QTS): To achieve QTS, you have to demonstrate to the university or school leading the training that you meet the Teaching Standards established by the Department of Education. At that point, the university or school recommends you for QTS to the Teaching Agency (TA), which is the body that awards the status (check out the Teaching Standards at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teachers-standards).

To look into all the available options for becoming a teacher in more detail than we have space for, visit the TA website at http://www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/teacher-training-options.aspx

The information and guidance we provide in this chapter is solid. But your best course of action before making any decisions is to check with the universities and programmes that you’re considering and make sure that you know the rules, regulations and requirements specific to them.

Pursuing an undergraduate degree

If you don’t have a university degree and you want to train as a teacher, you can pursue a degree and work towards QTS (which we define in the preceding section) at the same time at university.

Two types of undergraduate qualification can lead to QTS:

Bachelor of Arts (BA)/Bachelor of Science (BSc) courses with QTS: These courses provide an honours degree in a particular academic subject (such as English, Maths or Physical Education) alongside working towards QTS. Regular assessed school placements spread over the duration of the degree programme allow you to explore the pedagogic (that is, the theoretical and practical) approaches appropriate to the teaching of the academic subject in the school context.Bachelor of Education (BEd) courses: These programmes are honours courses in education. They’re available for primary and secondary education, but given the usual requirement for secondary teachers to possess degree-level knowledge in a particular National Curriculum subject, BEd qualifications (which don’t provide such a specialist focus) are much more common for primary education.

These two courses typically take three or four years to complete.

As with other undergraduate courses, you apply for entry to these programmes via the Universities and Colleges Applications Service (UCAS) at www.ucas.ac.uk.

Taking a postgraduate path

You have two options available if you have a degree in hand and decide that teaching is for you:

University-based training: Led primarily by university and academic tutors.School-based training: Led primarily by a Training School.

These models involve a close partnership between universities and schools, because a balance of academic learning about education and pedagogy and practical application of these subjects through classroom experience is important. Teachers working in schools and university lecturers in education provide different but complementary perspectives on the work of the teacher.

Theory without practice can be abstract and unrealistic, and practice without understanding of the underpinning theory runs the danger of being simplistic and will not provide you with a detailed understanding of the complex processes at work in the classroom.

University-based routes

Postgraduate routes into teaching via a higher education institution (HEI) generally allow you to obtain a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) with recommendation for QTS.

HEI-based PGCE routes are becoming increasingly rare because policy now favours school-based routes. As a result, numbers of training places allocated to universities for PGCE provision have been cut significantly. Check out the later ‘School-based routes’ section for the other ways of obtaining a PGCE.

A PGCE is an academic qualification that’s often studied for and assessed alongside QTS. It allows students to explore philosophies and purposes of education, theories of how teachers teach and learners learn, the history of academic subjects and the ideas underpinning subject pedagogies.

PGCEs are awarded in two forms, though both require that you’ve already completed your first degree (usually in the subject you want to teach):

Professional level: PGCEs at this level are assessed according to undergraduate criteria.Masters level: PGCEs at this level are assessed according to postgraduate criteria and carry Masters-level credits. These credits can be really useful if you want to go on to complete a full Masters in Education at a later date.

Check out carefully with your university whether the PGCE you’re interested in carries Masters-level credits or not, because it can obviously have an impact on potential employers.

Strictly speaking, you don’t have to have a PGCE; QTS is all that’s required in order to work in schools in the UK. But many employers like to see that you also have the PGCE, which is seen as adding some academic rigour to the practicalities of QTS.

To gain access to most programmes you need a good honours degree (2:2 or higher), although the TA has sought to ‘raise the bar’. In many cases a 2:1 or higher is now required, and in all subjects degree classification has a direct impact on levels of funding (see the nearby sidebar ‘Show me the money!’ for more on funding).

Also, with limited numbers of university-based PGCE places now available, admissions tutors can (and will) be much more selective. Entry criteria for PGCE programmes are, therefore, likely to become higher.

