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?

I certainly let some things slide that I didn't a few years ago because a) I don't have the time or energy to chase things up and b) I don't expect to be supported if I do.

The comment about teachers should do more is very amusing.

We have said that this would happen for years and all we got for it was "stop whingeing", "get a real job" and "welcome to the real world".

Its no wonder that teachers are leaving in droves and no-one wants to do the job.

I agree with PPs, pay is an absolute red herring. It is all about the conditions - we'd all like to be paid more, but no one goes into teaching for the money.

Teachers are (generally) conscientious types who love their subject and like working with kids. We all just want to get on with sharing our love of the subject, helping the students get decent grades, and having some fun along the way. That was how the job was when I started teaching 12 years ago. Nothing like that now. It's sickening to think how things have changed.

More importantly, the insane accountability and workload does not appear to have improved anything for the students or for the country/ economy; if anything, the pressure of constant testing and stretched, stressed teachers has led to students' experience of school becoming ever more negative.

I've posted this before, but my bright DD was without a maths teacher or science teachers throughout year 11. The resources were channel led into the borderline C/D sets. The school ended up in special measures.

We are science graduates so with a set of textbooks and us to fill in the gaps she got As. With a decent teacher who knows the curriculum inside out, I suspect she's would have got As. And for a bright kid, aiming for the very top, As instead of As closes a few doors.

For all the teachers who have been in the job for a long time - what has caused these changes? From loving a job say 10-12 years ago, what's happened to cause what is it today?

Very sad. Teaching should be one of the most rewarding jobs. To hear so many stressed teachers, hating their jobs, wanting to leave...don't know what to say

It's simple for me. The focus has moved away from the children. Every Child Matters was 10 years ago.

Now, none do.

New courses
Endless data and self justification
Annotated seating plans ready to hand over whenever somebody enters the room
Differentiation for just about everyone
A fear of textbooks
A hatred of chalk and talk
Marking expectations
Students responding to feedback
More teaching outside of your specialism
Large a level classes including students who should be taking a levels
Endless revision and intervention

I don't do all of the above - but these are many of the big issues

I agree about every child matters, they matter if affect your statistics. I hate that

The obsession with minutely evidenced progress. This leads to crazy marking policies, ludicrous amounts of testing and endless fiddling with spreadsheets and data entry.

Then the having to cover your back if your kids aren't making 'expected' progress (as if that's a meaningful thing for an individual student). So endless interventions and chasing and documentation.

Any responsibility for progress (which is poorly defined) lies entirely with the teacher.

@Tw1nsetAndPearls
Spot on with that list.

I'm fed up of the current government being blamed totally for the mess the education system is in. As a teacher of 15 years, the job has changed from something enjoyable to a job where you are having to evidence and justify every single thing you do each day, within a system where pupils and their parents have more say than staff. I have worked for several multi academy trusts, which quite frankly tend to be run by clueless, 'executives' who are most interested in lining their own pockets. The majority of the problems schools face, including this ridiculous 'let's make everything an academy', the dumbing down of GCSE exams, let's give pupils and parents more rights, and the justification of everything (removing any responsibility from pupils /parents for pupil achievement, eg completing homework, behaving in class)- these were things which the last Labour government introduced and imo the blame lies there. The current government can be criticised for not stopping the Labour induced madness.

(it was about 2008 that the madness started)

They can be blamed totally. They've had more than enough time to address those issues. Instead they made them worse. A lot worse. And on top of that have introduced more changes more often without trialling them or providing the funding to cover the costs of the changes.

What Noble has said x 100.

I'm in charge of vocational education for non MN's who aren't genius students getting a string of A*/9s The list of approved qualifications was supposed to be issued before Christmas for the current year 9s. This list was finally published end of February with only a few qualifications on there with updates issued regularly. We are near the end of May and with no updates published. Therefore once again we are being forced to push students down a pathway which means failure

I'm by anyone who thinks the Tories aren't to blame for the mess education is in. Have you forgotten Gove?!

And Labour might have started the academies program to turn around failing schools but it was the Tories that decided every school in the country should become one. If it started in 2008, they've been in power since 2010!

It also completely ignores the good parts of Labour education policy and the work they did to undo years of underfunding

Dumbing down of GCSEs? Are you having a laugh nelly?
Labour didn't introduce the new GCSE spec. Gove did.
I'm having to teach content A level kids struggle with to my bottom set year 10s.

We can't find a new French teacher for September. We have advertised 5 times. There is no specialist supply.

