To expect my child to be taught by a teacher with a degree in that subject?

[northlundunmum]

My child is in year 8 and in their school
has “Humanities” which is history and geography combined rather than taught separately- not great in my view but ok. However, this year they are being taught by a music teacher. No doubt a very talented musician but according to my child they admit not being very good at teaching history or geography.

I do understand there are teacher shortages and sometimes some teachers will have to cover for others but this seems to be a permanent arrangement at least for this year.

Does anybody know what the DfE / Ofsted rules / guidance are on this? I understand you have to have a degree in a subject in order to train to teach it at secondary level (or at least used to) - does that not extend to actually teaching the subject in school?

Grateful for advice from anyone who knows the law / regulations here as want to approach the school about it and want to be clear what’s reasonable to expect and what they should in fact be doing according to govt policy.

Thank you!

There is a major recruitment crisis in teaching right now. Academies have done away with regulations and don't even have to put qualified teachers in front of the class, let alone degree educated in the subject they're teaching. Maths and science teachers can't be found anywhere, and plenty of subjects are being taught by non specialists, supply and cover supervisors.

You can raise it with the school but the government have made teaching such an unattractive profession that there simply are not enough teachers to meet demand. The school can't hire someone who doesn't exist.

Your child, these days, is fortunate to have a qualified teacher. Apart from the well documented shortage, it’s cheaper to employ a cover supervisor or HLTA.

YABU because it's year 8 and the level being taught in that year will be pretty basic, and probably fairly easily teachable by any experienced teacher.

It's not as if it's exam years. If you said they were years 10 or above, I'd say YANBU because you DO ideally need subject specialist teachers for GCSE and A level.

Year 8 is probably the "best" year to suffer a non specialist teacher if they have to.

Not ideal, but sometimes there is no other option.

I think you can expect anything you want but it's not going to magic a teacher up out of thin air.

The only person required to have QTS is the SENCo.

For gcse and A level years I would expect teachers to hold a degree in that subject. For the first few years of secondary, I wouldn’t.

If it makes you feel better, the overlap between school geography and degree level geography is so slight that it probably doesn’t matter. It’s like two totally different subjects with the same name. 🤣

A PGCE is a qualification to teach ANY subject. Obviously a good school will try to recruit people with a degree in the relevant subject but yes it's perfectly legitimate for the school to timetable a music teacher to teach humanities if that's all they have. With the current recruitment crisis the alternative would be no teaching at all, just crowd control from cover staff.

Yanbu to wish this wasn't the case but it's not contrary to any rules.

Most teachers teach more than one subject. They teach their specialism at higher level, and whatever needs doing at a lower level.

My DD is a Head of Maths and she won’t hire a teacher without a Maths degree. Large academy chain.
Surely it’s complusory for Maths / Science, if it’s not then it bloody well should be.

I would expect A level not necessarily a degree for Yr7-9.

A geography teacher might only have a geography related degree anyway, not geography itself. Same with history!

You're lucky there's a teacher at all.
Teachers are leaving in their droves.
It's the most thankless job going.

Complete horses**t.

Be glad to have a warm body in front of the class.
Be even more grateful if they are a qualified, permanent teacher.
Thank your lucky stars if they actually have a degree in the subject!

There just aren't enough people with Maths and Science degrees who want to teach anymore. It's been building a long time. I doubt any HoD wants to employ a non-specialist Maths or Science teacher but in a lot of schools they get zero applications for any vacancies. It might vary by location but it's a widespread problem that is only growing.

She's lucky she can still find maths teachers. Isn't it the biggest shortage?

Are you aware that in some schools they can't attract qualified teachers so have unqualified staff in place , even at GCSE level ? My friend started off as a technician covering food tech but for the last 2 school years the school she is employed by has her covering classes in the department , which includes writing lesson plans and marking not just delivering the lessons each day. The school pay her as an unqualified teacher but have just put out another advert for the role for a qualified teacher , offering almost 10k more than they are paying my friend. They haven't had any interest so far ! The state of our schools is just appalling.

I'm curious what people would prefer now that you've raised it...

Would you (as parents) prefer a highly qualified person (e.g. a PhD) with zero teaching experience/qualifications... or someone like the OP mentioned, a qualified teacher with 'some' knowledge of the subject?

The reason I ask is because I've considered teaching in the past (PhD), but I would hate to go through further training. Given the teaching shortage, what are the mum's views?

My son is in first year of high school and his maths teacher has a degree in psychology. I’ve already had to email the head of
maths twice because she has “corrected” his homework equations, but she is doing it wrong and he is doing right (because I’m teaching him). They don’t have anyone else to take the class so the head of maths is having to show her how to do the things she has gaps of knowledge in, and I have to check what he is doing to make sure she has taught the correct stuff. It’s really not good.

The odd thing is, psychology has a huge amount of maths in! So she actually should be able to do all of it. It’s her rather than the psychology degree that’s the issue.

In England at least, it's incorrect to say that you must have a degree in the subject to be able to train to teach it. You don't even need an A level in it.

If the school was short I’d be happy with a qualified teacher that knew how to teach set course materials. Especially in year 8. Maybe they have an A Level in the subject? At my school it was common for teachers to teach their A Level language as well as their degree one, for example.

In theory, if you have QTS, you can teach anything the school is happy for you to teach. You just specialise in a subject and age range.

I feel mixed feelings.

My best teacher ever had a degree in Education, not the subject she taught, but was incredibly talented.

I don't have a maths degree but I did A Level and a degree with a pretty challenging maths component. If I was a qualified teacher I'm sure I could apply the same skills to teach maths to year 8s.

But I would be concerned in other cases.

As pp have said, if your child is in a state school at the moment she’s lucky to have a permanent qualified teacher at all. They are having a major recruitment and retention crisis, and quite frankly humanities will be way down the list of subjects they care about.