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?

I wouldn’t mind if she had a good few years of experience in the class room. She has probably understands more about teaching than anyone who has just recently completed their degree.

I think supporting and promoting TAs to teachers is a fantastic idea, they already are doing part of the job anyway and are fully aware of all the challenging and positive aspects of working in the field!

I work in the private sector and we regularly promote “lower skilled” staff and put them through on the job and formally vocational training, in often very responsible senior roles too.

It’s really no different.

She may have a degree, just not a teaching one (yet?)

I think it’s OK. A friend of mine is not only a teacher but is also head of department at a well known public school - and doesn’t even have a degree.
And for those astonished that English graduates are not taught grammar as part of their degree, why would they be? An English degree generally covers English literature, not grammar. Would you expect grammar to be part of a history degree? It’s no different. If you want to be a grammar expert you’d be looking at a degree in linguistics.

I wouldn’t mind if she had a good few years of experience in the class room. She has probably understands more about teaching than anyone who has just recently completed their degree.

No, that isn’t true. Learning about teaching involves - over a long period of time - applying theories to practical situations. You have to understand both. Yes, a person just starting out with a teaching degree will lack some of the practical knowledge of what a teacher is doing, but they will have a stronger grasp of the why. There is no “how to teach: ten steps for a monkey” book. You have to understand the underlying principles of how we learn.

She has no degree but our London borough grants QTS to people who have been working with children over five years, after a short course, which she will do whilst on the job.

You cannot get QTS without a degree or equivalent. No London borough has the authority to overrule this. I assume that they are putting most people on this scheme through assessment-only QTS, for which you must have a degree. The colleague you describe must be of the Registered Teacher Programme or similar.

It’s really no different.

It is different. What are we trying to produce, when we train a teacher? A person who can make a PowerPoint? A person who can deliver someone else’s lesson? A person who can give instructions designed by someone else?

Or - and you can see which way my rhetoric is leaning here - a person who actually understands teaching theories and can apply them critically? So, a person who, when confronted with SLT demanding that every child in their class is “creating” as soon as they enter the classroom because it’s a “higher order skill” on “Bloom’s” is able to say, “Hold on: isn’t Bloom’s Taxonomy a demonstration that a person can’t meet their more abstract need (learning) before they have met their more basic need (food)? And isn’t the application of that theory to a reductive series of steps in the classroom a load of guff? But even if it wasn’t guff, wouldn’t the underlying principle be that a child can’t access the “higher order” skill of creating before they have mastered the basics (comprehension and application of knowledge)? Wouldn’t it be a bit odd if they could, sort of like floating pyramids?

We’re not training monkeys here.

As a secondary teacher I taught almost everything at some stage other than music and foreign languages, not simply as a cover for an absent colleague but time-tabled! In the 70s I was even given a class of boys technical drawing, I was a couple of pages ahead of them for the year, the upshot of which was that I can draw free-hand from different perspectives 3d drawings.

@Zoobluebabypink Write me a sentence which contains a preposition, a subordinate clause and a subjunctive. Oh, and imagine you're teaching ten year olds this. Your view of primary teaching is probably the most offensive remark I've read about my job.

And for those astonished that English graduates are not taught grammar as part of their degree, why would they be?

I wouldn't expect University lecturers to have to teach grammar to English students, they should have mastered that far earlier.

It's really quite ignorant to think that just because you know the content (which isn't a given anyway) you can teach it. And offensive.
Fwiw I have a maths degree and have struggled to help my son with his maths homework since year 6. I could do the homework, but struggle to help him understand the concepts and the process.

I think supporting and promoting TAs to teachers is a fantastic idea, they already are doing part of the job anyway and are fully aware of all the challenging and positive aspects of working in the field!

I work in the private sector and we regularly promote “lower skilled” staff and put them through on the job and formally vocational training, in often very responsible senior roles too.

It’s really no different
It's very different.

For a start, TAs are not already doing part of a teacher's job. They are not teachers. They are valuable staff in their own right (and some are trained in specialist needs in more depth than teachers), but they are not teachers. It doesn't come close.
And I've done both as part of changing career to teaching.

The bottom line is the school in the OP's post are expecting someone without a degree or QTS to take the lead on a class with probably limited support (in my experience work based routes like that don't have the same level of support or theoretical depth of other routes).