Show me the money!

The good news is that funding of up to £20,000 is currently available (depending upon subject and degree qualification) for a variety of university-based and school-based postgraduate routes into teaching. For more information, take a look at http://www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/funding/postgraduate-funding.

The TA claims that an A-level in the target subject plus any degree is enough to gain entry into a postgraduate programme, but the reality is that most HEIs have much higher benchmark entry criteria. So, if your dream is to become an English teacher but you have a first degree in Forensic Science, you’re unlikely to gain a place.

PGCE programmes are available in full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) routes. FT routes take one year and PT routes up to two years. Please check carefully with individual HEIs, though, because not all HEIs are allowed to offer all subjects and only some subjects are available on a PT basis.

HEIs operate according to strict target numbers, and so early application for PGCE courses is advisable.

You have to apply for all PGCE courses via UCAS TT. See the website at http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/teacher-training for further details about the application process.

Overseas qualifications

If you qualified at an overseas university, you can still apply for any of the routes outlined here. Check out whether your degree and other entry qualifications (for example, GCSE English and Maths) are considered equivalent by referring to UK NARIC, the national agency responsible for providing information and advice about how qualifications and skills from overseas compare to the UK’s national qualification frameworks.

School-based routes

As well as the university-based routes we outline in the preceding section, you also have a variety of school-based routes into the teaching profession.

School-based routes are open only to individuals who already hold a university degree.

School Direct

A new major route is School Direct (SD). Typically a one-year programme (though some schools may opt to offer part-time alternatives), SD exists for primary and secondary levels. The route is available to high-quality university graduates and leads to the award of QTS if you complete it successfully.

Training is led by a Training School, but a partner university is also involved in the programme. No fixed rules apply about how this arrangement must work in practice.

Some schools adopt a model in which, as a student, you’re released for blocks of academic study at the partner university, where you prepare for a PGCE (we define the PGCE earlier in this chapter in ‘University-based routes’). In other cases, the academic programme supplements the school-based one but doesn’t lead to the award of a PGCE. Other schools develop bespoke relationships with universities in which teaching by university staff takes place in local clusters of schools or even in a single centre. Again, this arrangement may (or may not) lead to the award of a PGCE.

As you can see, a lot depends upon the nature of local partnership and assessment arrangements negotiated between the Training School and the partner university. The only way to be certain is to approach your chosen provider and ask!

School Direct exists in two versions:

SD Training: see details above.SD Salaried: arrangements for application remain the same, but this route is normally open only to candidates who have three or more years’ experience in work. Note, though, that this work can be in any field – it doesn’t have to be in education. Successful applicants will receive a salary from their Training School – the clue’s in the name! As with the SD route, places offered on this route also lead, if completed successfully, to the award of QTS and may carry the PGCE.

Funding of up to £20,000 for the SD Training route is currently available depending upon subject and degree qualification. For information, check out http://www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/funding/postgraduate-funding.

Application for School Direct places is also made via UCAS TT. For full details see http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/teacher-training.

School-centred Initial Teacher Training

School-centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) programmes are generally completed in a year (see http://www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/teacher-training-options/school-based-training/school-centred-training for details). They lead to the award of the all-important QTS and some also to the PGCE.

As with the SD routes in the preceding section, SCITTs have to involve universities, but the relationship is somewhat different, because the route has to be validated by a partner university. So, although this route is primarily – as its name gives away – school-centred, the responsibility for assessment remains with the university.

The extent to which students following SCITT routes receive taught input from the validating university varies, and so check this aspect out carefully before you apply to make sure that the programme does what you want it to do.

Details of possible funding are available via the TA website (http://www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/funding/postgraduate-funding) and application for SCITTs is generally made via UCAS TT (see http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/teacher-training) ‒ though look into this carefully, because it’s not always the case.

