A dance school question.

Wrong. Not only that, but illegal.

My DD is a now dance teacher and before she went away to full time performing arts college she did used to do some teaching under the direct supervision of one of the qualified teachers. She learned a lot from it but she was never responsible for the class. I would not be happy about an unqualified teenager taking sole control of any class, from both the perspective of the teenager and the pupils. I'd also be concerned about the judgement of the Principal of any school who thinks this is ok.
It is possible to do some teaching qualifications whilst you are still at school - my DD did the ISTD Diploma in Dance Education when she was in 6th form and I think the IDTA have teaching qualifications you can start at 16 too. But whilst on the course a student should be supervised. It's the same in sports. My DS is qualified to coach his sport when he was 15 but until he was 18 he didn't need a DBS check or first aid certificate but had to be under the direct supervision of another qualified coach who did have those things at all times.
There's nothing wrong with young people learning to teach or coach in my opinion. It's good for them as they learn more about their activity and develop transferable skills, and they can be very good role models for younger children, but it has to be done correctly, to keep everyone involved safe. And whilst it is not unreasonable to expect students to demonstrate a good degree of commitment they should always be supernumary and obviously there's going to be times when school exams etc have to be their priority. This sounds worryingly like a dance school where the Principal is looking to run classes on the cheap.

That is awful and I have never heard of this before at all.

DD is a dance teacher and has always been paid by the schools she works for but she was an adult when she started teaching

I would not have been happy with a 14 year old teaching my daughter ballet. Would she be able to recognise that someone is executing an exercise correctly and not damaging themselves? They may look like they are executing it correctly but they could be using the wrong muscles. Very young bodies that need nurturing.

If your DD really wants to teach then she needs to get accreditation with either
RAD, BBO, ISTD or IDTA - not in any order of preference I hasten to add. If you want to put your pupils through exams you need to be affiliated with one of these. I am a bit out of touch so I hadn't realised RAD were offering the course mentioned above. Perhaps the others will follow suit

I would recommend that you also visit the Balletcoforum board, you will receive very valuable advice and help here

https://www.balletcoforum.com/forum/9-doing-dance/

The dance teacher isn't always there to step in though, the studio owner will be "around" which means she will be in reception dealing with all the admin stuff, taking payments registering children etc.

If you ask someone to teach a class, you pay them - end of. I even paid my teaching assistants whose job it was to hold the hand of the shy children, take them to the toilet and help demonstrate the dances, not actually teach.

She isn't really taking on any responsibility if the dance teacher is always there tk step in if necessary and therefore they aren't saving money either.
Presumably the dance school are paying for her training and giving her experience, so that is her 'quid pro quo'.
They also probably do not want so set up and employment relationship with a 14vyear old

That doesn’t seem right at all. We have some of the older girls helping out in my daughter’s girls classes but they are absolutely not teaching the class. One of the older girls was doing a proper teaching qualification but she still very much seemed to be supervised with the class. Letting a 13 year old take a class is not on at all.

@Dancerr OP, as you can see, a number of posters have raised a variety of issues with this idea, and I hope that the advice you've been given will go some way towards clarifying the position in your mind. 🙂

Our seniors help out as class assistants - I wouldn't be happy with a student teaching the class.

I wouldn't be happy paying full fees for a 14 year old to teach my child.

I suppose that's how it's allowed.

No, that’s how she’s got away with it. You have to see that this is not remotely good, or even ethical, practice. It us fooling parents into thinking that their children are being taught safely by a qualified dance teacher, whereas in fact they’re being taught unsafely by an untrained young teen.

Was your DD also taught in this school at a younger age? This should surely be making you ask questions about the quality of the foundations of her dance training?

My dc is an adult dancer now, but as a parent, I wouldn't want to be paying a dance school fees for my dc to be taught by an unqualified, unsupervised 13/14 year-old who has no health & safety training, no knowledge of anatomy & physiology, no first aid qualification and no safeguarding training. Not to mention no teaching experience. And what about insurance? I can't imagine that the school's insurance would cover for anything that happened while an unqualified young teenager was in charge of a class.

Absolutely not, its slave labour and way too much responsibility.

I never allowed assistants to teach unsupervised (plus I paid them) and they had to go through the proper safeguarding procedure.

It does cost a lot of money to become a qualified dance teacher and I can see the logic in charging for the Assistant Teacher Award but what you are describing sounds totally different.

I’ve been reading the details on that RAD assistant teacher award, posted above. It’s brand new, as of this month. It does say that it could take the average youngster one-two years to qualify, and it does say from 14 up. The teacher has to be an “approved tutor”, though - all of which costs money, of course. It also says that the young assistant teachers not only aren’t paid but they themselves are charged for their assistant teacher tuition. Of course, under this scheme, the youngsters aren’t meant to be teaching by themselves.

I can't begin to describe to you how every kind of wrong this is.

Being a class 'helper' whilst a fully-qualified dance teacher is taking the classes would be one thing, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. Anyhow, what is this so-called qualification she would get at the end of two years? Who will be teaching her how to teach?

Aside from all that, the parents of the kids in the class she would be teaching are presumably paying full fees for the classes in the expectation that their dc will have a professional qualified teacher.

Personally I would say no. This seems sketchy.

What kind of dance is it, that takes 2 years to qualify?
Its one thing teaching a dance class, but another to teach other children (sometimes requires separate qualifications on top) and from seeing the decent insurance companies I’ve used in the past, you cannot teach children without it. Their anatomy is different.

I do think 14 is too young to be talking classes alone. The seniors at our school who take classes are between 16-18.

https://www.royalacademyofdance.org/programme/assistant-teacher-award/

Rad have just launched this for ages 14 plus

This sounds really dicey given her age. It's also something I'd not be happy about as the parent of one of the little ones which I assume is what they're hoping she'll cover - the age of "skip around and yank your leotard out of your arse crack and call it ballet" dancing lessons - because those parents sure as hell won't be getting a class cost discount for a young teen doing the teaching either.

The closest thing I can think of that we have at kickboxing are that some of the older students are volunteer mentors - get training to do the role and are extra partners, or go around demonstrating combos when pairs are practicing them - and they get discounts on their own class fees as a result and they NEVER have to do anything more than whoop encouragingly or offer a correction on a pair working on something already demonstrated by the class teachers... that is at a level I'm happy with as it's a bonus to staffing levels, not a substitute for it (and generally they're really really good, dedicated kids who've made it up to the higher belts).

I would also, tbh, question the quality and integrity if a dance school that had such a young pupil they were planning to pit in this position. Where are the 16/17/18 years olds planning to go to dance college which a high quality dance school would have?

I would be looking for a new dance school for your dd if she is hoping to go on to dance or teach - how much has she herself been taught by untrained, inexperienced young teens?

Given her age, I agree with this. From your op I assumed that she was maybe 17/18, getting ready to train as a qualified dance teacher with an established dance school or at a dance college of some sort.