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?

One of the major aspects of Finland is that education and teachers are respected by everyone.

Where in the UK (all of the UK )the education system (including teachers) has been undermined by years of bad press by various governments.

I can't see a MP from Finland getting away with calling teachers "the blob" or that that they are at "war" with teachers (paraphrased)

The success of Finland is routinely ignored by government as it would cost more than the Hong Kong method.

Personally, I think it would be impossible to implement Finnish methods here, because too many teachers and heads would resist switching to the more traditional teaching methods that, arguably, are what has allowed the mixed ability teaching in Finland to work. There is a lot of evidence now that explicit teaching is better for disadvantaged and lower-attaining children, than more investigative methods that favour children from backgrounds with lots of cultural capital.

provided the lesson was 'engaging' enough, children would behave well,
Yawn. I hate it when people say this in schools. It's like "get them on side". No. I teach & they learn and we all respect one another.

But again, I've seen threads on here where people have excused poor behaviour from their child. They've also told their children that they can not attend detentions, that they'll call up the teacher and put them in their place. I think that attitude of "you can't discipline my child if my child says it's not fair" and parents undermining staff is one of the biggest shifts in the last 5 years.
I always remind myself 90% of parents are very supportive. It's just the ones you hear the most from are the ones who aren't.

No politician has ever called teachers as a group 'the blob'. The term was originally coined in the US in the 80s to refer to the non-chalkface members of the education establishment: the academics, theorists and bureaucrats. To be fair to Gove, when he used the term, he was using it in the same way. It was Daily Fail headlines that misrepresented what he said (no surprise there!), and not surprisingly, the TES and the Guardian were happy to follow suit.

Don't forget 'enemies of promise' Boney

kesstrel

Why would teachers etc. be resistant to change?

Is it because they don't want what is best for the pupils
Because they are still graded by people that will mark them down for not teaching in the prescribed way?
Or because it would be yet another initiative on top of the many that we are in the middle of implementing and have already been changed before any results have been seen?

I think that attitude of "you can't discipline my child if my child says it's not fair" and parents undermining staff is one of the biggest shifts in the last 5 years.

Yes, it's really worrying. But I can't help but wonder if that attitude hasn't been fostered, in part, by the education they themselves received. If your own experience of school was that 'fun' tended to be prioritised over behaving well and working hard, and poor behaviour was often tolerated, your ideas about 'the norm' for how schools should function are likely to reflect that. And then why shouldn't they expect the same for their own kids?

Plus both the Daily Fail and the Guardian are constantly pillorying schools that try to enforce strong discipline standards, so people pick up that attitude as acceptable.

I must say, depressing as the posts are, it is refreshing and bizarrely heart-warming to come across a thread that is, in general, supportive of and sympathetic to teachers!

We (outstanding school) advertised for a second in English recently : one applicant. One. She was given the job. the only reason she applied is because she knows some of us and trained with us. She has three years experience and won't be up to the mental toughness to work in our exhausting school. But she was the only applicant, so she got the job.

My DSs school is scrapping German (they have one, incompetent , often absent teacher, sadly) and not offering Spanish at A level (three brilliant teachers but no uptake beyond GCSE). The problem with MFL is specific : children aren't taking MFL at GCSE , let alone A level... the numbers aren't coming through. there is no strong voice for MFL, unlike for STEM (although I do know that isn't producing teachers, it is beginning to produce scientists and mathematicians).Learning languages is dead on its feet. the EBacc achieved nothing.

As a lover of languages this makes me sad.

Boney Of course teachers want the best for their pupils. And I absolutely agree that they are overwhelmed with pointless initiatives. And I've already said that Ofsted and headteachers have been the culprits responsible for enforcing methods that mean teachers are forced to teach in less effective ways.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of teachers and headteachers, especially in primary, who seem very committed to methods different from the ones used in Finland. The idea of 8 year olds sitting children in rows i rather than around tables, using textbooks, and frequently working on their own in silence rather than in groups would, I suspect, be strongly resisted by a number of primary teachers.

