Does your dc get taught at school by someone they don’t understand?

[Greymacaw]

Reading the Times today and an article came up about the U.K. poaching teachers from other countries.

Many of the comments include parents saying their dc are taught by teachers with such a thick accent the dc aren’t learning. This happened to me in a recent masters I did.
could not for the life of me understand the teacher but as an adult I was able to push for more information where I needed it and work around the situation.

Was frustrating but I can’t imagine how hard it would be if I was struggling to under for my GCSEs or a levels. Do people hiring not take these things into account?!

Yes, unfortunately, DS2 was taught GCSE German by a native Italian speaker, who was actually the head of German in school at the time. I struggled to understand him in English and DH, who speaks fluent German, said his German accent was very poor as well. Not sure what can be done though, DS2 is now 23 so this is not a new problem, and from what I understand about teachers in general and language teachers specifically in this case, it’s impossible to recruit.

Happened to my kids when they were in year 1. I struggled to understand her. Very thick polish accent.

They got used to it and she was genuinely a lovely person.

Just to add, I’m sure schools do try to take these things into account, but if you have no pool of applicants to draw from, you’ve got to take teachers where you can find them. Obviously, it’s not just in education either, anyone who visits care homes or has relatives utilising carers will know that many of them are recruited from abroad with poor standards of spoken English which can be very frustrating for the people they are looking after.

Yes, they were from Newcastle. Strong, almost impenetrable Geordie accent. Very good at his job though.

Yes!! Spanish teacher has such a heavy Spanish accent. Another has a heavy Indian accent. My child is struggling in these lessons.

I was surprised at a recent parent's meeting online at my DD grammar school maths and computer science teachers. Both indian and I could hardly understand either of them- the accent was so heavy. My DD is in Y9 and has complained that she can't understand her teachers sometimes. I suppose, with such a shortage of teachers, schools have no choice.

Surely something could be logged if dc are sitting exams as these teachers have to be a disadvantage over any dc who have had a teacher who speaks coherent English? Such a shame this is happening.

For my course I had to forget any lessons given by the professor who I couldn’t understand and move over to other sources. I suppose this could be done for school age lessons but not easily.

I’m always sceptical about people who say they can’t understand strong accents. It reminds me of that Catherine Tate character who would roll her eyes at the Scottish character and say “what did ‘e say? Somefink about kilts?!” Smacks of lack of effort born out of lack of tolerance.

It’s good for children to get used to hearing strong accents, this happens in life and has to be dealt with. With a teacher, you have plenty of time to get used to it.

It’s a PROBLEM that the person teaching Spanish has a Spanish accent? Jesus wept.

Quite. And usually said by people who genuinely believe they themselves have ‘no accent’.

@ChristianHornersGlisteningFinger I think your comment is ignorant. You’re suggesting that everyone can learn a language to a comprehensible standard.

Thats not always true. My mother isn’t English. Everyone can understand her but of course there are people that don’t master the languages enough to be fully understood.

I don’t believe that during educational lessons that impact you for the rest of your life is the time to experience thick accents that can’t be understood. Perhaps that could be arranged as a separate part of school if it is that important. I don’t think it is. In the office if you don’t understand them, usually you can work around it. And as I’ve said, as an adult I was able to find other ways to source the information I needed. I can’t see how that’s possible on a tight schedule of set lessons for dc though.

That’s not what ignorant means.

The people hiring do take these things into account.

There is a teacher shortage and for some subjects it can be hard to get a teacher at all.

So does no one understand how much of a disadvantage this must cause? Or do the outcomes not affect grades.

The alternative maybe no teacher. England has teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Rather worryingly no one seems to be concerned about it.

What are they teaching? Surely a Spanish teacher teaching Spanish has a Spanish accent?

You need to be clear about what you are complaining about.

Do you really mean “thick accent” or do you actually mean people who do not speak English fluently and make mistakes with tenses, use incorrect vocabulary and struggle to explain complex concepts? Your OP refers only to “thick accents”. Later on you introduce the phrase “coherent English”.

Of course it is important that a teacher delivering lessons in English should be tested to make sure that they have sufficient command of English to explain their subject. However if the delivery involves a strong accent and perhaps sentence structure which a native speaker (or, more precisely, British native speaker - many Indians re actually native English speakers) would not use, the listener needs to adapt to this.

Yes at first but as with most strong accents, the longer you spend with the person the easier it becomes to understand them eventually, and the teachers also learned to make themselves clearer.

However it did cause problems for one of my DC for about the first half term.

The poster said heavy Spanish accent.

My MIL has a soft Spanish accent and speaks very clearly (lived in the UK for 40+ years). My DH's cousin (still lives in Spain) has a heavy Spanish accent and can be difficult to understand at times.

I would imagine more difficult if I was trying to learn from him.

My DD did for maths resit.

My DD has slow processing and audio processing issues so a fast talking accented teacher just didn't work for her. In the end DD was switched to alternate lessons.

My DS had a Nigerian maths teacher with a strong accent. DS had no problems understanding him but a girl in his class asked to be moved down a Maths set as she just couldn’t understand him.
I only know this because the girl shared DSs 1-1 support and the SENCO wanted to move DS to the other set.

(For back ground my DS has Speech and language needs, specifically around decoding speech)
Ds' teacher has a very strong (greek?) Accent that i struggle to understand. However having her every day he has tuned into her and instead of struggling as i worried, he has come on leaps and bounds so i think kids adapt better than us oldies!

At least they are speaking English. I’m in Aus and our local high school has a maths teacher who (allegedly of course) teaches his advanced maths class in Mandarin because the majority of the class speak Mandarin. The kids who only speak English rely on their classmates for translation!!! My son would never have been in an advanced maths class but I am glad I removed him from that school after six weeks for other reasons.

🤨

Read again. I said a HEAVY Spanish accent. I struggled to understand her at parents evening so not surprised my 11 year old struggled 🙄