To think that letters home from school should not be hopping with typos, misused words and bad grammar?

[ReanimatedSGB]

I was annoyed enough with the Momo letter anyway (yeah, thanks for including a picture of the fucking thing, DS had nightmares) but it's riddled with bad grammar and spelling errors. Now the school newsletter announces that 'Exam's' will be starting next month.

AIBU to email them a notice of my hourly rates for proofreading?

One of my favourites was when a school disco letter (written in Comic. Motherfucking. Sans!!) announced that glowstick's, tattoo's and snack's would be available.
This is the establishment I trust to teach my children!!

I doubt very much that the letter was written by one of the teachers. More likely to have been a member of the PTA, who are volunteers. Anyone criticising PTA members’ grammar needs to get off their arse and volunteer.

It drives me nuts when the letters come home and it's full of spelling mistakes and things. I mentioned it one day to the receptionist when a particularly bad newsletter went out and asked if they were proof read at all as the mistakes were awful in it, she was like I do it all myself and no one else has ever mentioned any errors , I had to show her the mistakes for her to believe me !

Don't schools use comic sans because it's an accessible font i.e. easier for people with dyslexia to read?

It’s like the old ‘I had all my teeth out and a gas fire put in....’
Use a comma/semi-colon/full stop. Dear Lord.

ivykaty, we had no teaching assistants! Class sizes were 40+ and the teacher stood at the front and taught. I have no doubt at all that a substantial number of the children were not keeping up and many spent increasing amounts of time in the 'remedial' class or even disappeared to special school. But all the children of average ability were expected to spend approaching half the school week on learning to read and write (most of the rest of the time went on arithmetic). I was very lucky. Lots of kids my age were at schools where they were already jettisoning traditional primary education.

All too common everywhere, and I'm not sure it would be well received if you were to point it out to the school. I'd do it anonymously, but not expect it to have much effect. It's no wonder the standard of written English is going downhill if teachers can't get the basics right. One recent post on here about the grammatical horror 'I was stood/sat ...' had at least one teacher respond saying that they did not see anything wrong with this (or words to that effect). I despair.

FrancisCrawford, And do teaching assistants teach grammar in school or is this left to the teacher?

Teachers don’t write these notices in my school - it’s office staff. Still not great!

Over 30 years ago I did my final 12 week teaching practice in a primary school and every day I was faced with display boards full of spelling mistakes. Excercise instead of exercise, scissers instead of scissors and many more. I didn't dare mention it to anyone in the school but did point it out to my college tutor when he visited. He agreed I should say nothing.

And do teaching assistants teach grammar in school or is this left to the teacher?

Sometimes they do. They might teach other subjects as well.

I always have to look up affect and effect, it wasn’t until a colleague pointed out that there was a difference I even realised I was getting this wrong 😬

@FrancisCrawford, one of the most basic rules taught in class would be to write 'Which is irrelevant, because...', 'Which is irrelevant - because...' or 'Because learning how to..., the earnings of a school secretary are irrelevant.' - not as you have typed.

It is as basic as learning times tables, too.

(They'd also be encouraged to find a different way of beginning three sentences, rather than using 'It is' every time.)

It should be known by all, but it isn't - and differences such as that are why somebody working on a School Reception Desk is a Grade 2 with such skills required as 'making a list' or 'taking a telephone message and writing it down' in the National Employment Competencies/Standards which are used to set the salaries of staff'.

If all you are prepared to pay is 5p/hr above National Minimum Wage (and then make it reduced hours, and then pro rata it down by 20% to allow for Term Time Only contracts), then you are not going to get people who are hugely confident or knowledgeable about the correct placement of apostrophes or other rules regarding punctuation.

Sometimes they do. They might teach other subjects as well.

Will the teaching assistants be proficient at grammar?

Hopefully the problem will solve itself when the current generation hit the workplace. I was educated in the 70s and 80s and formal teaching of SpaG pretty much disappeared by the time I was in mid secondary, but I think I must have picked it up from reading well written books. In any case, if SLT don't have the skills (many of them are v young these days) and aren't prepared to proof read, there's no easy solution.

My DSis a a qualified teacher working as a TA. There are quite a lot of TAs in that position. She's extremely proficient at SpaG. But I don't think anyone's asked her to proof read school communications (they're too busy exploiting her by making her plan and teach for a pittance).

SPaG. Forgot the Punctuation and not a term we ever used at school!

As a teacher I wish I could say that we don't get involved in writing letters and so on, but we do. Certainly at secondary I'd never allow a letter to go out that had anything to do with me if I hadn't written it myself. So it'll be the teachers or the leadership team making the mistakes in most cases. Drives me mad, there is a group of us pedants who sit together at lunch and red pen school communications then leave them strategically lying around. It makes us feel better anyway!

There is absolutely no excuse for a school to be sending out badly-written material or to have it on their website and I secretly applaud any parent who chooses to point out mistakes. Especially when you work for a head that insists on proofreading everything despite being one of the main offenders. Or the deputy that claims English as their second subject but couldn't use an apostrophe to save his life...

Don't know about others, I am.

Will the teaching assistants be proficient at grammar?

Not necessarily. Doesn't stop them being relied upon to teach classes. But then again, teachers aren't necessarily proficient at grammar either. I'm a teacher and have worked with many who aren't.

My DD's Y6 teacher used to make loads of mistakes in their homework - I started highlighting them because it bugged me so much, although it didn't make any difference.

I'm now a primary teacher and I triple check everything I send out.

Sorry, SGB but it’s such a great case if Muphry’s Law , I couldn’t resist.
*of
That was me, that’ll teach me!

But it really is Muphry not Murphy.

Sad that standards have deteriorated so that there are people holding down jobs, in both teaching and office work, who make elementary mistakes. If the basics were correctly taught in Early Years there would be no problem.
Also it has become politically incorrect to point out errors. At one time anyone who noticed one would quietly mention it.