To think a school can’t just cancel a GCSE/A-Level course halfway through?

[ChocBanana]

This is on behalf of a friend who’s not on MN.
Her children have gone back to school today, one into Y11 and one into Y13. Both were taking the same subject, one at GCSE and one at A-Level.
They have been sent a letter today saying the school has dropped the subject with immediate effect and they won’t be able to take it this year.
They have said they will meet with each student “over the coming weeks” to discuss how to move forward. There was absolutely no prior notice and the teacher is still employed at the school. He only found out at the inset day on Monday.
I can’t find anything online to this effect to confirm or deny, but surely there is some kind of legal requirement to finish what they have started? I can almost understand not starting anyone new (my son was down to do the subject but is happy with the alternative because they have moved the timetable around so he can now take something he had to drop before).
But my friend is distraught and her 17 year old is frantically looking at his uni options because he doesn’t know if he will get in without this course.

Does anyone know whether this is legal/illegal and what law it come under? I’m going to help my friend to draft a response (English isn’t her first language).

Any ideas or advice?

You cannot make an experienced teacher redundant and replace them with an ECT… it’s illegal and schools will not be doing that.

😂

@EnidSpyton

So-called “native speakers” can have widely differing levels of proficiency from basic to fluent. Thus the language at A level can represent differing levels of achievement among them. It’s not true to say either that Mandarin is only rarely taught in state schools - it’s an increasingly common choice not just among native speakers, or that a natively spoken language A level is “frowned on” by unis. Context is always taken into consideration. It’s still an essay subject with language and literature components as well as oral.

If there were only 3 kids doing one subject it’s highly unlikely not to have been pulled at the start. That you would condone pulling an A level midway to focus funds elsewhere suggests an alarmingly ditsy approach.

I mean, I think you have to see what options are discussed as they may include provision to study it at another school.

Gosh people seem remarkably relaxed about this. "Just pay the teacher privately" like that's likely to be a realistic option. I'd be extremely unhappy about them not finishing the A level course and would be considering a public law challenge, citing into their duties to provide education, whether they've complied with their PSED in choosing to end this course without notice, whether they have considered all relevant factors, what alternative provision they have considered - are they planning for these students to take an alternative a level and how is that going to give them better results? Have they taken into account an irrelevant consideration (last year's poor results) in making the decision. I'd be writing to my councillor, MP and local paper daily mail sad face style.

Op did say friend was 'frantically looking at Uni options', so I assumed it was a 3rd being dropped, rather than a non-as-important 4th.

A public law challenge would take too long. Exams start in 8 months time. A group of parents cooperating can share the cost of some teaching, supplemented with all the resources available for free on the internet. The A level is going to be an issue if it drops the child down to 2 A levels. The school doesn’t seem to be dynamic on the matter and time is ticking. The parents need to crack on. Suing the school is a pointless diversion.

I don't think one face crying with laughter does that comment justice, here are a few more

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Here we are, not sure exactly how many that is, but approximately one for every experienced teacher I have seen it happen to

Well I'd be looking into it/threatening it, in the hope the school gets a bit more dynamic and reverses the decision or helps find a solution. It's not mutually exclusive with tutoring etc anyway but I wouldn't just be meekly accepting the decision and cracking on.

I have never ever come across a school making an experienced teacher redundant and then replacing them with someone else. For a start, the redundancy pay would cancel out theoretical savings pretty quickly. Secondly, you’d be eaten alive at employment tribunal… it would be absurdly easy to prove that the post was not truly redundant and the payout would make it far more costly than just keeping the experienced member of staff.

Schools just don’t do it. The unscrupulous ones will just “manage out” experienced staff by performance managing them or putting them on capability until they choose to leave. But I have never heard of a school successfully using redundancy to get rid of teachers whose timetables are not truly redundant and then hiring someone new to teach those lessons. It would be stupid in the extreme and would not save money.

What’s your knowledge of the redundancy process in teaching?

DD1 sat GCSE and A level European language not offered by her school.

The school was very happy to enter her for the exams ('free' A grades, what not to like!). For the spoken part of the GCSE we found another exam centre (actually somebody's kitchen!).

I liaised a lot with the exams manager confirming papers to be sat etc. The school was happy to help.

No tutoring was needed for GCSE (DD was far more fluent in the language than I was). I did teach her the fine art of exam technique and she ploughed through all the available past papers and we studied the examiner's report.

We found a tutor for A level. Not a professional tutor but a native speaker keen to take on the challenge.

What course do you need an A Level in Mandarin for? Any uni courses which include or focus on Mandarin usually cater for (and actually prefer to cater for) complete beginners, but if he absolutely needs it he can study for the HSK at the appropriate level with an online tutor or similar and that should be accepted as a substitute qualification with no issues.

For DD her extra language A level was a nice respectable academic subject. It did rather shore up her iffy 'proper' STEM A level results (too much time with her boyfriend rather than her books).

She got into the university she wanted on the course she wanted and came out with a first so it worked out in the end.

I think the pont was the child needs the UCAS points from this A level to meet the requirements for their course

I’m a senior leader in a school and a former union rep. Redundancy in teaching is broadly the same as redundancy in any other job. I’ve come across teachers who were made redundant because the school cut classes, cancelled subjects entirely or restructured, but never a school that made a teacher of a subject redundant and then hired a new teacher for that subject who was less experienced.