I do a lunch duty everyday and I don't get to eat my lunch because I need two hands free to be able to stop the children pushing into me or fighting . Can't imagine why there's a shortage of teachers...

Was the dumbing down of GCSE's ever proven?

People/Posters forget that 'O' levels where only accessible to the top pupils in the (secondary) school, the rest did CSE.

You can't compare the questions as they are a completely different format, you can't compare the teaching methods, and you can't compare the results as they were on a bell curve.

But at least in GCSE there was provision for all ability pupils.

I've done a lot of supply.

If you are in a school teaching your specialist subject and someone phones in sick then you are sent to cover that lesson.

I've covered 1 lesson each of French and Spanish, I was honest with the children and we worked through the worksheet together.

IMO, the root of this problem is the way education academics (the ones who teach our teachers and advise governments) have for years been pushing teaching methods that aren't based on proper evidence. Governments look at other countries educational outcomes, and conclude (correctly) that we could be doing better - but those countries, for example Finland, have tended to use more traditional methods.

So governments set targets and change curricula, using the levers that they have - but because head teachers and Ofsted inspectors have been indoctrinated by those same education academics i mentioned above, they try to enforce less effective teaching methods like constant groupwork and minimal chalk-and-talk. So teachers end up trying to teach with one hand tied behind their backs by ineffective methods.

Nelly Well if that was the approach we took, we would allow anythng to happen in the world because none of us would be responsible for stopping things we know are wrong. In addition when we then took actions that exacerbated and added further issues to the problems, we would have no responsibility for that either because 'he started it' - as children say.

I was a teacher in the labour government and have been a teacher and school leader in this government.

Labour - whilst certainly not getting everything right- did invest in education massively and I genunely saw children enjoying learning, having opportunity to achieve success and going on to a whole range of options after 16. Teachers worked really hard and still moaned (in our school) but genunely felt it was all doable and good for the children n that it made a difference.

Conservative - Gove was the beginnng of the real end as far as I am concerned. His policies and decisions were madness, with no research or evidence base to show they worked. It was policy made on the hoof - charging in from nowhere on a daily basis having spoken to no one and making sweeping changes- leaving officials at the DFE stunned (and I absolutely know this to be true from a first hand source). It has been the most chaotic, backward thinking, destructive period in education I have seen in the 17 years I have been teaching. I have never known teachers so unhappy, children so stressed, miserable, disengaged and worried in KS4 and bored in KS3. I have lots of friends who are teachers and DH is a Deputy Head. They are all in despair. Their schools can not find subject specialiasts who are good n Maths, Physics, English, History and MFL. The numbers being trained in other subjects have plummeted because the subjects are not popular anymore because every child has importnace places on EBacc subjects. The GCSEs are really hard and boring and stressful. Children are not able to access them (because they are suited to children in 1950s grammar schools).
Teachers are overwhelmed by change after change, initiative after initiative , no time to implement them and no impact on standards. Schools have had budgets cut and face further huge cuts. Teachers pay has fallen in real terms after years of no pay rises then 1%pay rises. Support staff pay is miserly.No money is given to schools to fund these mandatory pay rises and the rises in NI- so it comes from money which would have been spent on children..
We have 3 friends leaving teaching - all after 10+ years- this summer because they can not bear it anymore.
DH is tearing his hair out trying to find 2 Maths and a Physics teacher - 4 goes at Physics so far and no one appointed.
Please don't get me started on the money being paid to Multi-Academy Trust CEOs- it is immoral.

THis government's actions are shameful. None of them are based on what is right for children- it is all political machination.

The success of Finland is routinely ignored by government as it would cost more than the Hong Kong method.
The BBC did an experiment ages ago comparing O level and GCSE. Unsurprisingly people taught modern methods of maths did well on GCSE and not so good on O level (as expected). However, the reverse was also true. Turns out there's little point in comparing apples and oranges.

And the behaviour issue reflects similar problems. So many teachers have written that they were told in teacher training that provided the lesson was 'engaging' enough, children would behave well, and that their leadership teams tell them the same when they ask for support in sanctioning outrageous classroom behaviour.

Yet that view completely ignores adolescent social psychology, and is a recipe for dumbing down with lessons that prioritise 'fun' over learning.

as it would cost more than the Hong Kong method

The government also ignores that in Hong Kong teachers only teach two hours a day. How can we possibly achieve any sort of comparable success when we don't even have time to go to the toilet let alone properly think about teaching.

I think the only real way to reduce teacher workload now would be to reduce contact time. Lots of teachers are already doing this by going part time just to make the job doable. I'm 3 days a week but work about 35-40 hours which is a normal job.