To expect a teacher to be qualified?

[Sunnysummer1]

My ds is about to start year 3 in September & I have just found out his teacher is not a qualified teacher. She has been an teaching assistant for a few years & is starting a teaching degree which she will do one afternoon a week. She has a teaching assistant qualification nvq, but nothing else. I have heard that she is a good teaching assistant and my ds likes her. She is supported by the deputy and will have a teaching assistant in the classroom in the morning. I’m trying not to worry but it just doesn’t sit comfortably with me as I thought teachers had to have a degree. She is fairly young; under 30 & doesn’t have children, if that makes any difference. Would it bother you?

Trainee teachers start off observing lots of qualified staff and get told what to look for, they do training sessions, plan and deliver starters and plenaries for a while, then team teach and then take their own lessons on a reduced timetable

But the problem with this is quite obvious: there is no TLR for training someone else. Qualified teachers are having to do so on top of their day jobs. And once every couple of years, to get a really good new teacher, nobody is arguing. But constantly, every term, it means they are doing twice the work. What’s the point?

Teacher training is also in disarray.

My XH was accepted to do a PGCE in maths. In no way was he suitable teacher material, but they were desperate for maths teachers.

He was 'asked to leave the course' before qualification, but not before he'd done two lots of teaching practice in two separate schools and required so much observation that qualified teachers were having to follow him about. To say nothing of the poor classloads of kids he confused the hell out of (he wasn't very good at explaining, to say the least!).

Simply having passed through a PGCE doesn't always mean a good teacher.

He was 'asked to leave the course' before qualification

I’m surprised. Generally they get passed and then have to be supported through their NQT year too.

It depresses me how we are sleep-walking into this situation.

People demand more from teachers all the time, yet seem to expect them to do this without proper formal training and qualifications.

I am in a very specific situation in that I work in a particular SEN environment and it is mandatory to have an additional M.ed on top of the usual PGCE. We can't afford to put teachers through their M.ed courses, so where ALL of the children's EHC Plans (which they all have - to be able to come to the school) state their entitlement to be taught by an M.ed qualified teacher in our specialism, only 3 teachers in the school have one.

What I learned on that course was absolutely invaluable. Our children have a specific set of needs and the pedagogy is different from mainstream children. It is a crime that we have good, and qualified mainstream teachers, expected to teach a very specialised area without having learned the strategies they need.

And that's without the fact that 'teachers' without even basic teaching qualifications are being expected to teach whole classes and be responsible for children's progress without having learned how to teach at all!

As for the 'easy to teach year 1/2'

Hahaha!

I have had a conversation recently with a few highly experienced colleagues and we all agreed - bar none - that, aside from the extra paperwork and exam stresses of years 2 and 6, year 1 is the hardest year to teach.

And it is, arguably, the most crucial. It is the year when children learn how to learn. It's when they have to grasp the basic skills they need to build on. If they have gaps in learning that year, it is incredibly difficult to plug them later on.

It takes enormous skill and patience and knowledge.

The attitude to teachers really grinds my gears.

@LolaSmiles I also know someone with shocking literacy and numeracy skills who is completing a foundation degree in early years and topping up to a full degree. She is a TA at the moment and wants to be a teacher, I would not want her to teach my child.

noblegiraffe

Yeah, he was that bad.

It wasn't just the actual teaching, but he couldn't get his lessons planned in time and his time management was appalling too.

As I said, he was in no way suitable to become a teacher, and public funds were wasted on getting him through training (he had a lot of extra support). Very bright guy, no common sense and no ability to pass on information.

Yes it would bother me.

I'm a teacher and it is becoming increasingly common for unqualified teachers and non specialised teachers (eg pe teacher teaching English) to teach classes. Is it an academy?

And once every couple of years, to get a really good new teacher, nobody is arguing. But constantly, every term, it means they are doing twice the work. What’s the point?
The thing is it isn't twice the work routinely.

It's twice the work when you get a trainee who is so incompetent that they shouldn't have had a place or should have been removed from the course, but most of the time it evens out in my experience.

Trainee teachers 6-8 hours of my lessons a fortnight, I have a weekly meeting taking 2 hours a fortnight. They ask questions around the department that are reasonable. We all had to start somewhere, I love mentoring and gained loads from the people who mentored me (in fact I'm still in touch with them).

The burden when training trainees is when providers insist on taking people who simply aren't good enough, aren't smart enough, aren't resilient or independent enough.
If you take students from a good training provider then you tend to get a better field of trainees.

crazycatgal
That's quite a common route for people who lack basic literacy and numeracy. Along side it they will try to resit maths/English GCSE, scrape by and then (generally) will apply to a training provider known to accept anyone, get a place and then put pressure on schools to pass them at any cost, only for the trainee to struggle to get a job because they aren't that good, struggle in their NQT year & then end up on the TES forums complaining about how unfair life is that school's won't employ them (I don't know if people use TES forums much but when I trained it was a hub of good advice and people being the world's biggest victim).

