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Author: Oliver Mumford, PhD Candidate in History of Education, Liverpool Hope University
Original article: https://theconversation.com/boat-race-row-is-just-the-latest-example-of-a-century-of-academic-dispute-over-teacher-education-254250
When the men’s and women’s boats took to the water for the 2025 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, a few students who would have hoped to be part of the crews were missing.
Matt Heywood, Molly Foxell and Kate Crowley, all of Cambridge, did not take part after a complaint from Oxford University Boat Club over their eligibility was upheld by an independent panel. All three students are studying at Cambridge for PGCEs, a teacher training qualification. Oxford University Boat Club had argued that a PGCE “is a diploma … not a degree”.
The decision seems to reflect a specific ideal of the university as a place of scholarly focus unencumbered by more practical vocational qualifications. It’s also far from a new attitude towards teacher education as an academic discipline.
My ongoing PhD research into the history of teacher training shows that for a century, teacher education has maintained a complex and often conflicting relationship with the ivory and red brick towers of higher education.
This has been reinforced by over a century of numerous gender- and class-based prejudices. Teaching has historically been, and continues to be, a female-dominant profession.
Significantly, training colleges and university education departments were one of the few places where women could partake in intellectual and professional development, an opportunity which linked them to transnational, and colonial networks.
Formalising teacher training
From the 1840s, Christian residential colleges of varying denominations had come to dominate the training of teachers. These primarily provided courses of around two years for mostly female non-graduates.
From the 1890s, English universities began their own involvement with professional teacher education. The university training departments offered a one-year postgraduate certificate course following three years of degree study – today the PGCE.
In the complex mix of training colleges and university education departments, formalised teacher training occupied an uneasy position. It was not considered a “pure” subject like history or mathematics. It was also distinct from the traditionally male “applied” subjects, like medicine, engineering and law.
In 1925, the Burnham report on teacher training considered the desirable balance between the intellectual and professional development of teachers. The majority opinion of the report considered teacher training as primarily vocational. It cautioned against undergraduate degrees for most trainee teachers.
But it did lead to the establishment of a system whereby students were certified as teachers by a board of examiners drawn from universities and training colleges. This was the beginning of a set teaching qualification and brought teacher training into a closer relationship with universities.
In 1944, another report contemplated the relationship between universities and teacher training. The members of the report committee held a range of views. Sir Arnold McNair, chancellor of the University of Liverpool, who chaired the report, feared vocational qualifications such as teaching could erode the purpose of universities. He was concerned that universities would become institutions of training, not education.
But others thought differently. The report claimed that bringing together these two teacher training institutions – the colleges and universities – would improve the standard of teaching and the profession. Following the McNair report, institutes of education were established in the main universities of England and Wales alongside area training organisations. In this closer relationship, universities often assumed the senior positions.
Teacher education in universities
By the 1960s, a still closer relationship was forming between universities and teacher training, from both academic and administrative perspectives. University staff played greater roles teaching in teacher training colleges, for instance. An undergraduate teaching degree programme, the BEd, was introduced.
Teaching became increasingly professionalised. From the 1970s, teacher training was transformed into an all-graduate profession, and later systematically dismantled. Many of the teacher training colleges faced closure, amalgamation or incorporation to polytechnics and universities. But dissenting opinions around the level of education – as opposed to vocational training – teachers should receive remained.
Yuganov Konstantin/Shutterstock
The preface to Cambridge academic Sheila Lawlor’s 1990 pamphlet, titled Teachers mistaught, bemoaned the rise of education as a subject and its presence in, rather than an adjunct to, higher education. In the pamphlet, Lawlor called for graduates to learn to be teachers “on the job”.
The debate on the position of teacher training has remained remarkably consistent – unlike other subjects with vocational elements.
Business schools feature courses taught and directed by companies. Business courses include vocational industry placements and are designed with employment in mind. But they do not so readily have their academic status or place in a university called into question. As this year’s Boat Race shows, the question over the value of vocational and academic education in teacher training is still very much alive.
Oliver Mumford receives funding from Liverpool Hope University (Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship). He is the 2025 Ruth Watts Fellow with the History of Education Society UK.