Teach First

Teach First has a particular social and educational mission to work with schools operating in socially disadvantaged areas. As such, the schools it works with often provide very challenging (though potentially very rewarding) experiences.

To enter the Teach First school-based route into teaching, you need a minimum of a 2:1 degree or 300 UCAS points. (UCAS points are awarded for A-level grades and/or other post-age-16 qualifications.)

Teach First advertises a UCAS tariff in its entry criteria because so many of its applicants have yet to graduate. The 300 UCAS point indicator is, therefore, a benchmark for pre-graduation applicants. Participants (that’s what Teach First calls students on its programme) who don’t go on to obtain a 2:1 or a First Class degree are usually required to withdraw from the programme.

Teach First operates in ten regions:

East MidlandsGreater LondonKent & MedwayNorth EastNorth WestSouth WestSouth CoastTeach First Cymru (Wales)West MidlandsYorkshire & The Humber

As an applicant you apply centrally to Teach First, indicating the region in which you want to work, though there’s no guarantee regarding the region in which you’ll be placed.

Teach First has no fees and offers an initial contracted period of two years: the first year paid as an unqualified teacher, the second year paid as a qualified teacher, assuming that the award of QTS is made at the end of the first year.

The programme begins with a Summer Institute that’s HEI-based. Here you receive an intensive introduction to Professional Studies and Subject Studies in the area in which you’re training to teach. All accommodation, travel and food costs for the period of the Summer Institute are paid, and so you don’t need to worry about that!

Teach First operates its own assessment and admissions procedures: check out graduates.teachfirst.org.uk.

Getting qualified: Teachers without QTS

If you’re already an experienced but unqualified teacher or an overseas trained teacher (OTT) who now wants to gain QTS, several options are designed specifically for your situation.

Unqualified UK teachers

If you’re working unqualified in schools (maintained or independent) or in other related educational roles, you can take one of several specially designed routes to QTS:

Assessment Only (AO): This programme is for teachers who can demonstrate that they’ve already met in full the requirements of the Teaching Standards. In this case, no formal ITE is required, but you still need to pass the Professional Skills Tests. You have to apply for AO routes directly to an ‘accredited provider’ ‒ generally university-based programmes (see the earlier section ‘Taking a postgraduate path’).Assessment-based route: This option (different from the above in spite of its similar name) is for candidates for entry to teaching who require some, but a minimal amount of, additional training in order to meet the requirements of the Teaching Standards. This process is administered by the University of Gloucestershire, to which you need to apply (see http://www.glos.ac.uk/courses/teachertraining/Pages/qts.aspx).

Before considering application for this route, check the TA website (www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching) for current details, because not all phases of education and not all subjects are always available. And, yes, you do need to pass the Professional Skills Tests (there’s no escape!).

Overseas experience

If you’ve been a teacher in a country other than the UK, your path to QTS depends upon where you previously taught:

European Union (EU): If you’re a teacher qualified in an EU state, your QTS is recognised automatically.Australia, Canada, New Zealand and United States: If you’re a qualified teacher from one of these countries, you can apply directly to the TA to have your QTS recognised in the UK (subject to meeting Border Agency requirements in terms of right to reside and right to work in the UK).Other countries: If you trained in any other country outside the EU, the Overseas Trained Teacher Programme (OTTP) allows you to work in the UK for up to four years on an unqualified basis while gaining your QTS after you find a UK school to employ you. Known as Employment Based Initial Teacher Training (EBITT), the length of your training programme is determined by your EBITT provider.

You need to take the Professional Skills Tests only if you fall within the third category listed above.

Introducing the Professional Skills Tests

Before meeting the conditions for acceptance on an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) course to become a teacher, you need to pass the Professional Skills Tests in Literacy and Numeracy (for a complete description of these tests, turn to Chapter 2).

Professional Skills Tests have long been part of the landscape of teacher education, but as a candidate who wants to undertake teacher-education programmes you now have to pass these tests upfront. In other words, the tests are a pre-entry requirement.

