To be fed up that my child is being taught Biology, History, English etc by PE teachers?

[apricotdanish]

I have a child in a grammar school, can't mention name for obvious reasons but an increasingly large amount of subjects are being taught by teachers with no experience at all in the subjects they are teaching and I'm not exaggerating when I say P.E teachers are teaching all of the subjects above, there are also some specialist teachers but clearly not enough. I'm really concerned about how this will affect my child's education long term.
This is not anti teacher at all, quite the opposite, and I'm not underestimating the intelligence of the PE teachers but I don't think it's acceptable for them to be teaching subjects like Physics and Biology that are so specialised when they haven't trained in that specialism. I feel as though I've been sold a bit of lie about how wonderful this school is when this practice is so widespread.
Just wanted some opinions on what others felt about this?

Well, okay Ideal but what do you want to do about it?

All you can do is move your child to another school where you may or may not come across the same problem.

TheFallen has no one thought yet that if there aren't enough specialist subject teachers in areas such as maths, then the answer is NOT to give the job to people who can't do it but to actually find ways to attract people who can do the job? Attract them and then ensure they will stay?

If it was in the private sector and you would be doing that
1- the company would go under
and/or 2- the person who has been putting the 'underqualified' person at the job would be likely to be sacked.

But somehow our dcs future isn't as important

If 'All schools academies' goes ahead as planned, they'll be bringing the dinner ladies in to teach further maths, if it saves a bob or two for the shareholders.

ideal

I couldn't believe that the union wouldn't back me in my case, it was terrible.
My friend taught childcare and was used in English Dept for A level, in fairness though her Degree was English.
Obviously, nobody should have a problem with this, but a teacher with no knowledge or qualifications in a subject, just shouldn't be allowed to teach that subject.
I taught Sociology for a while, I had covered the syllabus of A level in my degree so had the knowledge but not the actual qualification, I was fine with this and my students did as well as the teacher with a Sociology Degree.

It's shite. My DS is at a very academic grammar and is being 'taught' by all manner of people-cover supervisors for a large part. Sixth formers have had regular lessons that they were previously taught for (2 out of the weekly 6 periods for the subject) rescheduled as 'self study' time as the school can't afford to adequately staff subjects. It's shocking.

Best thing we can do is sign the 2 petitions against academies, support the teachers when they strike about it and write to your MP.

In the last 6 years I have taught 6 subjects that I am not qualified in. 2 of those subjects I've taught at both gcse and a-level.

I think it's completely widespread.

I agree that most PE teachers are trained to teach another subject as well, but that doesn't necessarily mean these are, or that they are enthusiastic about it. I used to teach in a Grammar School (not an academy) where the PE teachers had to teach their other subject, but none of them wanted to. We also had several unqualified teachers teaching a variety of subjects - not supposed to be legal, but happens a lot!

This isn't a new situation brought about by this government.

You've never needed particularly high grades or good A levels to enter teaching, and once qualified as a teacher in theory you are qualified to teach regardless of subject.

In practice, when there's a surplus of teachers, this doesn't happen: why would you employ someone trained in History for a Maths teacher when there are three good Maths candidates?

Also, when redundancies have to be made there are legalities to this situation. It isn't as simple as 'we cannot accept this!'

Maybe start screaming about it and put pressure on the HT?head of the academy?
Write to our MPs?
Start talking about it as being an issue so that, hopefully, it hits the headlines.
Contact the different political parties to raise the issue?

Anything to put pressure on the politics as a whole so that they start seeing it as an issue instead of thinking they can sell education to the private sector wo a word from the 'public'.

Being very 'British' very few peole will do any of that.
Nope much better to say 'Oh well, let's just live with it then'.
With just a few very lonely voices from parents, it won't change.

And the worst thing is that it's a crazy thing to do because a non well educated population will be a huge issue in 25 years time when it will be impossible to find adequately trained people to run businesses in the country.

We offered recruitment and retention allowances, but only filled one vacancy, and then with someone who was really not that great. Did have a Maths degree though. A very good one. But I was the better teacher for GCSE maths, sadly.
Of course schools have considered how to recruit. But there aren't't enough Maths, Physics and Computing teachers, and teaching in a highly scrutinised, challenging school adds another level of undesirability...

Very genuinely why is this suddenly something to get upset about?

New I fully agree with you and i really don't understand why unions don't back up any teacher that is struggling. Imo they aren't doing their job.

I do hope people remember all this when they are slagging teachers off and about how easy they have it with the holidays and all sorts, these posts show you exactly why teaching is not an easy profession as some make out.

