Teachers should be able to spell, says education minister

Teacher’s group says new exam form makes testing written skills harder

Sofie Carsten Nielsen, the education minister, said that it would be wrong of test censors to allow student teachers into the Nation’s classrooms if they do well in their oral exams but fail the written portions, but teacher’s organisation Dansklærerforeningen is afraid that could become a very real scenario.

Dansklærerforeningen head Jacob Buri Andersen said that the merging of  the oral and the written examinations in Danish into one grade has made it difficult to test a student’s writing skills.

“As the rules stand now, one can well imagine that a student who is good orally but bad at writing could nevertheless become teacher,” Andersen told Kristeligt Dagblad.

Spel chek
Nielsen said that any censor that allows a student to get their diploma without basic writing skills intact is “misunderstanding” the new rules and that no one should be teaching Danish in school if they cannot spell.

READ MORE: Government cutting thousands of student places

She also said that the rules governing the current teaching certificate could not not be immediately changed. The agreement was signed into law in 2012 and will not be evaluated again until 2017.

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