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!

The lower down the school you go, the more pedagogy trumps subject knowledge.

Just about any decent teacher with a degree, regardless of subject, could teach a humanities subject to a year 8.

The actual cognitive level of most year 8s is not that high, and a lesson would be a mixture of a few simple facts and some technique practice (writing a PEE essay, reading comprehension, graphical or tabular interpretation etc).

Teachers are given resources and do prepare lessons.

This is a total non issue, and you will be laughed at if you raise it.

(Now watching biology graduates trying to teach Physics at GCSE or even higher is common and far more concerning).

Just about any decent teacher with a degree, regardless of subject, could teach a humanities subject to a year 8.

A maths teacher couldn't.

😂😂😂

of course it isn't. Where would all these maths and science graduates come from??? Especially after Brexit.

My degree is in education. I can teach my science students just as effectively as many teachers with a science degree (if not more so in certain cases)

@NewYearResolutions are there schools (state schools) able to easily hire people with those degrees… ?

Geography teachers are hard to come by - they simply do not exist in the education market anymore. This is my experience from North London schools and family. I hope the music teacher is a good classroom manager in terms of behaviour. If the department is well resourced having a good long term teacher is better than say daily random cover teachers.

Well you see people said if you don't like the job, then leave. So they did.

😂

@noblegiraffe ,

Depends on the Maths teacher.

I was (maybe am still, but not working this year) a Physics teacher, and I have taught loads of bits and pieces when I wasn’t fully loaded.

And I prepared carefully, mastered my brief and the lessons were effective (yes, that is my assessment, but I am quite harsh on myself). It really isn’t hard.

Yes!!!

I mean things might have changed but I know someone who had a History of Art degree and she had to end up teaching maths up to GCSE because they couldn’t get a maths teacher or teachers in general, this person is also no longer a teacher… I can only go by what I experienced so maybe things aren’t as bad as I remember now… 😬

Some of them probably could.

But they would probably be a long way down the list for asking, given that the education system isn’t exactly awash with maths teachers.

Very few maths teachers have maths degrees in my experience. You could earn a lot of money with a maths degree, teaching is not an attractive alternative

There’s probably a fair bit of history in your average music degree, I’d guess.

The music teacher may actually have a degree that meets the criteria for entry to a history PGCE anyway.

Have you ever heard the suggestion that maths teachers should have different INSET sessions to the rest of the teachers because what is useful for most staff is largely a waste of time for maths?

Yeah, so we don't need to get kids to write extended pieces of writing. We don't need to facilitate debates. We don't need to do textual analyses. I don't even really know what PPE paragraphs are. Sentence starters? Not relevant. Improving your writing? Not relevant.

So I'd be a shit humanities teacher. Now I could obviously have extensive training to get up to speed, but schools don't have the time or money for that sort of thing so you are just dropped into it.

This.

To be fair in most schools in England, this does usually only happen because the school can't recruit. The difference is, perhaps, that even "nice" schools in average or maybe affluent towns can struggle to recruit for a particular vacancy for literally years. It's not usually SLT doing it for a laugh, or a teacher deciding to have a stab at something random just for fun.

Sometimes it's also done to fill awkward gaps on the timetable, e.g. you've got an ECT in geography this year, so there's one class they can't teach for this year only, but next year they can up their hours. It's very difficult to find someone in England to take on 0.1/0.2.

The work is normally set by a specialist, but this just puts additional work on specialist teachers, and leads to them leaving, making the problem worse. The bigger issue IMO is also marking- if assessments aren't marked by a specialist, then often key points are missed and students come through the year with misconceptions and gaps that take a long time to sort out!

I do agree it would be better to have official rules around this, but schools aren't usually doing it for fun.

Couple of other threads currently on Active that would seem relevant to this one:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4991143-crumbling-schools-really-not-good-enough-for-our-children-unsafe-freezing-cold-damp

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4990353-what-would-it-take-to-fix-the-problem-of-teacher-workload

The only surprise is that I haven't started any of them.

The school I work at is an academy. This happens a lot. Despite this, it's a great school and rated outstanding.

@noblegiraffe ,

I’ve not heard that, no. Not sure where I would sit there. Where would Physics teachers go? A subject that (at least at A level) is half Maths anyway.

It is the ‘sage on the stage’ vs ‘the guide on the side’ debate. I am probably too much the former when I teach Physics (or Maths) but I try and become the latter when I am teaching enrichment (mix of humanities) or PSHE.

Ultimately, in Year 8, they are learning to be curious and how to think rather than laying down a large body of knowledge. It all gets retaught at GCSE anyway.

If you have a shit geography teacher in KS3 you're not going to get anyone taking it for GCSE.

I would say this is now massively out of date. As a "science" teacher, I have taught all 3 sciences up to GCSE- one of which I only have a GCSE in myself. I have taught outside my specialism at Level 3 including teaching Y12 in a subject I have no qualifications in at all.

Often to, fill timetable gaps, people are teaching subjects to KS3 which they may have no qualifications in, and equally you have people teaching KS4 who may have only done a degree in the subject myself.

I do think Covid etc has changed a lot- things were definitely better 5 years ago, although in most schools most science teachers definitely taught all 3 sciences to GCSE.

@noblegiraffe

I’ve been posting about the teacher shortage crisis for years. I do wonder what people thought it meant

Yet Mumsnet still often has threads which complain about teachers. Apparently we have it too easy with all those early finishes & long holidays & don't forget the gold plated pension scheme 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don't think people realise that there really is a recruitment crisis. Not many young staff are staying more than a couple of years. Younger staff also won't go above & beyond for no pay. So all the trips & visits I see going out are older staff.

Just be thankful they have a teacher with them!

It might help encourage the Tories to offer teachers more than the rumoured 1% pay rise this year- which might help keep a few more teachers in the profession. Otherwise, next year, maybe that music teacher has left, and your son is taught by a string of supply teachers etc.

FWIW, I agree it's probably pointless, but for the time it takes to write an email it might be worthwhile.

Yeap pretty much!! But people won’t believe it… 🤷🏻‍♀️