The burden when training trainees is when providers insist on taking people who simply aren't good enough, aren't smart enough, aren't resilient or independent enough.

Well, yes. If you remove all the qualification barriers to entry, this gets a lot more likely.

herculepoirot2
I totally agree.

Most people don't mind mentoring a trainee when the standard is reasonable. It's a bit of extra paperwork but you get to lose a class or two and we all starts somewhere.

I've had some dreadful trainees who should never have been passed by their training providers (think - claiming bullying because I told them to read the novel they were teaching before teaching it, they didn't, their teaching was shit, I pulled them up on it, they claimed I had unreasonable expectations for a trainee. I know how dare I expect a trainee to know more about the subject than 13 year olds). They were from a training provider that has a low bar.

Placing an unqualified teacher with an nvq3 as a main teacher certainly lowers the bar.

I've had some dreadful trainees who should never have been passed by their training providers (think - claiming bullying because I told them to read the novel they were teaching before teaching it, they didn't, their teaching was shit, I pulled them up on it, they claimed I had unreasonable expectations for a trainee. I know how dare I expect a trainee to know more about the subject than 13 year olds). They were from a training provider that has a low bar.

😂 Oh dear.

She'll be a trainee teacher and be mentored and constantly observed. I did Teach First and spent my first year of full time teaching as an unqualified teacher - secondary though. I worked really hard and if anything put much more thought into creating bespoke lessons that engaged students than I do now as an 'old hat'.

@CuriousAboutChicken
But teach first trainees have a reduced timetable.
You also had the summer trainibg block, though there's also still a lot to be said for having more prep than the summer institute offers. For its merits, there's still quite a few challenges to the TF approach. (And I'm saying that as someone who considered it but wasn't happy that they could force me to train in science because of one of my A Levels and not my degree subject, and they could place me anywhere. There are people I know who wanted primary training but TF have placed them in core subject secondary teaching).

Equally, as a bright graduate who has gone through a selection process you've got a head start on anyone whose highest qualification is an NVQ3.

Teach first isn't remotely comparable to the OP.

@CuriousAboutChicken I did TF too, but it isn’t remotely comparable to this situation.

If the TA has NVQ level 3 then she won’t meet the requirements for a BEd so she will most likely be starting a foundation degree. That’s two years full time, so call it four years part time. Only then can she either top up to a full BA (Hons) and then do a training year, or alternatively enrol on the registered teacher programme to complete her degree and gain QTS. As a conservative estimate she is a good six years away from qualifying.

Has the OP been back to explain how she knows so much about the background of the teacher?

* Secondary school physics teach for example, I would expect to have a masters in physics and a teaching qualification.

My SIL is a secondary school science teacher and teaches physics. Her highest physics qualification is gcse. She has a biology degree but no masters. A masters certainly isn't a requirement.

She's now been told from next year she has to teach some maths as well and doesn't have a maths A level and hasn't done any maths for 15 years! She's not happy.

OP, @Sunnysummer1 please come back.

It's a reverse.

I'm beginning to think that schools should have to publish what qualifications that teachers have for each subject. It'd raise awareness of how the lack of funding is having such a serious impact on schools.

As a teacher I'd be prepared to share my subject/teaching qualifications with parents.

As a teacher I'd be prepared to share my subject/teaching qualifications with parents.

Me too, but this isn’t fair on those with fewer or less well-regraded qualifications. It wouldn’t resolve the problem; it would make teachers targets (as if that isn’t the case already).

*regarded

Me too, but this isn’t fair on those with fewer or less well-regraded qualifications

I'm not sure why you would think this.

BoneyBackJefferson

And I think it’s straight from the Department of the Obvious!

herculepoirot2

Then you won't have any trouble explaining it?

I don't really care if someone thinks that my BA Hons with QTS is less well regarded than someone with a Degree + PGCE.

Nor I am bothered if the school wishes to put in that someone decided to go for a Masters degree.

that problem is theirs.

But okay.

1. It introduces the idea of hierarchy: a qualified teacher should be judged as a qualified teacher, not a qualified teacher with a 1st or a 2.2.
2. It encourages children and parents to “shop around” within a school, angling for different members of staff based on the fact that one went to Oxford and the other to Sheffield Hallam.
3. It is an inappropriate use of my personal information.
4. It exposes staff to judgements from colleagues about their intellect, when their performance is the important factor.

All-round bad idea.