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AIBU?

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Original poster

To expect school teachers to actually educate my child?

460 replies

ICancelledTheCheque · 27/01/2017 10:41

Maybe I'm being a bit PFB but this has really irked me.

DD is Y7 in a big academy secondary school. She showed me some work she had done - in three paragraphs there were six spelling errors and five grammatical errors. The teacher didn't mark up a single thing and just put big green ticks and irritating smiley faces on her work and wrote "excellent work" at the end.

But it wasn't excellent work. How is she going to learn if they don't flag this stuff up? Is this the norm these days? Doesn't bode well for GCSEs if so!!

OP posts:
CosyCoupe88 · 27/01/2017 13:02

I am a teacher. We don't have time to deep mark every piece of work. We teach about 360 students and mark a piece of work for each every two weeks. It takes about 3 minutes to mark a book. You can do the maths! This is on top of planning, admin and parents evening, meetings , after school clubs, one to one support, revisiob classes etc. I mark with a specific focus.. maybe the focus forthis one was the quality of the review. I usually will correct up to 3 spelling/grammar /punctuation things per piece of work but wpuldnt do every single one unless hat was the focus. I may underline errors to flag up to them to check it. Do it yourself if you like

MargaretCavendish · 27/01/2017 13:03

Good grief adults today! Anyone would think they haven't been educated properly.

Indeed. If the flooding onto Facebook by the middle-aged has taught us anything, it has taught us that people of all generations struggle with differentiating different forms of 'its'.

TrickyD · 27/01/2017 13:03

grammatical perfection is a key requirement of my job!

Your job must to actually be quite laid back about split infinitives.

SmileEachDay · 27/01/2017 13:04

blunt - how is that feedback going to be acted on by the student?

Sugarlightly · 27/01/2017 13:06

I've heard this a lot. If you feel that grammar and spelling are useful skills for your DD to have, teach them to her! Especially if you consider yourself as a specialist in grammar. It can be exciting to learn new things with your child and you know how your child learns.

MargaretCavendish · 27/01/2017 13:06

I think some of the people posting here criticising teachers and explaining how much efficiently they could do their jobs should tell us all what they do for a living. I bet I've got a load of (underinformed, borderline idiotic) ideas about how they could do it better.

missced · 27/01/2017 13:08

Well, I don't think it's unreasonable in year 7 to be correcting mistakes like that. In my experience it's either (1) because they don't know themselves or (2) usually more likely they don't like to "demotivate" their students.......Hmm.....But it is true that they don't mark in red pen anymore. They use green pen because it is "less aggressive". Makes me laugh, because back in the day when I was working the psychology grads always told me you could spot a non-socially conforming weirdo, as they were the only people to use this colour. Look on the bright side, I suppose bic will benefit! Hmm

Anothermoomin · 27/01/2017 13:08

"Spelling and grammar needs more attention" is really poor marking practice.

Ofsted would spank your arse.

Chelazla · 27/01/2017 13:11

Op if it was a spelling mistakes but phonetically plausible you wouldn't correct, only a key work such as the. If the grammatical efforts were full stop for example if chafe but say it was speech marks I wouldn't if we'd no done them. Look at the learning objective, if it was describe a character for example, it might actually be excellent work.

Jaxhog · 27/01/2017 13:11

But how will they learn if it is not corrected?
This

As a manager who has done a lot of recruitment, it appalls me how some young people cannot string a sentence together or spell basic words correctly. In the work place, it actually matters.

I'm a firm believer in children/students needing to know when they get it wrong. The big wide world isn't an always-encouraging, cushy, pat-on-the-back kind of place. Treating them like precious snowflakes who can't take a bit of correction, is no way to prepare them.

Unless someone tells her now, your daughter may well assume she has got it right. However creative the content.

Anothermoomin · 27/01/2017 13:11

Oh oh Margaret that is a brilliant idea for a thread. Tell me what you do so I can talk crap about it. I bet I could be a brilliant engineer, that's all about trains innit?

amammabear · 27/01/2017 13:11

If it was english, I would expect that to be corrected. I would not expect that to be corrected in any other subject- unless it was a specifically subject relevant word, for example a misspelling of photosynthesis in a science class.