Michael "This country has had enough of experts" Gove is a thundering turd of a man who would rather call his critics names than actually consider whether they might have a point.

He is soley responsible for the shit that is the current KS2 SATs. Fronted adverbials and all that jazz? I read that the reading SATs paper this week was 'kinder' to pupils. That's because they had to change it so that it started with easier questions. Even that kind of basic concession to weaker students was beyond him. He rushed through a wholesale change to secondary curriculum and assessment in a couple of years because of a General Election in 2015 (the change to GCSEs in comparison took a decade and were carefully introduced), and the consequences of that are chaos, confusion and last minute changes that have caused teachers endless hours of work, and students unforgivable amounts of stress. The government has realised his plan to make 23% more students fail their GCSEs wasn't particularly helpful and changed the pass grade at the 11th hour with weeks to go till the exams. In addition, his decision to get rid of AS levels which enabled students to take 4 subjects in Y12 and drop to 3 in Y13 meaning they studied a wider range and had a safety net of dropping a subject that they didn't get on as well with (despite advice from everyone not to do this) is now looking like it may have catastrophic consequences for the take-up of harder A-levels like maths and Further maths, which the country needs people to take.

And when Gove finally showed his true colours as a total tosspot to the country during Brexit and the aftermath (Prime Minister!!!), all teachers could say was 'We tried to tell you, but you said we were workshy whingers'.

Genuine question here for Noble. Could a really solid joined-up IT system reduce teacher workload significantly - the progress-tracking element. Looking at the slew of miscellaneous paperwork that flies back and forward from both my DC's (excellent) schools I can quite see how keeping track of it all would be a nightmare but there really should be a better way to capture things directly. Teachers would still be marking work and recording their opinion, but automating everything beyond that shouldn't be beyond the realms of human ingenuity.

Yes I know that the success rate of big public sector IT projects has not been stellar in practice - just thinking in response to the "it's not about money". Because I can't see individual progress tracking going away. Isn't its removal part of what did for the Welsh system? (Again genuine question based on limited knowledge).

Good to see this discussed as it is a serious problem.

The problem was pretty bad under Labour who also fucked up the budgets with PPP and mass immigration and under the LibDem- Con coalition - so voting against the Tories is not going to cure it all.

Parents have to take some of the blame though. Every time a teacher says something that a parent does not approve of we get a witch hunt. Complaints have to be investigated, the Head has to be involved, it can go on a file, letters have to be sent back to the parents and the teacher has to go back in to class knowing that the kid is sitting there having been told that Mummy told the Head on the Teacher and the teacher got told off.

Teachers, stretched to their limit, doing their absolute best get hauled over the coals because an eight year old misunderstood a comment or a bolshy teen, (out of thirty), provokes a comment that can be used against them.

I am a trained teacher but I work with adults who respect me. I wouldn't work anywhere near a school even if you paid me double

I'd be all for a system more like the Finnish one. I've long been of the opinion that less is more in teaching. There is just too MUCH of so much stuff that we don't actually need. Schools and governments have forgotten what teaching means, in its most basic and fundamental form. Teachers should not be: entertainers, spin doctors, number crunchers, counsellors, babysitters, prison guards, replacement parents, data analysts. We are professionally qualified to deliver our subject and that's it.

Kids who persistently disrupt lessons should be routinely removed. Kids (certainly at secondary) should not expect all lessons to be fun. Kids who persistently fail to work, pay attention or cooperate when helped should be allowed to fail. Kids should have responsibility for for their work and results. When students know that their teachers are far more worried about their grades than they are (because their job is on the line), it's no wonder that many can't be arsed.

Cormorant - I genuinely don't understand why there needs to be so much progress tracking. There never used to be. I was reading a study about progress tracking, data and accountability in education recently. It said that there is no actual evidence that any of this has made students learn more. None. So wtf are we all doing it for? So let's just... not. Let teachers teach to the best of their abilities and help students with things they find hard, point out through marking where improvements are needed, only test at the end of the school year or 3 times a year at most. The constant need for targets and data is ridiculous.

