Was the school right to march the supply teacher out of the school premises

[oksodthebend]

A newly qualified supply teacher, who is just at the beginning of the career and finding teaching difficult, is asked to leave the school, which they was only covering for the day in a Y6 class midway through a lesson in the morning between break and lunch and not stay until the end of the school day because SLT did not feel that the children was not safe with the teacher as the classes behaviour was out of control. Is this common practice in teaching?

The teacher after letting 2 of the children go to the toilet at the same time, forgot that they had left the classroom and they found by SLT in an empty room on their phones, having been gone for around 30 minutes.

This is the problem with organisations relying on under qualified agency staff. An agency teacher shouldn't be newly qualified. It's happening in social work too - more and more social workers are going agency after their NQ year instead of getting the experience they need in a supportive permanent role. I guess she's doing agency supply because she doesn't yet have a full time job? It's really not the right thing for her to be doing as a NQT.

You can’t lose track of the children in your care for an extended period of time and not expect a pretty serious consequence.

At least she didn't forget an entire class during which an actual fire happened like my English teacher did.

I'm sorry, but your sister was right to have immediately lost her job over it. Escorted off the premises might have been a bit much, but that could just be the school's policy. Hopefully it won't have knocked her confidence too much, and she won't ever make a mistake like that again.

Agency may give her another chance or suggest they only give her TA roles or they may drop her. It all depends on how desperate they are teachers and how much they value their reputation.

Yesthatismychildsigh · Today 16:36
I doubt very much anybody was ‘marched out’. What an overly dramatic description. Yes, the school sound as if they’re on the ball, quite unlike the teacher. Who the fuck loses track of two pupils for so long. The teacher should be reviewing their career prospects.
we have had at least three supplies “marched out” in my secondary. One was clearly pissed, one was screaming at a class (properly screaming) and the other two, well, lucky police weren't involved. I (cover manager) usually get slt popping in and saying “don’t ever have them back again.”

Your poor sister. I hope she finds somewhere where she can build her confidence and this experience doesn’t put her off for good. Everyone makes mistakes. Children are unpredictable and teaching an unfamiliar class of year 6s is no easy task.

Skip the experience off the CV and don't go back to that agency.

There's little the school can do but From a safeguarding perspective it's the sort of thing that happens in dysfunctional environments. I l'm not convinced the school shoukd have put an nqt supply with no knowledge of the school in charge of 30 Y6 children. Was there a brief induction, info given about fire exits, what to do in an emergency, etc? Where was a TA? Why wasn't there a shuffle with existing staff takin on more challenging classes?

As for marching out, I suspect it felt like that but your sister probably had to be walked off due to security doors and her exit/entry pass being taken from her.

I hope this hasn't dented her confidence too much. Can she seek some support from a former tutor/lecturer. The school may have form. What's its ofsted report like?

I would very much hope that any teacher who managed to lose 2 kids for half an hour would not be left in charge for much longer.

I'm sorry your sister is struggling and I hope she gets support and more training but that decision seems entirely fair.

It’s not great the 2 children were missing but why the mobile phones . I might be naive as my son has special needs and 11 and doesn’t have one

Our classrooms don’t all have telephones so we would send a sensible child to find the nearest adult with a card that states please come with me, help needed.

A teacher is in Loco Parentis at school. So no, she shouldn’t have left them.

Was there more than the 2 children going to the toilet?

You said the behaviour was out of control.

Could she ask to do supply TA work instead? Supply teaching is very challenging, I teach in a secondary school and the behaviour can be dreadful for supply staff. I’m sorry she’s finding it tough but the school were correct in their actions. As a parent I’d want the teacher in this scenario to be relieved if my children were unsafe.

Daily supply is completely inappropriate for an NQT (or ECT as they now are called). Where’s the programme of development, of mentoring, and support? The school should never have accepted an NQT as a supply teacher. Fair enough if it’s a fixed term contract where the ECT programme can still be followed, but daily supply should not be allowed. A cover supervisor would have been more suitable, if the only alternative was an NQT. I feel quite sorry for the teacher, it’s a terrible start to their career, and just because the school can legally employ anyone they like as supply, doesn’t mean they should. Yes I know it’s incredibly difficult to even get any supply teachers at all, but some things are a step to far and just shouldn’t happen.

