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?

Years ago, I applied for a term's supply to cover a French teacher who had had a "crisis of confidence." An honours degree in MFL, specialist post-grad training, 30 years' experience with outstanding exam results, but because I was an overseas trained teacher, I was paid as untrained. I was headhunted by an independent school, who could pay me way more than the state-defined scale for untrained. I was replaced in the state school by a history teacher who had done O-Level French many years before, and was unable to speak the language. They were unable to recruit anyone else. The UK education system has real problems.

There seem to be two problems.

One is that teachers have too much paperwork and general crap to deal with. The other is that there aren't enough "good" teachers and certainly not enough of them in certain subjects. Perhaps the only way is to sack everyone and reemploy and recruit good teachers on twice the pay and half the paperwork (joking!). It's unfortunate that of course the teachers who really stick like glue to the profession are the worst ones.

I don't think "Tory cuts/meddling" have anything to do with the standard of teachers or the behaviour of pupils. I think the 80s and all the drive to get into perceived high-paying jobs was very detrimental to teaching recruitment and indeed the civil service. People saw those jobs as fall-backs and consequently many potentially excellent teachers never considered entering the profession and in the 80s/90s teaching standards fell. Eg letting primary school teachers in with no English/Maths GCSE! Thank goodness that's changed.

Tw1nsetAndPearls I am aware that while overall spending in education has gone up - spend per pupil has gone down due to an increase in population - I scream this every time we have a Tory representative repeating this deceptive statistic about funding. We really desperately need an effective opposition, Labour are in a shambles, no sign of Corbyn letting go after he's slaughtered in the election.
And while my experience of secondary education was a Grammar school with a fair few very incompetent teachers (lazy, hungover and just crap at communicating) - I taught myself with the aid of a text book and the syllabus, I was aware that many of my very able classmates were doing the same - from this time there was a need to make teachers more accountable...it has simply gone too far! There is a middle ground.

I don't think "Tory cuts/meddling" have anything to do with the standard of teachers or the behaviour of pupils. I think the 80s and all the drive to get into perceived high-paying jobs was very detrimental to teaching recruitment and indeed the civil service. People saw those jobs as fall-backs and consequently many potentially excellent teachers never considered entering the profession and in the 80s/90s teaching standards fell That would be the Tories in charge then - still not their fault that they were a bit blind and didn't see this happening?

Sheepskin it is the one Tory misrepresentation that annoys me the most.

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

Until not long ago I worked in a school (in a technical capacity, non-teaching). The budget was being cut and cut (rubbish about this 'more money than ever' being put in - if there was, I don't know where it was going). I have a first class honours degree, but have NEVER wanted to teach children (I teach adults privately, a subject not offered in schools).

The Head was making noises about wanting non-teaching staff to step in to cover classes if teachers were absent. This would have meant people with few qualifications, standing in front of classes of 30 secondary pupils (some with SEN) with no teacher training. For technician pay. At that point I left the school.

If I wanted to be a teacher (I don't) I would take my PGCE (which I am qualified to do) and be paid teacher rates. Not sideways-slid into being responsible for a class of children (and their exams) with no preparation, no training and very little pay! As PPs have said, people have very little idea of what is going on in schools today, it's a shambles.

Mind you don't know why we're all moaning there's a simple solution to all this - all we really need to do is to test the kids a bit more, that usually improves standards doesn't it.

Ermm..I have no (equivalent) GCSE in Maths. I have been teaching for 42 years - not Maths, of course, but can do mental arithmetic with lightning speed, because that is what we were taught. In the old days, we had to do loads of work with numbers, balancing attendance rolls, adding up test scores and producing means and averages, without benefit of calculators. I can also do "maths" in 4 languages. It would have been nice to know more about geometry and algebra, but I have never actually needed it to do an extremely competent job in my subject areas. Not sure why it should necessarily be a barrier to teacher training.

Oh yes sheep! & if it doesn't, SLG just need to do a learning walk & a book scrutiny, then put everyone into Critical Friend Trios & make them give up their planning time to watch each other!

There you go, fixed.

Gah. It's such such nonsense.

Yay to more testing!
Bit like measuring a child's height makes them grow taller.

Ah, yes, but, pollyglot , you are old !!!! (It's all right, so am I!)

Why were standards so much better in the past? Look at the handwriting of children from before 1970s and it's excellent ? The 3Rs were well if boringly taught and everyone knew their tables. Did everything start to go down the drain with the introduction of "trendy" 1960s methods?

