Teacher training, a mature new teacher's view

Following Tim Worstall's blog at the ASI in which he comments on research that showed we don't need to spend years training teachers:

Put simply, the idea is to take bright graduates, give them a few weeks of training to polish their educational skills and then stick them into bad schools. The schools that they find it very difficult to get fully trained teachers to go to.

I sent the article to a very good friend and former colleague who now teaches.

But before I copy his email you should know that he left school at 16 and got an HND in the Royal Navy. On leaving he worked for a mobile company before I met him and recruited him to a consultancy. We worked together around the world on some fairly tough assignments, generally alongside management consultants, where he was often engaged on long projects by clients because of his abilities. During this time he gained an MBA from the OU. Now in his in his mid 40's he has qualified as a teacher last year after undergoing one years teacher training.

So this is his response:

Thanks xxxx,
Just had a look it’s interesting. There is a similar scheme here where very bright graduates do nearly all their training in teaching practice and not learning how to become teachers.

Apparently there’s a lot of truth in it, these young graduates are keen and focus more on ‘selling’ to the students and getting their buy in rather than droning on at them and assuming some of what you say will stick

Also some of the more mature teachers I have met are really lazy and just come in and don’t want to prepare to make their lessons interesting but just reuse old material they planned donkeys years ago.

I’m still trying to be the former, can you imagine how bad teaching would be if you hated it?

I'll bet the NUT et al would have something to say about his opinion.

We really do need a way of getting rid of dead wood from the teaching profession, especially if they want to remain a profession.