Off the point, but curious as to what action a teacher normally takes in that scenario, they obviously cant leave the class alone to go find the missing children. Do they contact the office or something?

When l was teaching secondary we had to on call any kid who wasn’t in the classroom. This had to be done in the first 5 minutes. We sent an email to attendance person, and they would alert the on call team. It’s basic safeguarding. Every school will have something similar.

Well, the children were not safe with her so therefore she was removed from the situation. Supply staff can be marched out and I have been part of this when students have not been safe. To be honest, I have witnessed the same with a permeant member of staff; the students were very much not safe in that room.

It is a pretty big fuck up; we are at the point where we will accept supply teachers if they have a pulse and can keep the students in the room as there are so few available in the area, but we would not accept a supply teacher like this back. The agency would also be unwise to keep her on their books to be honest.

If your sister is struggling then supply is not a good place for her. She needs to find something longer term to be able to hone her skills, gain experience and see if teaching is really for her.

Feel sorry for your sister. Supply is tough, the kids know you’re there for just the day, or week, they’ll mess about, test every boundary they can and tell you the most outrageous things ( our teacher always lets six of us swing on a rope in the gym…..Well, strangely I don’t) It’s not really the best job for someone newly qualified and inexperienced, you need well practiced strategies for controlling classes of kids you’ve never met before.
I hope your sister gets professional support from her agency.

Back when I started teaching, NQTs were rarely taken on as supply teachers.

On the other hand safeguarding issues could still arise with a full time NQT and they'd be harder to get rid of.

I'm also a supply teacher. Been doing it 4 years now, and prior to that spent 10 years in a permanent teaching role.

I've only seen it happen once, that a supply teacher has been asked to leave mid-way through a day. It wasn't me, but I was there at the same time, and it was at a school I've worked at many, many times. The gossip I later heard was that the teacher was behaving quite offensively towards the children. This included swearing at them.

In a perfect world, if the school knew this was a difficult class, they should have provided more support. But unfortunately this isn't a perfect world, and supply teachers are often left to their own devices, with the schools taking a "if the kids are still alive at the end of the day, it was okay" type of philosophy.

Your poor sister, having this hang over her head the entire fortnight. I'd advise her to speak to her agency as soon as she can, and get her version of events across.

If she liked to speak to someone who has been there, done that, feel free to DM me.

You could ask a child to go to the school office and ask them to follow up. Or look for another member of staff going down the corridor. Half an hour is a very long time. You also never let two pupils be out at the same time. The latter you do learn with experience but having children be out for such a long time is poor practice.

Oh I see the teacher is your sister. You need to urge her to stop doing supply, she’d be better off working in Tesco’s. Supply is absolutely not a good career move unless she can get a contract of a decent length, and the school will follow the ECT programme.

Sorry op, but this isn't good enough. It doesn't matter how inexperienced your sister is but to forget children are missing is unacceptable. The school did the right thing. Your sister will need to volunteer as extra help until she is good enough.

I know that feedback was given to the agency. What will the agency do realistically?

Realistically they'll probably take her off the books, though it may depend on how many others they've got and how much they value their own reputation

Yea it sounds reasonable.

I don’t think supply teaching is a useful role for a newly qualified inexperienced teacher. I’d suggest looking for a teaching role or otherwise getting school experience in another role.

In a classroom full of 30+ 11 year olds who may have been unruly, or not doing a sit-down-at-the desk task, where the supply may have never met them and there wasn’t a TA supporting, then it’s very easy to not notice 2 missing children

Yeah, a bit of an OTT reaction. If the teacher is struggling (with what sounds like a terribly behaved class) then obviously you wouldn’t invite them back again, but the teacher was only covering that one day anyway. Sounds like the parents and the respective kids need calling into school and to be sat down and given a good talking to about taking responsibility for their own education/futures. Unfortunately supply teachers often still have the mentality of going to to teach a subject(s) when in reality it’s more like crowd control as the parents/school have failed to create a respectful environment cuducive to teaching.