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?

Just for the record (as the public are generally not aware) 'qualified' does not mean 'has relevant subject qualifications' in teaching but 'has completed an approved teacher training course'. Ime the two things are a lot more separate than you'd think. I didn't suddenly get better at teaching Economics because I trained as a teacher -- in fact the training actively got in the way as I had to spend a lot of time doing non-related stuff just in case later in my career I (for example) suddenly needed to know about synthetic phonics in KS1. One of the good Maths teachers I know is () a PE reacher by trade but perfectly competent to teach KS3 Maths. I have worked with excellent overseas-trained teachers not recognised as 'qualified' in the UK. I have interviewed truly terrible Economics teachers who were qualified.

The main problem is the shortage of competent people willing to take the jobs and the second problem is that getting trained once teaching is an unnecessarily complicated and bureaucratic thing. Specifically in my subject (also in Maths) salaries compare very poorly to other jobs e.g. Finance.

Surprised at how many people here are saying "that's how it is, get used to it". Since when did parents have such low expectations of their children's education?!

Serious question: how does it work with subjects like languages, where lesson prep and swotting up at home can't possibly be enough?

I agree, this doesn't happen in Scotland

All teachers have a teaching qualification .

All teachers in secondary schools must have studied their subject for at least two years at university . So they might have a degree in Spanish but have also studied French for two years , so they can teach both subjects .

They are very strict about this. I have a friend who went into teaching as a mature entrant in his 30s. He had a degree in chemical engineering and had worked in the industry for more than 15 years . He wasn't allowed to teach chemistry in high school as he had only studied pure chemistry for one year, whereas he could teach maths as he had studied that for two years at university .

I am shocked that teachers in England can have no qualification in either teaching or their subject.

BTW my child's maths teacher ( at her state secondary ) has a PhD in maths . My child has never, not even for one period , been taught a subject by anyone from another subject, not even a biology teaching chemistry , let alone history.

jam I'm sorry but I think you are dreaming.

My dcs have been taught french by people who couldn't speak french. That sort of thing isn't hard to spot tbh.
They've also had a science teacher that had no idea of the period table (eg was given an element from it and didn't know about it).

And YY to endless stream of supply teachers. That or teachers who go on sick for 2 months at least once or twice in the year. We've had that in a lot of subjects too.
But you see that's OK because they are still in the lower years. Apparently it's all going to get better when they are in Y10 and 11 and get ready for their GCSE

You need a C grade pass in Science for a secondary PGCE in any subject. Not that a C grade GCSE is anything like enough to teach Science of course, but EE would not get you some n th course.

Not always been the case thefallenmadonna I trained 8 years ago for secondary and just needed Cs in English and Maths. Not sure about Primary have a vague recollection of science being added since for them which does make sense.

Also agree jam is dreaming. In my nice area middle class good comp we have people teaching who are not instructors. Just fallen into it. We have a cover supervisor who has an interest in maths who thinks they are an amazing teacher - in some ways they are in others not so much. Causes a lot of extra work for teaching staff to support them.

We have others in the same situation. Just an interest or competency in subject and they get put on timetable - main reason they are cheap!

You need a C grade pass in Science for a secondary PGCE in any subject. Not that a C grade GCSE is anything like enough to teach Science of course

This wasn't the case when I trained!

A private school in our old area charged 4k a term and had very very few specialist teachers teaching their subjects. They currently don't have a single maths teacher on payroll.....

I personally find that scary.

My dcs have already learnt that you don't ask 'ackward' questions to a teacher. You listen, maybe ask for a small clarification but you don't do in tangeant or say something a bit out of the ordinary because they know some of them will have no clue. Talk about encouraging the more able students, the curiosity of any of the pupils etc...

I've also seen children deliberately doinbg badly in tests to move down sets to get a better teacher.

And some subjects are clearly done only very superficially (or even worse, they have learnt mistakes)

But somehow they will get their GCSE and then A levels, will arrive at Uni to have all the teachers shocked and the very low level of knowledge of said students. Maths being a good example of a subjects where at Uni, teachers think they have holes in their knowledge etc...

I suspect this is common in some schools but it is definitely nothing new.

When I first went into teaching in the mid 90s this was happening at secondary schools, and definitely not just for temporary cover. I have taught a couple of out of specialism subjects whilst o was still in secondary.

It's not illegal in England.

DH teaches Science and this year has been doing Physics/ Chemistry subject enhancement training for PE teachers to be able to teach Science. There is some overlap as they do study some Biology as part of the PE PGCE apparently.

But it's all part of the shortage of Science (and other subjects) teachers in the local area. One school recently advertised for a Science teacher and got 2 applicants. Both not very good but the school gave the job to the better of the two as there was no-one else.

But in the meantime the government will tell us that there are record numbers of people training to be teachers.

Hulaby does legal means suitable?

Of course not. It's never going to be ideal at all, anything but. It's not great for either teacher or pupil.

However, it does happen and it's nothing new. It's happened for many years and under many different political leaders. And sadly it is legal so it will continue to happen.

