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?

How odd that not having a specialist teacher for one subject would make you home ed a child, resulting in a non specialist in every subject.

Teachers have been hard to recruit for ages because pay and working conditions are terrible, the tories have done the same to the police and now the NHS. I hope the people complaining here will all vote for parties investing in schools?

Sadly I don't think the Tories will get a shock at the next election. They should do but they won't and things are about to get a lot worse as budgets are cutback even further

Cover supervisors don't necessarily have a degree either. (or A levels) Personal experience. No idea how widespread this is.

Speaking as someone who led on recruitment in a secondary school as Deputy Head, it has become almost impossible to get:
Physics or Maths teachers - at all, even very poor ones.
English, MFL and Humanities in very short supply- you might be lucky.
Pe- loads of them
Technolgy and Art- numbers decreasing
Music - never been able to find them, very few are actually trained now
Computer Science - getting a decent one is almost impossible, most are ICT trained and scared of programming

PGCEs and School Direct and Teach First are takng in poor quality candidates and turning out poor quality NQTs. It is a dire situation in secondary schools. The government has its head in the sand. It is not prepared to tackle the issues that mean teachers leave the profession faster than they can train replacements- workload. If they reduced workload teachers would stay but all they do is ratchet up the pressure on teachers every year. Pay is not the issue - except for the newest teachers. It is workload brought about by constant, badly thought out, chaotic change for no rational no real reason

I don't think parents have any clue how bad things are.

This. A hundred times this. We are in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. Something has to change (crosses fingers for 8th June).

If they reduced workload teachers would stay but all they do is ratchet up the pressure on teachers every year

This. And then this.

I was qualified science teacher (chemistry). I do think there is too much workload for teachers. It's high stakes too. That's government policy.
I found the kids difficult. Teachers are sworn at and assaulted on a daily basis. I don't think that is to do with government really but made the job unpleasant.

"I know a music teacher who's also been covering a Y9 maths group. He only has the subject at A Level - and he did not get a high grade - but it's seen as good enough. "

That's not a new thing. When I was at school 30 years ago most of our teachers taught 2 or 3 subjects (small school). They taught their degree subject at GCSE and A level, but for lower years could teach subjects they only had an A level in.

The official line of the Tories is 'teaching remains an attractive profession'

1 in 10 teachers quit last year.

Don't vote conservative unless you want more of the same for your kids.

I don't know how parents don't know how bad things are.

As Gwen says, we can teach degree subject to A level, A level subjects to GCSE. Depending on the age of the teacher, they may have taught something original and now teach something different. Asking a French speaker to teach French when their specialty is say, Maths, is not good. The method of delivery are wildly different.

I think many parents have little idea what the situation is like re specialist/non-specialist teaching their DC and even alleged specialists can be crap and their subject knowledge can be awful or re MFL, they can't manage a decent accent.

Regardless of the result of the GE, I don't see the profession changing dramatically. Cuts will be made regardless. I currently can't even afford to buy exercise books and I certainly haven't been profligate with funding.

Clearly they don't. Just take a look at the ridiculous thread running currently, about how all the nasty teachers leave their kids out and don't choose them for things. We're all too chummy with the PTA and it's not "fay-errr."
They have no IDEA how insidious nastiness like that permeates through and adds to the despair that teachers are feeling, and contributes to the stampede away from the profession.

Originally

Parents (and more importantly grandparents) are beginning to see this. I promise you things will change on June 8th.
(I'm a bit of a fortune teller when it comes to elections...)

lulujakey1 excellent post. Totally agree with you.

Its a very easy time to get a new job as long as you can stick it in education but I've been teaching since 1994 and I have never been so unhappy. The politics is killing the profession and we can't keep up with all the changes.

The people who make decisions about education are motivated by power and money and assume others are similar, whereas teachers tend to be motivated by wanting to help children achieve and the politicians just don't get that mentality.

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

Your teen told you the teacher knew nothing and you just believed it?

