Should Alevel teachers have a degree in the subject?

I would be interested in knowing the actual form "not knowing what he's doing" takes. Did the teacher hesitate? Get something mixed up? Not be sure about the syllabus? Tell them gravity works in reverse? Children can sometimes misinterpret what is said to them. I've had a class think I didn't know something because I gave a different explanation to their last teacher - never mind that I was right!

There are plenty of crap physics teachers with degrees round here.

As long as the teacher understands the concepts well enough to explain them, plus far enough beyond to deal with the really bright students who might be going on to study at degree level I don't think there's a big problem. As a physics teacher I know there are lots of things a random maths teacher who's just been coopted in at the last minute is very likely to struggle with!

I am an A-level Physics teacher with a degree in Chemical Engineering. I think I can keep ahead of the students.

I teach a level sociology without any qualifications in sociology at all.

The best teacher I have ever had was a maths teacher with a history degree. We all thought he was joking when he told us (when I asked why he simply said he briefly forgot how great maths is). He was so good at explaining things and made the lessons really enjoyable considering I was a grumpy teenager I don't think the degree subject is necessarily the key, perhaps enthusiasm for their subject?

PS DH enthuses school groups about lots of things : one of his strongest skills in an area where he does not even have a GCE, but he's read by choice for 20 years

A Degree in a subject proves that you can learn, not that you can teach.

My degree is utterly unrelated to my career.

Some of the best teachers I've known have taught outside their degree subject. Lots of crossover, lots of new subjects that didn't really exist before.

If he's incapable of delivering the course content, that's a different matter.

Part of it depends on how willing the teacher is to get their subject knowledge up to scratch-you can teach yourself all sorts of stuff if you're motivated and as long as you're a few steps ahead of the kids it doesn't necessarily matter if you've got a top level degree. If you've got what's on the syllabus plus a bit more and know how to actually teach it you'll generally be ok. The fact that this particular teacher is already looking incompetent is a bit worrying...

Ideally yes, but as others have said, there is a huge shortage of physics teachers in particular. We have exact same situation and our one physics specialist has just handed in their notice as presdure of teaching is too much. Sigh.

The A level syllabus has just changed so actually there are a fair few of us just figuring out what we're going and which topics go in which module now..

I teach A-level Media (and have for 12 years) with a degree in English, and DH teaches Engineering with a Physics degree. It's very common. (And I know someone teaching A-levels with no teaching qualification at all so it could be worse!)

They are desperately short of physics teachers. I ideally wouldn't want a mathematician teaching A level physics-the mechanics elements will be fine but there are loads of hard concept topics that wouldn't appear on a maths degree. If they're only teaching mechanics that's fine-it depends how they've split the topics between the teachers.

Philosophy and maths is a joint honours degree so not a full degree's worth of either maths or philosophy but it sounds really interesting!

I thought they were supposed to as well. Maths and physics do still have a lot of crossover though at a-level so if the maths teacher is only really doing those aspects then it wouldn't concern me on its own, although I'd still be on the alert for any other corner cutting.

Ideally, but there's a national shortage of teachers, especially in those sorts of subjects. I suspect that it's a case of needs must. Hardly a great situation though.