Education, education, education

Hopefully everyone remember's Blair's 1997 mantra regarding his main priority. Well, it would appear that - as with the NHS - the eventual solution (if indeed it can be called one) has been the use of overseas labour.

The Guardian - How Heads bend the rules

The Headspace survey also reveals that a large number of schools are using unqualified teaching staff: 73% of secondary and 35% of primary heads in England admitted they had taken on someone without qualified teacher status (QTS) to teach in the past three years.

Dunford expresses little surprise. "This merely reflects what everyone already knows - that there have been severe teacher shortages in several subjects, not just in maths and sciences," he says. "It's also been difficult to recruit in ICT and English."

Now there is nothing wrong per se with using teachers from overseas. After all, they can actually add to the richness and cultural diversity of lessons. But there are two issues here.

Firstly, by using unqualified teaching staff, the standard of education our children receive may be lowered. And this is a direct result of the DfES directive to increase teachers' non-contact time without introducing an equivalent budget increase to fund cover. As a consequence, head teachers are faced with making budget cuts to fund UK qualified supply teaching cover; asking teaching assistants to cover the lessons or employ an unqualified overseas teacher at a lower cost than the equivalent UK qualified supply teacher.

Secondly, this process has the effect of depriving poorer countries of valuable teaching staff.

Yet another example of New Labour's inability to apply joined up thinking to the process of government.