I think parents really are not aware of how bad things have become, we're spending more than ever on education but that does not mean we are spending enough! We felt quite worried about dcs taking computing GCSE as dh and I have no experience in computing and the school currently use a TA to teacher Year 8s and 9's. Luckily they decided computing wasn't for them.
We've bought the textbooks - school doesn't supply them anymore and I'm currently swotting up on GSCE science - their science teacher is a lovely man but he isn't doing very well, he's bogged down with low level disruption - he's leaving at the end of the year (and I'm not convinced his replacement will be much better), dd gets really frustrated by the rest of the class but feels she has learned next to nothing all year.

We need a culture change and we need to pay our teachers more, a lot more. We need to make teaching a desirable profession again. In my opinion most professionals have to work their butts off but they get adequately rewarded and respected.

One interesting aspect of the Finnish system is that all schools have a 'special education' classroom, where any children who are falling behind at any point can go to be helped to catch up before they get too far behind. That means there is also a place where disruptive children can be sent as well, until they are ready to return to the classroom.

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...and on it goes. And it gives everyone a stick with which to beat teachers.
I also really object to the current culture of every lesson having to be super engaging and that if children aren't behaving well, it's because you're not 'exciting' enough as a teacher. Apart from anything else, I don't think it does children, and especially teenagers, any favours in preparing them for the real world.

Exactly, kneesup. If teachers complain about performance related pay, we are regarded as lazy and 'not living in the real world', but the fact is that a teacher cannot make a child brighter, they cannot physically force a child to work or do homework and they cannot even force a child to pay attention in class. So how can a teacher be held solely responsible for that child's results? Some kids will not cooperate however entertaining we make our lessons and however much we try to help them. I get so sick of seeing the looks on the engaged, well-behaved kids' faces as they try and concentrate in a classroom where most of the teacher's effort is spent on managing the low-level but widespread poor behaviour of other kids. I don't know how they put up with it day after day.

Sorry, OP, for having a whinge on your thread! But, as a parent myself, it just makes me feel so sad.

kesstrel most schools have some kind of unit/room/base for disruptive students where they stay until they get it right. They only hold so many students though and don't really tackle low level disruption

My Spanish A level teacher left (sacked but thats another story) half way through Lower 6th. The French teacher - who had O level Spanish- stepped in and took the class. We did the set texts in translation and a school support staff member from Colombia helped with orals etc. By some miracle most of us passed. It was a great lesson in pulling your finger out, working at things and not expecting everything on a plate!
Also much more fun than the other A levels ..

sheepskin we are spending more in total on education but there are more students to educate so we are not spending more per student. In addition whilst knowing that money was going to be tight because of a baby boom and rising immigration in previous years the government introduced a new curriculum for just about every stage of education at the same time - that has cost a huge amount of money. My little department has had to spend most of its budget on new resources for new GCSEs and A level and training. I do wonder how many MPS have links with the companies making this money out of education.

It truly is chaos, I started teaching a new A level this year and the text book wasn't released for the first year of the course for September . They have only just released the A2 book. Some departments are still waiting for their textbooks ! THe same for GCSEs

User so if your children are placed in the same situation you would be quite happy would you? I know I wouldn't.

In fact why hire teachers at all lets make all A levels fun and get them to work it out for themselves.

"The French teacher - who had O level Spanish- stepped in and took the class. "

To be fair, O level in her day is probably better than A level now.
I run a French conversation group. The level I find people need is O level and up. Those with a GCSE instead of an O level and no other knowledge of French can't participate like the ones with and O level.

I am a highly qualified professional and have been keen to do teaching. I almost applied to do teaching this year but found I was pregnant. Since then I have researched going into teaching after maternity. The replies I have got from teachers is not to do it, it will ruin my family life and due to government cutbacks, teach to test and high levels of non teaching admin, I can expect long stressful working days including weekend's, with no time for family life. A friend who left work to teach came back to work after 10 months voting 70hrs weeks which were too stressful woth a young family. Many teachers responding to my queries said they had been teaching for tens of years, love the teaching and the children but are now leaving, because everything else is making them miserable. This has made me very worried about my children's education.