The school isn't an academy, so they can't pay what they like in order to retain some staff.
Nothing to do with it. All the academies in our area are having fun sign slashed, mine included.
ALL schools have always had the flexibility on staffing and pay to pay higher. What Academies have is the ability to say to an experienced teacher we don't pay UPS3, we'll pay you MPS2 like a 24 year old.

Sadly, until more people realise that for the last few years schools don't even have to employ qualified teachers, until people see what happens when there's not enough teachers, until it's their kids future on the line, nothing will change because people are too busy attacking public sector workers and buying into the lies that are told about us.

she'll say she has a mandate for new grammar schools etc - where are all the teachers going to come from?
Not here at least. Give me a nice rounded comprehensive any day.

PGCEs and School Direct and Teach First are takng in poor quality candidates and turning out poor quality NQTs. It is a dire situation in secondary schools.

If they reduced workload teachers would stay but all they do is ratchet up the pressure on teachers every year.

All of the above.

I started training as an MFL teacher with School Direct last summer, and resigned a few weeks after October half-term last year. My decision to resign wasn't an easy one, but it was the best one. I have an absolutely huge amount of respect for teachers (and NHS workers, but that's for another thread). I knew that I just couldn't carry on training to be a teacher - the training was making me depressed and anxious to the point of being suicidal.

A few people have mentioned Teach First on here - does anyone know of Ark? They're another educational charity and academy sponsor, and they've actually employed a lot of Teach First alumni as professional tutors on their PGCE course.

Both Ark and Teach First have been hailed as the answer to the current teacher recruitment crisis.

I'm not exaggerating when I say here that the ten weeks I spent teaching at an Ark school was sheer hell.

*were sheer hell

Ooh Nonno just saw your post - I'm intrigued! Do tell us more? (I'm desperate not to see a Tory victory on 9th June!)

I speak seven languages and really enjoy both learning them and teaching them. Can I come and teach? Knowing that there is a shortage in the UK, could I actually do this ? How do you become a supply teacher? What if you don't have a degree?

I think it's tough recruiting qualified STEM and language teachers in this country. To give you an example, I don't have a degree yet, but was recently offered a maths TA role for £50k + allowance to get a teaching degree by a local secondary to try and lure me from the City. They were targeting all local analysts via local recruiters and although I declined someone must have accepted it. Really ridiculous.

My experience of MOOCs (especially for under 18s) is that they are not really a substitute for schools, they are more like "a technological tool that makes homeschooling easier."

I know a couple of kids who have done well on these, but in reality this was merely something they were doing alongside face-to-face work with parents and tutors, including some Skype tuition.

The thing about HE is that one parent has to stop working or significantly cut back on hours to make it work. Hard to get round that barrier.

I think British education urgently needs to slash teachers' workloads and tighten up A LOT on school behavior policies. I find it so odd that not every school has a centralized system for sanctions. Surely it is wrong that so many teachers end up chasing individual students around dealing with their detentions on an individualized basis?

This is so sad to read that education has got into this state. I am one of the many who trained and worked as a teacher in the uk then buggered off abroad to teach. Also my brother. My sil trained as a maths teacher. She did the extension year and pgce (receiving payment for both). But has decided to become a yoga instructor instead. What a waste of funding our family represents. But this is the reality of pumping shit loads of money into training and losing it because of working conditions on the actual job.

Where I am now there is an oversupply of teachers. It takes career changers two years to train, which they pay for themselves. Doesn't stop them or the many British teachers from trying to get work here. Amazing what decent pay, appreciation and an easier workload will result in.

This happened to me when I was 14. In my school the so-called French teacher they'd hired didn't know much French. My granny put me in an extra-curricular activity where I had to travel into town each week to take French lessons for a private tutor (some French nuns who held classes as a side job). On doit toujours trouver des solutions pratique.

In any case, those extra lessons my granny made me take for two years at age 14 paired with French books and audio ensured I remember some French to this day. I never use it, but can read it properly. At work I even manage stuff like this: "Conformément à l'article 16 du règlement (UE) n° 1094/2010 du Parlement européen et du Conseil1, l'Autorité européenne des assurances ... sur le contrôle des succursales d'entreprises d'assurance ...."