To think teachers should be able to spell

[Brieandcamembert]

I have increasingly noticed recently teachers (often of primary age) who make very basic spelling and grammar errors. Surely having excellent basic skills in this area is an essential criteria for teaching it?

I'm really concerned that we are raising a generation who will have appalling literacy skills.

I have seen the classic "of / have" confusion
I have seen "been" used instead of "being"
I have also seen phonetically similar words interchanged with one another.

I think allowances should be made when teachers have dyslexia and I also agree that mistakes will be made because teachers are so overworked. Anyone would make mistakes with that sort of workload.
Saying that, I was a bit disappointed when I went to a meeting about phonetics at my son’s primary school and ‘pronunciation’ was repeatedly pronounced ‘pronounciation’ by the teachers.

"but who the hell uses an apostrophy for a plural?"

This is amusing.

My DD had a teacher that constantly marked her spelling as incorrect, when it was correct. It took all my self control not to correct her misspellings, but that teacher already had a down on DD, and as a result I already had a down on that teacher, so I figured that no good would come of tangling horns.

That teacher was very education for both DD and I. For all the wrong reasons!

To those saying that teachers need to pass Literacy and Numeracy tests before starting their teaching course, this is no longer the case. Apparently it was too big a barrier to recruitment of new teachers

I wasn’t aware of this. So the plan to recruit more teachers is to drop standards? Heaven forbid we actually improve the working conditions to recruit and retain teachers.

And the skills tests that several pp have mentioned - tests in English, Maths and IT - were scrapped in 2020 because many candidates resat millions of times and still failed. They prevented some candidates from training as teachers, so they scrapped them.

"Unless you are comfortable with people being discriminated against because of a disability, then yes you must accept this".
Such a stupid comment. If the disability prevents someone from doing the job properly then they shouldn't be doing it. That's like saying someone in a wheelchair can be a roofer.

I could not agree more. And I don't agree it's not the be all and end all. It's an absolute basic. If teachers can't spell, they shouldn't be in the job. They need to have other skills, but this is one of the essentials ones, somewhere after liking kids, for sure, but essential nevertheless.

@WhenSheWasBad

To those saying that teachers need to pass Literacy and Numeracy tests before starting their teaching course, this is no longer the case. Apparently it was too big a barrier to recruitment of new teachers

I wasn’t aware of this. So the plan to recruit more teachers is to drop standards? Heaven forbid we actually improve the working conditions to recruit and retain teachers.

No requirement to have classroom experience any more either. I'm seeing more and more trainees without a degree in the subject they're training for. SPAG should be the least of people's worries, frankly.

@ArmWrestlingWithChasNDave

I agree, but nobody can afford to be picky about who's accepted onto teaching courses right now. There's a massive recruitment crisis.

Was just going to say this. Welcome to Tory Britain.

I think it depends where you’re seeing those errors and how frequently. Everybody makes mistakes sometimes and I think they’re more common now most writing is typed rather than hand-written, autocorrect and spellcheck can sometimes make it worse and mistakes will get missed.

I’m a teacher with good SPAG but like everybody I will make careless errors from time to time. As an example I wrote a report recently and accidentally used there instead of their. I only noticed because I needed to go back and add something to that paragraph so I caught it before it went out but I could have easily missed it. It’s a mistake I would never normally make and would definitely notice if I was reading someone else’s words but I guess I just had a lapse of concentration. I find that when I am typing I am definitely more prone to making mistakes I wouldn’t have made if writing by hand as I type quickly, I try and remember to proof read to catch my mistakes but things can still get missed. I had similar with have and of recently, I was messaging a friend and said ‘should of’ even though it is one of my pet peeves, I didn’t even notice I had written it until she pointed it out and I was really annoyed at myself as I am well aware it’s incorrect. I do aim to proof-read anything formal that is going out to parents but I will sometimes send out emails quickly on my lunch break or at the end of the day between meetings etc and don’t always have time to re-read and in those cases it’s possible I could make a SPAG error and miss it but I would hope not to be judged too harshly by parents if I did. Everybody makes mistakes sometimes and sometimes they can be missed even if you’ve proof-read so as long as a teachers not making constant errors in all writing I wouldn’t judge based on the odd mistake.

@annabell22

Some teachers have dyslexia- it doesn't mean that they shouldn't become a teacher.

I disagree. It CAN mean that they shouldn't be a teacher if they cannot use computers or whatever to make sure that what they show to the class is perfect in terms of spelling.

During the first lockdown my DS was doing GCSE history and were studying American history. As my child has SEN issues I spent this and every lesson with him.
The teacher was giving a livestreamed lesson and every time she referred to the Sioux Indians she said it as "Sue Ix" rather than "Soo".

I had a trainee with me last year. She was terrible. Honestly terrible in every way. We couldn't have supported her more but it was clear she was going to fail the placement. She went off with anxiety. I am not doubting this at all, and was pleased she sought help and was diagnosed. The university told me she would have to repeat the year as she hadn't met the standards or completed her training. The trainee contacted me weeks later to say that she had passed the year due to allowances made for extenuating circumstances. It is unbelievable to me that she is now teaching, and failing horribly. Not fair on anyone.

