The controversy over a teaching charity promoted by the Prince of Wales has intensified after his officials invited Scottish headteachers to a private meeting with him and the charity’s executives.
Documents released to the Guardian show Prince Charles met headteachers from East Ayrshire just after they were briefed by executives from Teach First, a charity he helped set up that has been heavily criticised by Scottish teaching organisations.
The meeting was held on January 22 behind closed doors at Dumfries House, a stately home in Ayrshire that the prince helped save for the nation in 2007 and which hosts rural skills education courses for schools.
The day after the event, participants were told by a Dumfries House director that it was vital “the conversations which took place (with Prince Charles) were completely confidential and the prince’s views are not to be freely shared nor quoted”.
Scotland’s largest teachers’ union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), and Labour said they were deeply alarmed by the meeting, as Teach First’s approach to fast-track teacher training had been nearly universally rejected in Scotland.
The Guardian disclosed last year that Prince Charles and his officials had repeatedly lobbied Scottish government ministers – including the then first minister, Alex Salmond, in 2013 – to study Teach First’s attempt to introduce its fast-track model to Scottish schools.
The charity, a social enterprise that places teachers in schools in England after only three months’ training, receives a fee for every teacher it provides.
The General Teaching Council of Scotland (GTCS), which regulates teacher training, refused to accredit Teach First’s model and no university that runs Scotland’s one-year postgraduate teacher training degrees would co-operate with Teach First.
Larry Flanagan, the general secretary of the EIS, said his union was “very clear that organisations such as Teach First have absolutely no role in Scottish education. The GTCS has also been resolute that the Teach First scheme is incompatible with Scotland’s professional teaching standards.”
Iain Gray, Scottish Labour’s education spokesman, said the country’s teacher recruitment crisis had led ministers to look at Teach First. “It is an approach rightly rejected by Scotland’s teachers and by Scottish teacher training institutions, but this meeting shows that Teach First and their royal patron are still refusing to give up,” Gray said.
He and the EIS said the documents released by East Ayrshire council under freedom of information rules raised significant questions about the timing and purpose of the event.
After several years of lobbying by Teach First, John Swinney, the Scottish education secretary, unexpectedly announced in October 2017 that he would allow providers such as Teach First to set up fast-track teacher training schemes in Scotland if they had a university as a partner.