Therefore, you no longer have the luxury of time and multiple opportunities to pass these tests. All offers to take up places on teacher-education programmes are conditional on the successful pre-course completion of the Professional Skills Tests: no pass, no place.

Taking the tests despite having the relevant GCSEs

Most people entering the teaching profession have already gained GCSEs (or equivalent qualifications from other countries) in English and Maths. In fact, proving that you have a Grade C or better at GCSE level in these subjects has long been a pre-entry requirement for teacher-education courses. Despite having these qualifications, however, and even if you have a degree or a PhD in English or Maths, you still have to take your Professional Skills Tests.

The reality is that even if you went straight to university from school and from there are now seeking to go straight into teacher education, five years have passed since you did your GCSEs. Taking into account gap years, employment, parenting and so on, for many people much longer periods have elapsed. After such a gap, being asked to undergo a new test of your abilities is quite reasonable.

Understanding why you have to do the tests

The rationale for the Professional Skills Tests is clear. Whether you aim to teach at primary or secondary level, and whatever your specialist subject, you need to be an effective and accurate user of language and numbers.

All teachers have to engage in the teaching of reading and writing to some extent. If you’re a budding biology teacher who wants your pupils to be able to spell ‘photosynthesis’, you have to teach them (we cover spelling in Chapter 4). If you’re a food-tech teacher and you want your pupils to write in particular forms and styles, that’s down to you.

Plus, think about the many occasions when teachers have to use language in other aspects of their jobs: writing letters to parents, composing end-of-year reports, speaking at consultation evenings and so on. Turn to Chapters 5, 6 and 7 for all about punctuation, grammar and comprehension, respectively.

In addition, teachers (yes, even English teachers) need to be numerate – how else do you expect your pupils to read statistical data in non-fiction texts or present numerical material in their own writing if you don’t teach them? As with English, teachers also need to use numeracy outside the classroom: working out examination results, analysing school and national performance data, and so on. We discuss the Numeracy parts of the tests in Part III of this book: mental arithmetic (Chapter 8), general arithmetic (Chapter 9) and statistics (Chapter 10). We supply useful numeracy practice questions in Chapter 11.

Don’t forget that your literacy and numeracy abilities also impact on pupils and teaching colleagues. Teaching is a collaborative endeavour, and unless all teachers of all subjects reinforce the importance of, and demonstrate the effective use of, language and numbers, pupils’ education is bound to suffer.

Like any policy or code of practice, weak performance by individuals has a knock-on effect. Accurate and creative use of language and numbers is important not only for effective communication, but also because your example as a teacher rubs off on your pupils. If you don’t use these key skills accurately and confidently, and explicitly reinforce how important they are, the result is an adverse impact on the children you teach. If you don’t value literacy and numeracy in your work, how can you expect them to do so?

Therefore, literacy and numeracy are vitally important for teachers and you can see why the authorities require you to show that you possess the basic skills in these areas. But you don’t have to do so alone: we’re here to help prepare you for the tests. As well as the specific chapters we reference earlier in this section, you may want to take a look at Chapter 2, where we describe the tests in detail, and Chapter 3, in which we provide some invaluable test strategies. We also supply timed tests for you to practise: on literacy in Chapter 12 and numeracy in Chapter 13. Try these out before you take the tests and nothing is going to surprise you on the day.

Chapter 2

Scoping out the Skills Tests

In This Chapter

Running through the practicalities

Reading about the literacy test

Counting down to the numeracy test

As part of the government’s drive to improve the calibre of applicants to teacher training, it has introduced tests in numeracy and literacy at the start of your course, replacing the old tests (which you were able to take at any time during your course). The new tests are also designed to be harder (sorry, ‘more rigorous’) than the old versions: you need to get at least 18 out of a possible 28 marks (about 63 per cent) to pass.

