Teachers: What grades did you get in your own A Levels/GCSEs?

you are not really comparing like with like, are you, there has been massive grade inflation since I took my exams, ( no not GCSEs 😂) you need to add at least two grades to A level grades from 25 years ago to get them to the equivalent of todays. GCSE - Olevel equivalency is closer, but really, testing very very different things.

I failed my O level in the subject I am best at teaching. I understand all the problems and confusions students have. Many of my students get 9s, so no difficulty stretching them

Our eldest is on SLT at a high school and he got A*, A and B at A Level and a first class degree( comp sci ) . He always wanted to teach from about 13 .

Well it depends - there are some state schools in London at least with high Oxbridge offer numbers and of course having Oxbridge grads on staff helps with preparation. Independents also like to recruit these people.

Teachers need a range of skills.

"Those who can't, teach" is probably true of many Oxbridge grads. It's the career of last resort for those without connections or a fashionable degree subject. That doesn't mean we're all crap at teaching, of course, just that it tends to seem like the sole remaining avenue of opportunity once you've been laughed out of graduate job interviews for the unfashionable degree subject and laughed out of non-graduate job interviews for being overqualified.

You may be right about that. Thinking about it, the only people I knew at Oxford who became teachers (apart from me) were public schoolboys who tried other things first, and then went straight into teaching at a public school. Whereas I was a grammar school girl who decided age 12 that I wanted to be a teacher!

Some of the best teachers I've known have been the ones with the least impressive qualifications. I've also known plenty of highly academic teachers who were very bad at teaching.

Not fully, no , but mainly, and they are keen to employ Oxbridge alumni.

There's some interesting studies done on other species that show intelligence and the ability to teach or pass on culture are completely different skill sets. Some very intelligent species don't teach at all but other much less intelligent species are very good at passing on information or 'culture'. Humans are both intelligent and cultural but an individual who is a good teacher may or may not be intelligent.

Public school educated students teach too. Otherwise, where would Eton get it's staff!?

Someone I know teaches at Rugby and went to their local comp for their own education. Public schools aren’t fully staffed by ex public school students.

I got all As and A*s in my GCSEs but only Cs at Alevel due to a range of personal circumstances. Then a 1st in my degree, and merits in a masters and PGCE.

I am very good at subject knowledge but I really really struggle to cope with poor behaviour - I was never misbehaved at school and it drains me so much having to deal with it, so much so that I am desperately trying to leave teaching for good.

14 gcse at grade A (not A* in my day), 5 A levels at A level, first degree 1st class second degree masters with distinction 3 rd degree phd from Cambridge university. PGCE from another top university. I worked in state for over 20 years in very very challenging schools recently moved to a top indie school (within the last 5 years). Most teacher I know in my current school have 1st class degrees or at least a 2.1 - same in state.

??

Straight A*s at GCSEs.
Straight As at A level.
2:1 but I did joint hons and transcript shows the subject I teach I achieved a First.
Distinction at Masters.
Very similar to my colleagues. A normal state comp.

Straight A's.

I have two undergraduate degrees, one from Cambridge. I did a second degree in the subject I teach and got a first.

I live near Cambridge and a lot of the teachers near me have Cambridge degrees.

I did O levels and got 9 As and a B. For A levels, I got 3 As and a B. I got a first at a top university - in English. I don’t think those grades in themselves make me a good teacher, though. Many good teachers don’t have grades like that, and it doesn’t necessarily matter.

No, that's not the case. There are a range of reasons. Public school educated students teach too. Otherwise, where would Eton get it's staff!?

It's more to do with Oxbridge offering a narrow range of subjects. People who do marketing at eg Lancaster or business management at Northumbria will go into those fields.

I think it sounds rather sneering to refer to teaching as a consolation prize.

@TurquoiseSeasAndSilverSand Yes, the anti-poly snobbery was stupid, as was the attitude to trades. Fast forward to when I graduated, and plumbers were making 70k a year while I was waitressing.

That's probably because there are so many more state school students now. If you have no "old school tie" and an arts degree, teaching is the obvious fallback. I only knew one person in my year (different college) who had teaching as her Plan A, and she was in the highly unusual position of being a mature student with a young child. I bet she was a brilliant teacher. For the rest of us, teaching has been very much the consolation prize.

I’m a uni lecturer rather than a teacher. I sometimes have to teach stuff of which I have no subject knowledge. I’ve never found it a problem as long as I have enough prep time. I’m teaching a topic next week of which a week ago I knew bugger all. I’ve spent a morning in the library researching it and preparing the session. I think being able to teach (which is a skill in itself) is probably more important.

Straight As/a* at GCSE, As a a level in maths and sciences. Taught primary. Nope- didn't really make me a better teacher. Learning about teaching and learning did that.

Teaching is the most popular destination of Oxbridge graduates, as it goes.

The qualifications of the teachers at my school range from Oxbridge educated to two E grades at A level and a mediocre degree, with everything in between. Zero impact on teaching ability or results!

Sampling bias :)

Asking g people what they earn will attract the 100k+ (show offs?)... and here, notice we have an unusually high number of Oxbridge, A*, PhD replies :)

I got ABBC at A level then did a Primary Education degree.

I moved in to secondary as a cover teacher and fell into teaching my subject (Maths) which I've now done exclusively for 16 years. I have no Maths qual beyond GCSE

I've moved school twice and had the best results in all 3 departments every year for those 16 years.

DH teaches secondary core (but is SLT now anyway). He got As at gcse, Bs at A-level. Then totally stuffed up his degree cos he was 21 and a bit immature and didn’t take it seriously. He’s a genuinely outstanding teacher though. The fact he was a bit of an idiot at school really helps him to engage and understand his students.

I got straight As and a first class degree. I’m also a very good teacher. Academic understanding is, of course, important, but it’s very much not the whole job.

I'm a primary teacher. I have an A in A-level maths, B's in GCSE English Lit and Language.
I'm much better at teaching children who struggle with English than those who struggle with maths, and am able to stretch able children in both.
I have worked with 3 Oxbridge graduates in my career. One did it for a year, was pretty good, but it felt like they had a checklist of things to do in life and they were off to the next challenge.
The others were 2 of the worst teachers I have come across. Both struggled with the soft skills needed to be a really good teacher. One needed complete control and couldn't manage behaviour - they were very rigid in their approach and could not allow flexibility to meet individual children's needs. The other had incredibly poor social skills and was terrible with pupils, staff and parents. Both were highly strung and had long periods off before leaving teaching.

Not at all! And when I was in sixth form (93-95) most of the "Russell Group" universities - nobody used the term "Russell Group" then - weren't regarded as prestigious at all. The idea of redbrick universities as elite is very recent indeed.

RG hadn't even started when I was applying. But there was snobbery akin to the redbrick unis as we had polytechnics and universities. I was very looked down on for applying to a poly, but that was the best option for most art based subjects at the time.