To expect a French teacher to be able to speak french

[SandyY2K]

Why would a school get a supply teacher to replace the French teacher who can't speak the language?

My DD mentioned that prior to her GCSEs last year, they had some lessons with a supply teacher and he didn't know a thing.

Same thing with my other DD. She's mentioned having a chemistry teacher and a teacher for another subject who didn't know the subject and just handed out worksheets. When anyone asked a question, the teacher said they didn't know the answer.

Would it be unreasonable of me to contact the school about this? Any teachers? What do you think?

Why would anyone with a STEM degree teach?

Because we don't all want to work simply for the maximum money possible. I could literally earn twice my current salary if I stayed in industry (and more again if I had taken DP's route into accountancy from an engineering degree), but I really enjoy teaching. We don't want teaching to be somewhere only failures go, but nor do we only want people who are there solely for the money.

That said, I'm moving to private education in September, so maybe I'm not the best advocate for STEM teaching. (No extra cash for me in private, btw, I'm not moving for the money.)

noble, I recently told my year11s I'm leaving and next lesson one had been nominated to ask if I would still get my new job if their results weren't good. They thought teachers had a report-card with their students' exam results that tracked their careers.

Absolutely spot on. The Tories treat teachers like not very bright housemaids, and have done so for years. I remember when one of Thatcher's ministers introduced a minimum hours in front of a class in F E and we had to pay out a fortune in overtime to get work experience visits covered when the hours had been front loaded and done by Easter. The minister had been told again and again but knew better. Think it was two brains Willis😀

AmeliaLion You're the saintly vocation type - even so you shouldn't be taken advantage of for that.

Only read the title but in the UK?! LOL

Dh, who is a deputy head, always says that the problem with all this data collection is that it was designed as a blunt instrument to judge trends between whole cohorts of students. It's no use as a fine tool to predict progress for individuals because progress is not linear, kids progress at different rates and their performance can be affected by so many factors that are not within the teacher's control.

If a teacher is teaching well and the class is paying attention and doing their work, then good progress will ensue whether you measure it or not. It is certainly true that some lazy teachers got away with murder in the old days, but on balance I still think that was better than the situation we're in now. In any job you get the odd slacker or incompetent. It should not be necessary to inflict a system of fear, distrust, pointless number-crunching and crazy hoop-jumping on a whole country's teachers just in order to bring a few poor teachers to heel.

sheep, I'm certainly vocational, but not saintly at all! I do the job because I genuinely enjoy working with teenagers (most of the time). I'm not taken advantage of - the salary is not bad for where I live. And because I'm a physics teacher I get a bit more choice over where I work. I deal with increasing amounts of low-level disruption and apathy but no where near the behaviour seen in other schools.

My gripe is with pointless crap. Because teachers don't work set hours, a lot of SLT think they can just expect more and more and more work. They don't even seem to realise that working 70 hour weeks would have a massively detrimental impact on the quality of teaching within lessons. On reason I decided to move when a couple of my yr11s were under performing due to lack of work in class and no homework ever being completed. I raised it as an issue with SLT (because the school sanction system was having no impact) and was told to do extra classes for those students after school without extra pay. Screw that.

mousymary

Why were standards so much better in the past? Were they?

Look at the handwriting of children from before 1970s and it's excellent ? Was it?

The 3Rs were well if boringly taught and everyone knew their tables.
Did they?

The problem with referring to this golden age of education is that it never existed, and unsurprisingly there is no data to back it up.

Not sure the standards were better. My dcs receive helpful pointers on where to improve their work, they understand where they've gone wrong - I remember my English essays were marked out of 10 and that was it - maybe a spelling correction here and there. I had no idea where I was going wrong or how to improve, and felt too rubbish to ask - I simply thought I was rubbish at English and there was no point.

The problem with referring to this golden age of education is that it never existed, and unsurprisingly there is no data to back it up

Yes, I recently happened upon some of my old a level English Lit essays.

They were barely marked & frankly they were CRAP. I wouldn't let my current top set year 10 IGCSE group write such airy fairy substanceless twaddle. No textual evidence to back up my unformed thoughts on Philip Larkin or Ted Hughes, & certainly no analysis.

I attended a grammar school that was, & still is, on every 'best school in England' list going. I came out with an A.

I really don't believe standards used to be amazingly higher.

