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!

Yes I could and do- it's mostly just PowerPoint clicking! A good teacher can stand in front of a class and teach (that's why we all do cover..)

I have an economics degree but teach maths, only up to GCSE as we don't have a sixth form. I'm due to return from maternity leave soon and since September my classes have all been taught by whoever is avaliable. One class of year 7s has 5 different teachers over the two week timetable including PE, art and science but not a single maths teacher.

Yes I could and do- it's mostly just PowerPoint clicking!

Blimey, do you think maths teaching is mostly just PowerPoint clicking or is it only humanities teachers you're insulting here?

Wow. I hope the poster who thinks teaching is just clicking PowerPoints doesn't teach my kids.

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was talking about prepared cover lessons not all lessons.

She seems to think that cover lessons are teaching.

At my school cover set needs to not require any specialist subject knowledge because of course a maths teacher can't teach a French lesson if they don't know French. Same for any other subject knowledge.

I'm sure she'll find out when she gets back from maternity leave just exactly how much maths teaching those poor Y7s have had.

I suspect there was an element of irony in there........

We were taught History at both O and A level with a large amount of Powerpoint's granddad the Overhead Projector. The teacher needed to know the subject though, style very much that of a University Lecturer - this was a Grammar School.

I suspect at yr 7/8 level while there's a absolute need to have the skills and aptitudes of a teacher, all that stuff about how kids learn that (used to be?) part of the PGCE, subject knowledge may be no more than being a few pages ahead of the kids.

I don't know why, but this made me a bit tearful. My son's school experience (like so many others) has been such a mess.
Year 6 was hard lockdown - so no end of Primary school things and hideous remote learning (primary schools really were not set up for this), no residential etc.
Year 7 was spent socially distancing with masks in school. Year 8 was partly the same. No football, no enjoyable lunches and playtimes.
Year 9 was spent reading how wonderful it was that the school was fully open and how the new yr 7s and 8s could do all the fun stuff.
Strikes meant only the exam year students went in. Year 9s stayed at home.
I was hopeful things would improve in yr 10; that the resources would be directed towards yr10 and yr11.
He has had one trip since year 5 - a day at Thorpe Park.

He is happy enough at school, but education wise, he is disengaged with so many subjects. Supply teachers come in and tell them to 'get on with your work' or 'do page 7-11 in your work book' ie there is no actual teaching.
The correlation in his effort, behaviour and attainment between subjects with stable subject teachers and those with a string of supply teachers is very, very clear.

I do not blame the school or the teachers.

As a teacher myself (primary trained, now working in a secondary), I completely agree that there should be a teacher who is an 'expert' in the subject teaching it, and I live and work in Scotland where this simply wouldn't be allowed. On the point of history and geography being taught together, I'm okay with. In Scotland in the first few years of secondary school, they're called social subjects and are all taught together. The different disciplines all interlink pretty closely and, if taught by a subject teacher, being taught together could increase understanding of the subject 🙂

Everyone would like their children taught by subject specialists- although just because you have a Maths Degree it doesn’t mean you can teach
Unfortunately this and previous Governments have de- professionalised Teaching and made it an unattractive career, experienced Teachers are more expensive, and in some schools have been replaced by Classroom Assistants. Until parents and Government start to value the education of our next generations, things will get worse

I’m not sure it has ever been a requirement to have a subject degree to teach it. Back in the 80s, my (excellent) chemistry teacher actually had a maths degree.

To be honest, they’re actually very lucky to have a permanent teacher in the room. Teacher recruitment and retention is in such a state that many won’t even be that lucky. Not that it’s right.

You only need an A Level in a subject to train to teach it and then once you’re qualified they can technically ask you to teach anything.

The teacher probably isn’t very happy about it either, but they’re better with someone who is permanent staff with planned lessons than lots of cover.

There are no requirements for subject degrees. I did supply teaching and, to be quite honest, if you had ‘o’ level in a subject you could manage. What’s more important is the ability and enthusiasm of the teacher.