Plus, if she's doing a teaching degree and doesn't have a degree then a part time degree typically takes 6 years.

The only way this would be ok in my opinion is if she was a strong and experienced TA with a degree and she was now starting a school direct route to achieve QTS.

I wouldn't expect University lecturers to have to teach grammar to English students, they should have mastered that far earlier.

Yes, subject knowledge is taught explicitly to ITE students. Fronted adverbials (for instance) only became part of the curriculum a few years ago and most students have no idea.

TAs covering for the odd absence or PPA, absolutely fine.

Full teaching and planning for a class, absolutely not unless they're already qualified.

How do you expect people to get qualified?

But I could say that about being a doctor, couldn’t I?

Do you have a medical degree?

No.

Then you can’t treat patients. You are welcome to train once you have the degree.

But how am I meant to do that?

Sometimes there is no answer that doesn’t undermine the goal.

How do you expect people to get qualified?

To study first and then teaching PRACTICE which is guided and observed.

Or gain a degree and do SCITT or equivalent.

Not just get given a class and get on with it!

I think supporting and promoting TAs to teachers is a fantastic idea, they already are doing part of the job anyway and are fully aware of all the challenging and positive aspects of working in the field!

Absolutely. By the proper route- degree and QTS by one of several methods.

Not just by practising directly on the children.

I think it’s ridiculous that unqualified teachers end up being responsible for a class from day one. I worked in a school as an unqualified teacher whilst training but I was buddied with an experienced teacher who taught FT at the start of the year and I wasn’t teaching full weeks until the end of summer term. It’s far too much pressure to start you with a class straight away, that’s not fair on the teacher or the children. It happens a lot and will probably be fine, but I’m really glad my school was sensible about it! (And as for teaching being easy, I had NO IDEA beforehand how hard it would be. It’s a very, very tough job that requires a much higher level of intelligence than any job I’ve ever worked before.)

How do you expect people to get qualified?
To complete a teaching undergraduate degree with training time, placements, supervised by a mentor and the mentor remains accountable and responsible for the class.
Or
Get a subject degree and complete a teacher training programme with supervised placements, close monitoring and associated study.

Both the above would have phased timetables or reduced timetables.

Not give someone without any higher study a class and tell them they're the class teacher, but it's ok because the deputy might come in now and then if there's time.

When we take trainees, our class teachers can't be used for cover or have meetings etc. We have to be on hand or in the room to support. The trainee is learning and that's why they take our classes as they learn. We don't throw them in an hope it works out ok.

As she is training she will probably be more likely to want to do everything right and put more effort in
As an unqualified teacher new to teaching, she probably doesn't know what doing it 'right' is, or that there may be multiple 'rights' to apply depending on child, subject, context.

Hardly difficult to teach primary kids is it?

OP I wouldn’t be happy at all

Why do people think that a degree means that a person is capable of teaching? You can get a degree in any subject and become a teacher with just 120 days experience in schools.

A TA, who knows the pupils and the schools and has observed teachers for years will be much more equipped to teach primary than a random person with an Art or Buisness Studies degree.

Also fuck off to the poster who thinks that teaching primary is easy 🖕🏼 You have no fucking idea how much hard word and exhausting it is.

Why do people think that a degree means that a person is capable of teaching? You can get a degree in any subject and become a teacher with just 120 days experience in schools.

It doesn’t. Plenty of people with degrees would make awful teachers. But, by studying for and passing a degree, they have shown they are not - and I am going to give up all attempts at tact here - incapable of learning, thinking, reflecting; in short, they’re bright enough to master complexity. Unfortunately, although there are lots of TAs out there who are of course as bright as anyone who has studied for a degree, there are just as many who aren’t. Academic study shows you are capable of academic thought.

And I feel a bit of a hypocrite here because I did do an on the job route into teaching, but - and again I feel bad saying it - I had outstanding academic qualifications: As at A Level, Oxbridge 2.1. And a previous career. The barriers to entry were there. No child was having someone foisted on them who couldn’t spell, add up, write an essay, or deconstruct a poem. It’s not fair on the kids to gamble with their educations.

I'm a teacher and whilst there are many amazing TAs out there I wouldn't want them being my child's full time teacher if they were unqualified.

It would bother me massively. She has had no training in pedagogy and theories of learning.