I worked with a TA in a primary once who labelled everything to assist children with their reading.
We had draws, knifes and cuboards.

The signs had been there for a while and the class teacher either hadn’t noticed or was far too nice to mention it. I quietly changed them once lunch time whilst everyone was out.

@twominutesmore

I had a trainee with me last year. She was terrible. Honestly terrible in every way. We couldn't have supported her more but it was clear she was going to fail the placement. She went off with anxiety. I am not doubting this at all, and was pleased she sought help and was diagnosed. The university told me she would have to repeat the year as she hadn't met the standards or completed her training. The trainee contacted me weeks later to say that she had passed the year due to allowances made for extenuating circumstances. It is unbelievable to me that she is now teaching, and failing horribly. Not fair on anyone.

It's totally believable. You pay your £9k; you get a qualification. Ofsted grade, in part, on successful completion.

@CallmeHendricks

Your OP might have carried more weight with me had you not split an infinitive in the first sentence.

Split infinitives are perfectly acceptable in English. The idea that they shouldn't be was introduced by a clergyman called Robert Lowth in the eighteenth century, because he thought English would be more elegant if it had some of the rules of Latin. Latin does not split infinitives because Latin infinitives are single words.

Read more here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lowth

Split infinitives are perfectly acceptable in English. The idea that they shouldn't be was introduced by a clergyman called Robert Lowth in the eighteenth century, because he thought English would be more elegant if it had some of the rules of Latin.
This is the point exactly. Lots of the "rules" come from grammarians who wanted to create rules, or lexicographers who decided that one variant was "better" than another.

@Debroglie

Teachers are massively overworked and make mistakes. I teach physics. I’m pretty academic and have a phd. I wrote on the board last week 2 x 3 = 5 My year 12s reacted with amusement and disgust in equal measure. (I do know that 2x3=/=5) I also spelt a word wrong in another lesson (forgotten what the word was now but the TA corrected me.) We’re not robots. We’re human. We’re tired. We can’t be perfect.

There is a difference between making mistakes because we’re tired or doing too many things at once or just because it inexplicably happens from time to time and ignorance. Your example is clearly in the former category, as are the comments about getting students to check their marks tally up correctly. And, yes, it’s good for kids to learn that everyone makes mistakes and it isn’t the end of the world.

A teacher refusing to accept that ‘passed’ is incorrect when it has been pointed out is another matter.

Not sure what the answer is, though, given that a decent grasp of SPAG has been undervalued for so long that you wouldn’t be able to fill vacancies if you insisted on it. As someone said on the first page, this just reflects a wider decline in SPAG standards.

@annabell22

Some teachers have dyslexia- it doesn't mean that they shouldn't become a teacher.

I'm sorry, but it does! They will have many other skills which will serve them well in another career, just not primary teaching. Teaching a secondary subject not English based, yes, but not primary.

I'm an English teacher and had to decline a reference for a lovely girl I taught last year. She's always struggled to spell. She's not dyslexic but it's one area she has a difficulty in. The course she applied for was primary teaching and I told her I couldn't approve that as it's of paramount importance to be able to spell perfectly and have an excellent command of syntax and grammar, which she also doesn't have.

I'm not a logical person at all, Science is NOT my thing, therefore I'm not an engineer/ science researcher. We all play to our strengths. Sorry it doesn't fit with inclusion but it's the truth.

Some teachers have dyslexia- it doesn't mean that they shouldn't become a teacher

Not as a blanket rule no of course not, but I do think sometimes it should though. As a pp said, sometimes a job is not well suited to a person. One of my DC had a dyslexic teacher who had terrible spelling, grammar and English skills in general. I don't know how much was due to the dyslexia and how much was just that they were bad at those things.

We had spellings incorrectly marked wrong and vice versa nearly every week, frequent use of totally the wrong word in the context, terrible reading (I watched an online assembly where the teacher's reading was worse than my 9 year olds).

I'm sorry but I do not think they should be a teacher. Not all children have parents at home picking up on the teacher's errors and correcting them and plugging gaps. Children deserve high quality teaching and if a person cannot provide that then they shouldn't be in the classroom.

"Ofsted grade, in part, on successful completion."

I didn't know that. It's so disheartening to see the decline.

I'm 27 now but I had a teacher for 2 years in primary school who my parents say was 'totally useless' I was a really shy kid and she had no clue what to do with me and didn't help me because and I quote 'she doesn't put her hand up and ask for help' anyway, my parents went to one parents evening once and my dad noticed on the board, Wednesday was spend 'wensday' 😳

@twominutesmore

"Ofsted grade, in part, on successful completion."

I didn't know that. It's so disheartening to see the decline.

Failed to recruit to your quota? Black mark. Too many trainees drop out? Black mark. Trainees fail? Black mark.

Solutions - recruit anyone who breathes. Keep them to the end. Pass them all.

@CallmeHendricks

Your OP might have carried more weight with me had you not split an infinitive in the first sentence.

A split infinitive is perfectly acceptable in English.

If you can’t do the job then you shouldn’t be hired to do the job. That includes teachers who aren’t able to teach spelling because they don’t know how to spell themselves and aren’t capable of using tools such as dictionaries and spellcheckers to correct their mistakes.