Should Alevel teachers have a degree in the subject?

Pandylion
I am 50. What I studied at university has no bearing on my current skill set.
If I'd done a geography degree but then gone into Accountancy and then retrained as a teacher I would not be a few pages ahead of the pupil in the text book
Especially once I had a few years experience under my belt.

Teaching is about pedagogy, not what you fancied learning about for 3 years at age 18.

and often a level syllabi have NOTHING to do with your degree

say, for example in History. teacher did saxon history and teaches 19th cent European

its the skill of the teaching that makes the diff

the subject can be learned

One of the things which really impressed us about our DC's grammar school was that all the teachers actually have degrees in the subjects they actually teach. This is rarer than you'd think.

I certainly wouldn't want our DC being taught maths by someone with a geography degree (and I know a school where this is currently happening). Essentially in these circumstances the teacher is just a few pages ahead of the pupil in the text book. And what if an inquisitive, bright pupil starts asking questions that are even further ahead in the text book than just a few pages?

At our DC's school a geography teacher trying to teach maths to the top maths sets would probably just get eaten alive. You need to be very good at your subject and seriously know your stuff if you're going to try and teach it to the top 5% in the county.

Some subjects blend very easily. If you have an English degree there's no reason why you shouldn't teach Media, though I would hesitate at a Media graduate teaching A Level English Literature.

Having a decent degree in the subject you teach should be the basic requirement. And you should have a decent ability at conveying what you know to your pupils. All pupils deserve nothing less.

If I went in to any sort of teaching it would be in the topic which has provided my income for the last 25 years in which I have neither O Level, A Level or degree.

IIRC, you've got a professional qualification in it equivalent to a first degree, if not a second degree. Still a very different proposition indeed from what I'm talking about.

I agree, Talkin, that it is possible to be far more knowledgeable about a subject that is not the subject of one's degree when one is 10/20/30 years into one's post-educational life.

I still maintain that having a teacher who is just a chapter or two ahead of the class in the textbook is a poor substitute for having a teacher who loves the subject and knows it inside out

Which does not necessarily require having a degree in it.

If I went in to any sort of teaching it would be in the topic which has provided my income for the last 25 years in which I have neither O Level, A Level or degree.

I'd noticed that even the local superselective grammar schools are now advertising for teachers of humanities, rather than history or geography or RS specialists.

Depends on the type of school really. It may be reasonable to expect this if your ds is at a fee paying school but otherwise a degree in a closely related subject would be OK (especially if it is closely related so Maths, Engineering or another Science would be fine as the teacher is likely to have done A level Physics himself at some point). As has been said upthread there is a shortage of Physics teachers.
Sadly most of my contemporaries with Physics degrees have left teaching but often they moved subject areas e.g. teaching computer Science and Electronics as well.

A few of my friends are doing their PCET to teach A Level Drama and the requirement is that they have a degree in the subject they want to teach.

That said, in secondary school one of the English teachers had studied drama. Our maths teacher doubled as a geography and PE teacher, and RS teacher also taught Leisure & Tourism.

MFL degrees are a quite reasonable basis for teaching English, at least up to GCSE. Any sort of comparative literature degree at a good university should have imparted the skills necessary to teach English to 11-16 year olds.

You can do conversion courses to teach A-level physics, I know a teacher who has done one. So the teacher may have training in teaching physics A-level.

Interesting. I also have a friend who is a French specialist but teaches English to GCSE. Her class make the best progress in the (already very good) department.

Computing : did not exist when we were at school

How old are you? O Level computer science was a mainstream subject in the late 1970s, and the syllabus dated back well before then. There was a matching A Level, which I did in a big group. A lot of the content would be beneficial for today's undergraduates.

DS says he has a degree in Philosophy and Maths. (I'm presuming that's two different degrees

You're presuming wrong.

Maths and Philosophy is one of the hardest courses to get onto at Oxford.

www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listing/mathematics-and-philosophy

It's a very well-known, very hard-core combination. I know several world-class theoreticians who have that as their first degree.

Oh come on, Talkin, the history syllabus does indeed cover recent events, but there's still thousands of years of recorded history before that! And if you'd read what I said I acknowledged that there's a lot of subject content change in some subjects, just not all of them.

I still maintain that having a teacher who is just a chapter or two ahead of the class in the textbook is a poor substitute for having a teacher who loves the subject and knows it inside out - given, of course (as I said before) that the teacher is actually good at teaching.

Gaspode
Because having a degree in a subject is a good indication of having a longstanding interest in it
Bilge : I did my degree because I enjoyed the subject but never planned to carry it on, ever
and a depth of knowledge, and because few subjects change out of all recognition in 20/30 years.
You're not a scientist are you ?
The paradigm shift was happening during my A level. All books published before it are now historical document.
Look at Biology syllabus before DNA sequencing and since
or epigenetics

History : A level syllabus includes what we used to call "news"
Computing : did not exist when we were at school
ES : Ditto

Because having a degree in a subject is a good indication of having a longstanding interest in it and a depth of knowledge, and because few subjects change out of all recognition in 20/30 years. I have a Classics degree from over 30 years ago. My daughter graduated in Classics this summer. There's a substantial overlap between what she studied and what I studied. The same wouldn't apply to all subjects, of course, but it would to most of them.

My friend is an an English teacher, she has a French degree. I also have an English degree ( i' m not a teacher) her knowledge of how language works and grammar is far in advance of anything I learnt on my English literature degree.

Gasp0de
Why do you want people to have a degree in a subject when
(a) it could be 40 years old
(b) degrees are proof of ability to learn, not teach

When I was at school, so few women had degrees it was not really an issue.

I had two A Level physics teachers
one was lovely and inspirational
the other is openly slagged off by the famous girl from my year deservedly so
the latter had the physics degree

Tricky. One of the best teachers my son ever had taught English but his degree was in French. Meanwhile, as far as I know all my teachers had degrees in their subjects (very academic independent school in the 70s) but they weren't all good teachers. However, although being a good teacher is obviously important, so is subject knowledge. I'd want my children to be taught by a specialist for GCSE, never mind A level.

A young woman of my acquaintance is teaching Maths in a comprehensive school. Her degree is in English. She has Maths A level. I don't think that's ideal at all.

It doesn't seem like a new problem to me. The chemistry teacher at my high school (30+ yrs ago) taught physics one year. Felt uncomfortable so refused to do it again & thus my school could not offer physics (argh).

I think the teacher not knowing what he is doing perception comes about when one student calls out a question, swiftly followed by another student calling out a completely different question. The teacher answers the first student, but the second student takes this as the answer to their question.