I don’t really want to derail the thread any further. This is about a young person who has had one of their A levels cancelled and who is now worried about their university entry. I think the school needs to making provision for these kids. If the existing teacher isn’t up to it then they need to be hiring a tutor to see them through if necessary. It just isn’t ok to cut a subject mid way through and not make alternative arrangements for those kids.

They do it when they need to. It is almost always about cost. If the number of students interested is no longer viable they may not be able to afford to continue to fund the teacher. They are also about attracting more students, which brings more funding. So if a teacher can also teach a more popular subject and be diverted in that direction, that will attract new entrants - that will be another consideration.
PR doesn't come into it when schools are struggling to cover their costs with no prospect of any improvements on that front.

I've been a governance professional in several super-selective secondary. MATs and grammar schools. They are all looking at the numbers over the holidays, when they have the information on how many want to do which subject available.

He’s going to need 3 A levels isn’t he.

So the schools that you’ve been a governor pulled A levels/GCSE halfway through the course if numbers dwindled far enough?

That's not what a Governance Professional is. A Governance Professional is somebody paid to provide advice upon legal compliance. A Governor is a volunteer who, if they have any sense about it, listens to their Governance Professional.

But that sounds more like not offering a subject to new students, not pulling it with no provision for those halfway through the course.

School must make alternative arrangements for those kids already one year in to a two year course. A school local to me who dropped their sixth form- they paid for remote learning for the A level students to continue in their subjects.

Regardless of the role ‘governance professional’ does not take caps and my question stands.

If a school is facing a hole in the budget they have to save money from somewhere. This is the reality.

The head and the governors would have looked at every possible avenue to ensure that there is the minimum of disruption to students with any cost cutting measures.

In this case it’s clearly the reality that very few students at this school study Mandarin and for those that do it is most probably not a subject they ‘need’ as in they will still get to university without it as it’s an extra native speaker qualification. As such it’s a subject that can be cut with very little knock on effect compared to cutting a core subject or more popular subject. Cutting it could save £30k + which could be spent on benefitting many more students. In this current climate I’m afraid offering a subject like Mandarin is a luxury schools can’t be expected to afford.

As has been said repeatedly on this thread the school is not legally obligated to do anything here. There is no legal obligation for students to study three A levels in the first place. Good practice would be to form a partnership with another school or to find a private tutor who can be paid hourly for these students, but if this isn’t possible practically or financially then the school can’t be held to account for any wrongdoing as legally there isn’t any. Morally it is of course hugely problematic to leave kids in the lurch like this, and I would imagine it’s the tip of the iceberg in terms of being symptomatic of wider issues within the school. I’m not saying it’s ok, I’m just saying I can understand why it’s happened and the reality is no amount of moaning at the school is going to change the fact they can’t afford to do anything about it.

The parent should engage a private tutor and pay the very small fee to have the school still enter them for the exam if they are an exam centre for that exam board, or if not, they can register as an external candidate with another local school
who is. It’s not ideal but neither is the situation schools are in right now. How the government expects schools to constantly do more with less money I don’t know.

In this case it’s clearly the reality that very few students at this school study Mandarin and for those that do it is most probably not a subject they ‘need’ as in they will still get to university without it as it’s an extra native speaker qualification.

Two wild assumptions. And the claim that Mandarin is a “luxury” suggests an insular outlook. China is the top manufacturing country in the world at 30% of global output - double that of US in second place. In terms of power it’s second only to the US.

There is a serious lack in Whitehall of people who speak fluent Mandarin. (40 in total). The increase schools offering Mandarin, including state, is due need as much as demand.

In addition, a school is obliged not to stuff up its own students’ education.

@Mirabai

I don’t disagree that Mandarin is an important language to learn for Westerners. I’ve not said otherwise. I also don’t dispute that it would be useful to teach in schools.

However the latest stats suggest only 6,000 students in the UK study Chinese in state schools. This is a tiny number compared to the hundreds of thousands who will be learning French and Spanish. Mandarin is offered more widely in private schools but many of the students studying it in private schools will be doing so as native speakers as private schools tend to offer more one to one teaching opportunities and to attract more international students.

The stats don’t lie I’m afraid. As much as you want to suggest that Mandarin is a popular subject, in state schools at least, it really isn’t. You are not going to have classes of 30 students studying the subject and this is why it will be vulnerable to cuts in the current climate. If something isn’t benefitting a large number of students, then headteachers have to think carefully about whether the costs outweigh the benefits to the entire school community.

When I said it is a luxury to teach Mandarin, I meant in the context of teaching any language as a native speaker qualification. It is a luxury to have access to lessons in a one to one or small class context to enable you to gain a qualification you don’t ‘need’ in a subject no one else in your school is being taught. In my precious (private) school we offered 4 modern languages (incl Mandarin) and any student wanting to take a GCSE or A Level in a native language outside of those we offered had to pay extra for the teacher who we hired on an hourly basis. This is a common model in private schools. In state schools I can imagine it’s almost unheard of as the resources would not be available.