SheFeedsYouTeaAndOranges · 27/01/2017 13:13

and it's quite simple for teachers to write "excellent content, spelling and grammar needs more attention" on a piece of work

How is that going to help the child?

At primary we would ask the child to rewrite the sentence using the correct punctuation or with the correct verb form. Or we might write a misspelled word out with three lines ruled after it indicating the child is to write it out 3 times correctly. Or something else that would give the child the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to correct the error themselves.

But you would never just write a comment telling them it needs "more attention". What are they going to do with that?!

Chelazla · 27/01/2017 13:14

Last post full of auto correct sorry!

SheFeedsYouTeaAndOranges · 27/01/2017 13:14

I'm a firm believer in children/students needing to know when they get it wrong. The big wide world isn't an always-encouraging, cushy, pat-on-the-back kind of place. Treating them like precious snowflakes who can't take a bit of correction, is no way to prepare them.

But getting cross with teachers doesn't change any of this.

SmileEachDay · 27/01/2017 13:15

There is no point is there, in patiently explaining why it is not possible for every mistake to be marked. Or why it might be undesirable. It's just met with the hugely well reasoned argument "it's just not good enough".

What. Is. Your. Solution?

Angry
SheFeedsYouTeaAndOranges · 27/01/2017 13:16

Smile I always wonder too whilst the people who tell us we're shit at our jobs can't actually provide a solution.

puddingbunny · 27/01/2017 13:20

If teachers don't even have time to underline spelling errors (seriously, how long does that take?) then their students are going to have a nasty shock when they first encounter the spell checker in Word...

Unfortunately, having been subject to the same system while they were growing up, many teachers simply don't know a mistake when they see one. So yes, if you want your child to learn how to write properly you are probably going to have to teach her yourself.

Bluntness100 · 27/01/2017 13:21

blunt - how is that feedback going to be acted on by the student?>Ofsted would spank your arse.

BertrandRussell · 27/01/2017 13:21

People always think they can be teachers because they went to school and have a child.

I could be a GP for probably about 80% of their patients. It's the other 20% that's the issue!

NotCitrus · 27/01/2017 13:22

I went to old-fashioned schools back when we had spelling tests from Y3 every other morning until end of Y6, spelling and writing homework every other night, and every single thing we wrote that was marked had every misspelling corrected and you had to write out those words correctly three times each before getting on with your next piece of work or homework. In secondary school same applied for subject-relevant words.

Result: kids who could spell well would produce perfectly-spelled work. There weren't many of us though. The kids who couldn't spell well didn't get better, and got more and more demoralised and hacked off. Wasn't really a problem when you could just have them sit a couple CSEs and then sod off to the local employer of kids without qualifications.

HollywoodStunt · 27/01/2017 13:24

Haven't had time to RTFT.

My dc's school has just failed an Ofsted inspection and one of the reasons given in the report was that teachers don't expect enough of pupils and they allow incomplete work and errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar to go unchallenged.

Broccolirevolution · 27/01/2017 13:26

Pudding you tell us? How long would it take you to underline all the spelling mistakes on roughly 150 pieces of work (let's say double sided A4) each night?

Bet you don't answer!

Then how long would it take you to go back and correct the work with the actual learning outcome in mind?

So many posters annoyed with the teacher, but you will keep voting those education loving tories in won't you? Maybe you want to think about WHY teaching is in this state and do something about it.

Nah, just slate the teachers.

SmileEachDay · 27/01/2017 13:26

blunt you said:

it's quite simple for teachers to write "excellent content, spelling and grammar needs more attention"

If that is the feedback, the student has to identify where the errors are then correct them. There is an obvious issue with that.

Or are you suggesting the teacher goes through and identifies the errors in every piece of work?

brasty · 27/01/2017 13:26

I am in my 50's, but went to a very right on school for the time. We were not taught grammar or punctuation. I had to try and teach myself. And I regret that I was never taught it properly.

I don't understand why saying - spelling and grammar need some attention; is worse than simply saying excellent work.

By the way people here do comment on my job, and frequently get it wrong. But they also pick up bad practice.