Critical friends trio. What fresh hell is that?

I'm an English teacher but I did supply for a while. I was once drafted in to cover a Spanish lesson. I don't know any Spanish. Luckily it was only Year 7, and I have a reasonable aptitude for languages in general so I was able to make a reasonable job of following the lesson plan. When the kids asked a question, I looked up the answer (more accurately, I encouraged the child to help me find the answer).

I also had to cover Music, Dance, PE, Drama, ICT, Maths, Science, History... none of which I had been trained to do. These were always short-term assignments. If it's long-term cover, then ideally the teacher would be qualified in that area but I don't know how easy it is to find enough teachers to do that these days.

Critical Friends Trio = you plus two random from different departments.

You have a meeting where you tell each other what you think you're a bit shit at, & the other two decide which of them is the most not shit at it.

Then you go & watch them doing whatever it is, plan a lesson where you will do it brilliantly, & they come & watch you.

So everybody in the trio carries out two observations & is themselves observed twice. (No of course you don't get cover! Silly. You have to co ordinate all this in your non contact time).

It all has to be written up (minuted planning & feedback meetings, lesson obs) & sent to the SLG member who is using it as research for his Masters, sorry, organising this valuable CPD opportunity for you all.

The best way to truly appreciate it is to come up with a spectacularly impractical thing you're shit at & watch your Critical Friend figure out how to demonstrate inspiring use of the vaulting horse or a bunsen burner in their Maths or Geography lesson... .

Once we all started doing this the SLG accused us of 'taking the piss' & we went back to learning walks.

I think what is interesting about this thread is that there is consensus that the situation is unacceptable and getting worse. There is also consensus that the teachers are being driven out. There are a number of factors being give as reasons from people who genuinely know what is going on. Overall the picture is depressing.

The problem is that everyone disagrees on what is needed to improve things. If we could work together to do this we would be fine.

Telling people not to vote Conservative isn't going to sort things out, neither is paying teachers more, insisting immigrants speak English before they enroll kids in school, giving teachers more authority, allowing disruptive children to be dealt with, bringing back grammars, teaching like they do in Finland or whatever else. All of these things might or might not help but there are too many vested interest to allow any co-ordinated approach to succeed.

That is what is depressing.

More non-contact time. Significantly more. It would solve most issues at a stroke.

Not voting Tory would help as they are refusing to acknowledge there's a problem let alone come up with any solutions. The education select committee has raised this several times.

That critical friends thing sounds awful.

More non-contact time. Significantly more. It would solve most issues at a stroke

It would be fascinating to see what other countries do. It seems like we want to emulate certain countries but not give teachers the time as these countries do.

Still, as the May bot says:

We have more and more teachers being trained.
We have record funding in schools.
We have 1.5 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools.

Yes.....But those figures can be challenged because they are misleading.

I would love to get May to answer questions on education without using those phrases.

The depressing thing is that I don't see any hope at all that ANY of the parties will do anything to improve matters. They don't seem to understand that just throwing money at it won't work and that endless attempts to raise standards by measuring everything they can think of to measure and targeting a bewildering range of different categories of apparently under-performing children with schemes which just waste teachers' time instead of trusting them to do their jobs has the OPPOSITE effect to raising standards.

The trouble is, anyone who started teaching in the last decade or so is so used to all this crap that they don't realise it doesn't have to be that way. Until they jack it in and go and teach abroad and go "Huh?! What?! You mean I just have to plan lessons, teach kids (the way I see fit) and mark books? Jeez - I should have done this years ago!"

Did everything start to go down the drain with the introduction of "trendy" 1960s methods?

Cognitive psychologists are now demonstrating the the groupwork and 'discovery' methods so popular post-1960s chew up large amounts of time with often little learning, especially with inexperienced teachers. And also that many children suffer from insufficient practice of basic skills and knowledge - what 'trendy' educators demonised as 'drill and kill'. And the detrimental effects of both these ideas fall most heavily on the disadvantaged and less able. Add to that constant low-level disruption, due to firm discipline also being frowned on. There's more, as well, that I don't have time to go into.

Due in part to these issues, children are going into their GCSE years without enough background knowledge and skill, with the result that they are put under huge amounts of stress to cram in lots of things they could have learned thoroughly in Key Stage 2 and 3, with a sufficiently evidence-based and disciplined approach.

That critical friends thing sounds awful.

I read lots of teacher blogs, and that's just a drop in the ocean of the appalling practices being foisted on teachers.