Filling timetables can be a desperate business; a friend of mine, Music graduate hired to teach Music, found himself picking up parts of the RE timetable as well, on the tenuous grounds that he was also a church organist (Christianity by osmosis, I guess, hence knowledgeable about world faiths in general......)
I once bluffed my way through covering a lesson (primary but private sector) when the specialist teacher of Mandarin required cover - but I was a familiar face to the pupils at least.

I expect the poor teacher is a) doing their absolute best and b) doesn't want to be teaching a subject that isn't their specialism but has no choice. All the lesson plans and resources will have been created by a subject specialist.

There is a teacher shortage, it is likely the case that your child is being taught my a few teachers without degrees in the subject.

there are no rules at all about teachers teaching outside of their specialism, once a teacher is qualified and has QTS that they can be directed to teach whatever subjects the school want them to (whether the teacher likes it or not)

You might also be shocked to learn that there are a huge number of unqualified teachers working in schools who have not yet completed teacher training, and even quite a few teaching who don’t have a degree at all and are still working towards those.

It isn’t unusual in schools to have TAs teaching (some of whom may not even hold GCSEs in English and Math)

the recruitment and retention crisis in schools is so hugely underestimated by the public because it isn’t widely reported on. I urge people to remember this at the polls later this year…..

@Sooz817 I take the point about English but why does a History teacher need GCSE (O level for us oldies) in math(s)?

If you are just PowerPoint clicking then you aren’t a good teacher.

Scottish geography teacher here.

I do not teach anything other than geography; and that is my hill to die on. It’s most certainly not the norm to do it the way your schools do - normally; classes do a 6/8 week block of each of the three social subjects, taught by a subject specialist, and then rotate to the next.
An alternative model is to do one period per week of each subject (again, taught by a subject specialist) all year.
Some schools do what we call “single teacher delivery” - there is two models for this. The first one is when they complete something like an IDL project - for example, maybe on climate change - with elements of all the subjects included. However, when doing this, subject specialists would still plan and assess their own subject area. Alternatively (and this is absolutely the worst option!) They do a unit of each subject - I only know one school who do this in our area.

Speak to any humanities/social subject teacher and they will ALL agree that single subject delivery is far, far better. Especially for geographers - geography is the least literacy based of the subjects; and many history and modern studies teachers really struggle to teach the geographical skills effectively.

Power point clicking is bad teaching. Passive learning.

As a teacher myself (primary trained, now working in a secondary), I completely agree that there should be a teacher who is an 'expert' in the subject teaching it, and I live and work in Scotland where this simply wouldn't be allowed.

How do you not allow it if you cannot recruit a teacher though? What could the school do, other than put a non-subject specialist in front of the class?

When I left school in 1973 you needed English and Maths O levels to do any teacher training course.

It’s a completely different system here.

We have far fewer private schools because we have Catholic and non denominational state schools. We also don’t have selective state schools. So the assumption is that most kids will go to a school run by the local authority.
In many local authorities; you apply for the supply list, or permanent cover pool. Supply work is almost always within your own subject and you could be offered anywhere in the local authority.Permanent cover means you are paid a normal teachers salary but can be moved school to cover in event of a longer absence/maternity cover/vacancy.

Many local authorities can fill roles only using their own staffing banks.

I did permanent supply for a while.

You are simply not allowed to be timetabled to teach a class without being qualified to do so.

Teaching in Scotland is significantly less awful than I’d imagine teaching in England is; we are far better paid too so there isn’t the same recruitment crisis. It’s seen as a profession, and fairly well respected.

In Scotland you need higher English and standard grade/n5 maths to be accepted.

A higher is like an A level and a standard grade/n5 is an o level/gcse; I believe

Just about summed up my teaching career. I qualified as a secondary music teacher and then you are a pot of hours. There wasn't enough music so I taught English and media too.
Moving on I taught outreach in primary and a special school then took over a post 16 careers programme. Moved school to teach just music and now work in a primary special school.

The teacher would have been provided schemes of work and will need to plan their lessons. We are expected to teach outside of our first subject area

You can have all the qualifications in the world but it doesn’t make you good or efficient in that area