I teach English in a large department and only a handful of staff there have a related degree and a few don't have QTS. We currently have two supply teachers and neither have related degrees. When I started teachibg nine years ago we would have 50-100 applications for a teaching post - we just advertised and got three. Two were from Canada. This situation is only going to get worse once the government remove the need for QTS. Teachers have been complaining about this situation for years but we've had little public support because out concerns have been presented as about pay.

ilove it is because it's becoming extremely widespread and because more and more teachers are teaching subjects they don't know anything about.
And this is happening because there are less teachers around because people are leaving the profession in masses.

Why do they do that? Ask the government, their latest policies/tests/evaluations etc... Plus the fact they want people to do all that work for less money.

So now we don't have enough teachers (despite what the governemnt is saying) which soon won't matter because with all the academies, they won't need teachers anyway.
But they still expect standards to be met which isn't going to happen unless parents are starting to tiutor theeir dcs right left and center or go private. Ahhh maybe that's the answer then.

I don't disagree, I just wanted to point out that schools aren't actually breaking any laws on this :)

MsFireman

I don't have QTS as it wasn't applicable to post compulsory PgCE it was QTLS for Further Ed.
My colleagues shouldn't have been allowed to teach lower than A level and only allowed to be employed in schools that had 6th form and teach at this level.
My peers from my course now teach at all levels in secondary, some are specialist in their subjects some are teaching subjects unrelated to their Degree.
They aren't even qualified in secondary education.
I'm so glad I'm out of it. Maybe one day I'll tutor in my subject again, but it would have to be a college, not a school with a 6th form

Teacher recruitment crisis is biting, even in grammar schools, in English, Maths, Science, ICT etc Students are choosing subjects based on whether there will be a qualified member of staff in front of the class.
However, PE teachers often have to have a second or combined subject and Geography/Biology are commonplace, and vice versa - there are Geography teachers who lead expeditions and dabble in PE.

This is common and will continue to be so until the current education secretary and her idiot predecessor stop buggering about with the education system.

In my DH's world (accountancy), if his company has a vacancy to fill, they offer a renumeration package which enables them to recruit someone with the right qualifications and experience to do the job. They know that this financial commitment will pay off because the benefits of having a competent member of staff far outweigh any possible advantage of recruiting someone cheap. In my world (teaching), despite the Government rhetoric that schools are able to pay enhanced salaries to recruit staff, the money simply isn't there. School budgets have been pared to the absolute bone. Rather than schools being able to take advantage of the so-called freedom the Government claim to have given them to reward good teachers, schools are having to find ways to cut the staffing budget just in order to stay afloat. The whole system stinks.

This is common and will continue to be so until the current education secretary and her idiot predecessor stop buggering about with the education system.

Tbf it has happened for years under many education secretary and governments of both sides. It isn't a new thing.

This is shocking! I had no idea this happened in England, so relieved it can't happen in Scotland.

In my 3rd year of teaching in a FE college I received my new timetable for the following year. 50% of my teaching was in my specialist subject and the other 50% was in something I had no experience of what so ever, I had no say and had not been consulted. I spent more time that academic year self-teaching before each lesson and planning lessons for this subject that my specialist area seemed to fall by the way side. In the end both subjects performed well in their exams, so well I was told I'd be doing the same the next year. I handed my notice in and now don't teach at all and, if I'm honest, haven't regretted it once. I know lots of teaching colleagues who are being drafted in to teach subjects they have to experience in with very little say in the matter. The majority of them are professionals and will do everything in their power to make sure the students don't suffer but it's not right. Not fair on the students or the teachers.

There were 27 of us on my PGCE course (small satellite campus), 8 years later there are only 9 still in teaching

I am completely shocked by this thread. How can you have someone teaching Geography who doesn't even have the GCSE in it?! Perhaps this is one of the reasons top jobs are increasingly going to the privately educated?

This is, unfortunately, the way education has been going for a while. If we have another big recession it will help the teacher recruitment crisis, but at the moment why would anyone want to be a teacher? I am one, and have an exit strategy...I am counting down the years!

The focus on holidays as a perk is so overused. We get 12 weeks. That's 60 days. Fab! Remember though that the bank holidays are included in that. So let's compare someone on 25 days holiday. Add in the 8 bank holidays and all of a sudden the difference is 27 days. Take off GCSE and A level results days, days before we return and after we have broken up, working until late for the term time days. And all of a sudden that starting salary of 22k doesn't seem worth it.

Sorry, rant over!