DC’s teacher didn’t go to university.

School is obviously very happy with the teacher and know she doesn’t have a degree.
Other parents are happy too
Results are good
Whats the problem?

If you feel that strongly about your child’s teacher having a degree then go to another school. The school aren’t going to stop her teaching just because you don’t approve

Sorry, I’m not sure I understand you. Yes, he will be a qualified teacher by the time he teaches my daughter in September. Despite only being 21. Because he has qualified via another route. Which did not involve going to university.
Hence he will be a qualified teacher who did not go to university. Which I thought was the point of the thread. Apologies if I have misunderstood.

I have a degree in English and also worked as a teacher for a year. Absolutely nothing in my Yeats, Middle English, Comparative Italian Lit papers (you get the gist) helped me in anyway to plan KS2 and 3 lessons, the content for which you simply lifted from the govt websites or the GCSE exam syllabuses/syllabi.

I’d say that I think you need a degree to teach A Level, though, just as you’d expect Undergraduate lecturers to have an MA (Minimum). But, no, for primary school a subject degree is utterly useless.

You need empathetic adults who understand what they are teaching

So she’s a well loved teacher who regularly receives high praise. What’s your issue exactly? Is it windy up there on your high horse?

What difference would a degree make? You're saying she's an incredible teacher but she didn't do three years at uni, instead she got practical experience. It's weird you're so focused on this honestly.

Surely before “paying a small fortune” to send your children private you would have looked at things like this? What do you expect to happen if you went to the head, they employed them and know full well what their staff need to hold in order to teach.

Teachers never used to need a degree. After 'A' levels they went to teacher training college to become teachers. Nurses never used to need a degree. Most of their training was practical, and done on the wards. Requiring a degree for every profession you can think of was unheard of.

@LilySLE you are confused. ECTs are qualified teachers who are still early in their career.

My primary age daughter is going into a class next year where her teacher will be an ECT (modern equivalent of NQT in old money). He is just 21 years old, and does not have a degree. Rather, he has worked as a TA since leaving school, and, as I understand it, has at the same time completed a course of part-time study alongside in order to gain his qualification.

It seems that, alongside other professions such as law, traditional routes of access in are being widened up to increase diversity and appeal and reduce barriers to entry, so that what would once have been the only way to qualify into a particular profession is supplemented by alternative routes which are deemed by the regulator of the profession in question to produce equivalent outcomes.

I can’t comment on the teaching access routes as I don’t know enough about them. But this chap is ace and my daughter is lucky to have him. This is a state school.

Oh.... Check your child doing GCSE understands about Language and Structure.

Focus, Flashback, DAFOREST, Foreboding, Foreshadowing

The obvious...and polysyndeton, asyndetic listing, sibilance, plosive, lexical/semantic fields and tricolon...

You need this for both Lit and Lang.

She may get good results but I've found students who understand Lang often get a grade or two higher than predicted. It certainly should be the same as Lit and not lower.

Yes, it would bother me. I'd expect any teacher to have QTS and have perhaps done School Centered Training (SCITT). If she started out as a TA and then did a SCITT that's fine but to just promote her without training or full understanding of the syllabus strikes me as a poor move.

Too many students sit GCSE without actually understanding the papers because their teacher clearly doesn't. And of course this means they miss out on the grades they deserve.

I’d be incredibly concerned re a secondary English teacher not having an English degree. And if I was paying for it I’d be livid.

It wouldn't concern me, it's a private school, you're not paying for the best education, you're paying for the soft skills they instill and the privilege.

On average they only give pupils a half a grade boost and that disappears by the time they graduate.

I want my children taught by teachers who are well educated. Being a TA is a hard job, but it is not the same as being a teacher and does not require a higher standard of education.

How can you be undereducated to be a teacher.

I haven’t got any qualifications and taught ds for a few years and put him through his Gcses
I pulled him out of school because he really wasn’t being taught anything

…..how is that ironic?

Of course she should have a degree. She is undereducated to be a teacher.

Though O understand your surprise and concern, it seems she is considered to be a good teacher. That’s all the matters. Who knows why she did not go to university, but even if she had, that in itself would be no guarantee of her having had a high level of education, being exceptionally able, or being a good teacher.

One of the most brilliant and well-read people I have ever met never went to university.

Why does this myth persist? You only need QTS to teach in local authority schools in England. This is not most schools! To get QTS, you do not need a PGCE, but you do normally need a degree. To teach in an academy (most schools) you don’t need QTS.

It's a well known fact Private School teachers don't need a PGCE to teach or any qualifications whatsoever

Obviously a lot of them do but the school can hire who they want

I'm sure the top academic selective schools hire the best on offer but your bog standard local independent school not so much

Oh well! Shit happens.

Shock horror, someone without a degree being capable of doing the job that we are told you must go to university to be capable of doing!

Well. Go to a state school then. Teachers there do have to be qualified and registered. Why are you paying for this?

Did you not know that private schools don't have to employ qualified teachers?

OP, you don't believe anyone should climb the ladder, take the hard route and be rewarded and promoted based on merit. Doing a degree and pgce top up does not make you a teacher either