Until 2012, you were allowed to take the Skills Tests as many times as you wanted until you attained the pass mark, but this arrangement has been replaced with a three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy. If you fail either of the tests three times, you have to wait two years before you can apply for teacher training again. Your first attempt at each test is free, but if you need to take either paper again you’re charged a fee – currently £19.25 – when you book. So now you know the official cost of failure!

In short, getting through the Skills Tests is significantly more difficult than in the past. The good news, however, is that we give you all the information and practice you need to get your literacy and numeracy up to speed so that you can succeed at the tests with minimal stress. In this chapter, we run through the Skills Tests in general and also focus on the Literacy and Numeracy tests individually.

Discovering the Test Basics

A bit of organisation can really improve your chances of getting through the Skills Tests without a panic attack. We’re not talking about organising your notes (although that helps) – we mean booking your test as early as you can, showing up in the right place ahead of time and making sure that you’re set up for doing the test.

The more confident you can be about showing up in the right place at the right time and avoiding test-day hassles, the more you can concentrate on just getting the answers right!

Arranging your test

To get you used to the bureaucracy you need to master as a teacher, you have to apply for the various elements of teacher training in a specific order. Here’s how the process goes:

Arrange your Skills Tests for a date after you plan to apply for your course, but before you plan to start training.Submit your application(s) for teacher training.Study for, and pass, your Skills Tests.Succeed at your initial teacher education (ITE) interview.Start your course.

You register for your tests online (you can find all the links you need at www.education.gov.uk – search for ‘Skills Tests registration’ and you’re taken to the right page).

Ensuring a level playing field

If you’ve been assessed as having dyslexia or dyscalculia, if you’re hard of hearing or visually impaired, or you have any other circumstances that may affect your performance in the exam, you may be entitled to extra time for the paper or to special arrangements. Make sure to mention these issues when you apply for the test.

When you sign up, make sure that the details you provide match the details on your application and your ID – you don’t want to get turned away because you write that your name is Tony but your passport says Anthony!

You also need to ensure that the email address you provide is one that you check regularly – all teacher-training-related correspondence comes to it and you don’t want to miss anything!

Showing up (it’s a good idea!)

You take your tests at a Pearson Professional Centre – a dedicated testing centre that’s similar to the one where you take a driving theory test.

You need to bring some documentation with you:

Evidence of your application – a copy of your application form or your confirmation of receipt does the trick.A copy of your test booking email.Two forms of ID, including a passport, driving licence, European national ID card or student card. If you have only one of these forms, you can also use a bank card or Armed Forces ID, as long as it’s signed and valid.

The test centres do not provide childcare – if you’re responsible for children, you need to arrange for alternative care while you’re taking the test.

Taking the test

You don’t have to bring anything with you for the test. In fact, the less you bring, the better: the test centres don’t let you take anything to the computer where you’re doing the exam. As well as the obvious things, such as notes and calculators, this rule includes phones, jackets, bags and drinks. We’ve even heard of people being asked to leave their watches behind – presumably in case knowing the time would confer some kind of unfair advantage!

You can consult a list of rules at www.education.gov.uk, most of which are common sense: be nice to the staff, don’t cheat, don’t talk to anyone in the exam, don’t disturb anyone and don’t confuse the test centre with a canteen – you’re not to eat or drink in the exam.

You take the test on one of the centre’s computers. The questions ask you to type in answers, click boxes to indicate which statements are true or click an element of a graph or table with a particular property.

Each test typically takes about 45 minutes, and you need to pick up about two-thirds of the available marks to record a pass.

Don’t worry about tests being interrupted for any reason (such as fire alarms), because it happens very rarely – and it’s not under your control, in any case. Focus on studying instead! The test centres have procedures in place for suspending tests so that you can resume them after any incident is resolved, or for rearranging your test if resuming isn’t possible.

After you finish the test, you’re told pretty much straight away whether you passed or not. That’s all the information you get – you aren’t told your score.

Limbering up for Your Literacy Test