Training for professionals

The coalition is starting to atomise on several fronts, with today's example being on teacher training - with the official position being that it should be up to schools to appoint the best people whether or not they have been formally trained, and Vince Cable saying, no, teachers need training. But even the 'official' coalition is starting to unravel, with official amendments to the Children and Families Bill to ensure that teachers working with children with chronic health conditions should be trained – even if they work in an academy or a free school! It is an Alice in Wonderland world in which professionals have to be trained for subsidiary tasks but not their main role.

But I support the amendment – teachers should be trained in meeting health needs, and they must be trained on how to teach and how children learn. I wouldn't employ an untrained plasterer or a bricklayer, I wouldn't go to a nurse or a doctor – or, worse, a dentist – without training, and I certainly would not want an unqualified garage mechanic to fix my car or solicitor to transfer my home.

I suppose, though, that I have no qualifications (beyond GCE English Grade 5, 1967, gained on the third attempt) to write this blog ... but if you don't like it, you won't read it, and even if you do read it and you don't like it, all it is intended to do is to stimulate some thinking with which you might or might not agree. I'm not trying to save lives, provide basic education, or to build a wall that will stay up.

It is worth remembering that MPs and ministers (of the Crown, not religion) are not formally trained before they start work, and it shows – some are good, some dreadful – is that what we want in our schools?

John Freeman CBE is a former director of children's services and is now a freelance consultant