Back in 'the day', I seem to remember O and A-levels being given grades not by how well someone did relative to standards but to do with percentages.

So the top 10% got an A, next 20% got a B etc.

Was there really a time when you could become a teacher with no English or Maths GCSE?

Maybe back in the golden age where teachers didn't need to have degrees but since teaching became a graduate subject I very much doubt it as you wouldn't get onto the initial degree course without English or Maths GCSE.

Jellyfrizz.
No entirely true - my brother got onto a degree course without English GCSE - there are ways!

Actually my husband has done a masters without a maths gcse so I agree with that bit.

But I don't think you could ever do a teaching degree or PGCE without at least A C in English and Maths? You can't be a TA without one these days.

When we had supply teachers at school they were never, ever trained in the actual subject. They were more like childminders just telling us to do whatever work our teachers had instructed them on. I think a parent complaint would be laughed at tbh

What are your thoughts on removing education from the Government's control? Much in the same way that the Bank of England became independent of Government meddling. The Gov could set general objectives but could not get into the meddling that Gove got into. Gov would then stop trying to reinvent the wheel, we'd hopefully have more evidence based initiatives and the welfare and workload of the teachers and students might be better represented.

Back in 'the day', I seem to remember O and A-levels being given grades not by how well someone did relative to standards but to do with percentages. So the top 10% got an A, next 20% got a B etc

Same still: I hate this, it's so unfair.

I was sent a survey today from an exam board. One of the questions was about how close government is to examining bodies. I clicked the 'remove control from government' option. They are so far removed from the reality of the skills needed.

I'm an ex-teacher and think that the introduction of performance related pay was the absolute beginning of the end for most teachers. Whilst teachers are still held accountable for every result for every one of their pupils, I don't see how anything will ever improve. Because now, if a child has a bereavement and gets poor results, it's the teacher's fault. If a child has only attended school twice in a year, it's the teacher's fault. If a pupil has disrupted every single lesson for 2 years, it's the teacher's fault.

I was slated several years ago because my % of children achieving the expected level was below expected. One of the children had parents divorce and had gone totally off the rails, and another of my class had died:(.

These are children we are talking about. Real people. Not bloody data.

I know about 4 18-23 yr olds who are pursuing being a teacher. Every single one wants to do reception or yr1 because the kids are cute and you can do fun school plays etc and its rewarding because they're so young. no one seems to want to teach secondary, I think the image of it has tp change and the conditions too, drastically

One of the children had parents divorce and had gone totally off the rails, and another of my class had died And I bet there was little in the way of counselling to help these kids get through this - oh no better to put pressure on the teacher to pressurise fragile kids.

TrinityTaylor My sil works with infants - it all sounds great and she gets great job satisfaction but very many of the infants have very severe needs and getting any extra help for them is a massive funding issue - who said we didn't need money being thrown at it?
She tours around her local area helping to advise infant teachers on how to appropriately respond to children with very special needs who can be violent and uncooperative - it is not an easy ride and they are worryingly naive to see it that way.

Sheepskin we'd hopefully have more evidence based initiatives

That depends entirely on who would have the power in such a body. Up til now, the influence of prominent 'educationalists' and education academics has largely been negative, in my opinion, and their ideas about what constitutes good evidence are often pretty dubious. This is because they have been largely able to 'select' people to join their groups who agree with their views, via academic appointments, etc.

Probably the one education policy with the biggest evidence base supporting it is the explicit teaching of phonics. But the evidence there is good because it was largely collected over decades by academic psychologists specialising in reading, who knew how to design studies well. Education academics chose to ignore that evidence for decades, preferring their own evidence-light theories. It's not a promising precedent.

@sheepskinshrug I totally agree. It won't be like the "Nativity" movies or being Miss Honey from "Matilda" and they seem to think it might be. I think there is a reason a lot og NQT's quit quite soon into teaching. I've never been a teacher but worked in schools in a sort of extra curricular role and I have the most respect for them and think they get a very hard time.

Seriously spending a day with kids on a school trip is completely and utterly exhausting - they have my utmost respect. They look after our most precious loved ones and we pay them peanuts - what are they worth?

d we pay them peanuts

The pay isn't too bad - but it's the insane workload vs the expectations. It's great to have high expectations but the associated workload is a killer. Primary teachers have a full day with a class and then have all the workload for the next day.

And as others have mentioned, the accountability for things that are outside their control.