I'm a qualified maths teacher, with a maths degree. I'm currently on Mat leave so now looking for another job and not sure teaching is where I want to go back into. At my previous school we had such a hard time trying to recruit maths teachers, in the end we had some classes taught by English, some by pe, some by citizenship. It was not fair on the kids as sometimes they were better at maths than their teacher. It will keep happening if the government gets their way and turns every school into an academy. OP YANBU, but I don't think that there is much you can do about it at the moment.

We are experiencing a shortage in some subject teachers for Secondary up here in Scotland so we see a lot of retired subject specialists who come in on supply.

Not ideal as they are sometimes a bit out of touch but at least they have the subject knowledge behind them.

They are also finding it really hard to recruit in the Highlands and Islands I think.

Schools aren't supposed to use "general" cover for more than 4-5 days up here in cases of teacher absence - after that they are supposed to bring in subject specialist supply -- If they can get someone!

But hulaby laws can be changed can't they?
When the external environment change, you adapt and modify whatever rule there was before to fit the current situation.

Saying it's the law like if it can not be changed doesn''t reflect reality. politicians can and will change law when it suits them.

It just happens that it dooesn't suit them to change that at the moment (See the academies stuff) and no one else is shouting loud enough there is an issue 'because it has laways been like this so we can't hange it even if it's not ideal crap'

Recruitment and retention.

I work in a just out of special measures school and we are lucky in that we only have 2 vacancies! Kids get rotated lessons and we're putting on lessons after school (unpaid) for gcse kids.

Whilst teaching remains such an unattractive career choice both financially and mental health wise, I suspect little will change. The ongoing scrutiny, monitoring and measuring is driving out the best teachers. Teachers that were outstanding have long gone (or are now requires improvement!).

Listen to Nicky Morgan at the NASUWT conference if you want to hear the government bullshit.

My DP is a History teacher and was asked by his school to consider teaching Maths as there has been a mass exodus of qualified Maths specialists from his school. DP's response was to laugh with a firm no. And what about a non-French speaker expected to teach French?

Noodle YY to that. My dcs have already been in that situation, wghere they knew more than the teacher.

Tbh, I'm sure it's a nightmare for the teacher. Both for being put in a situation where they must feel very unsuitable for the job but also because classes like this must be very hard to handle. I doubt that said pupils are calm and concentratring on their work...

I'm really wondering what will the effect on exams results if the curriculum is getting harder AND there are not enough teachers. (I know what is the effect on pupils learning, I just think these are two different things)

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

It absolutely is. Anecdotal evidence that it sometimes happened 20 years ago and has never been illegal is just fudging the issue. This government have set about to systematically destroy education. The teacher crisis is real and is having a direct impact on children's education; but after this year you won't be able to tell because the new GCSE's will come in.

The system is most definitely broken. We are a few years off it, but will be leaving England rather than allowing our children to be secondary schooled here.

As a teacher in a core subject, I was shocked when I first heard of it being taught by non-specialists as it didn't happen when I was at school. However, on reflection I partially agree and disagree with points made in this thread.

I do think that a good teacher is a good teacher, not directly related to their degree class - have seen plenty bad teachers with excellent degrees.

I am astonished by the assertion of many in this thread that a sports Science degree automatically qualifies you to teacher biology. There's a lot more to biology than human physiology.

I have managed to avoid teaching outside my degree specialism (other than KS3 across my faculty) throughout my career thanks to being plenty enough in demand (shortage subject) and as a professional (haha to that these days) would be concerned about my ability to deliver a subject I don't even have a GCSE in to what we should see as an acceptable standard, support misconceptions, being able to address questions and stretch the able.

However, as a realist, we have a very real recruitment crisis. If I were in charge I would make a new rule of +1 level - ie to teach a subject you must have studied it to one level further than your students. With a decent GCSE pass you could do KS3 in that subject, if you passed A level teach the GCSE... That way you would at least be able to provide some insight beyond handing the kids a textbook and BBC bitesize.

But education is broken. I really do worry it's too late.

Sil was asked to teach Spanish this year. She was informed before the summer holidays. She did not know one word of Spanish. She is not the most enthusiastic of teachers and said she'd just mug up the necessary before each lesson. I'd be raging if I thought dd was being taught by someone with such a lack of expertise.

I was at a Pampered Chef evening (yes, I know...) a while back and a woman was saying that she'd just started as a TA at a local secondary school. After a week she was called in to see the Head of Maths and after looking at her CV could she teach Maths. She had a 25-year-old Maths A Level.

I do agree though that an intelligent person can deliver most subjects to a certain level, in spite of no great level of qualification. I reckon I could teach English, History and French pretty decently yet do not have a degree in any of those. In fact dd tells me I know far more than her teachers: I would preen here but considering I'm several decades older than most of them I should I think I should know more!

Anecdotal evidence that it sometimes happened 20 years ago and has never been illegal is just fudging the issue.

No it isn't fudging the issue.

I am no Tory fan, however I'm not so blinkered to think that things were all wonderful under Labour either.

It needs changing of course it does, but rewriting history helps no one.