AIBU to expect my child's Year 1 teacher to spell correctly?

[PerkyShark]

DD is 5 and currently in Year 1. Every Monday, we get a new spelling list for a test on Friday, which I think is a great idea in theory. However, nearly every week there seems to be a glaring spelling mistake on the list.

A couple of weeks ago, "tarpoon" appeared instead of "harpoon." Last week, we had "Artic" instead of "Arctic." I brushed these off initially, but this week, THREE words are incorrect: "micture" (mixture), "nuture" (nature), and "murcury" (mercury).

I approached DD's class teacher politely to point this out, assuming she'd be mortified and promise to ensure it wouldn't happen again, but instead she shrugged it off, saying "human error is to be expected."

I'm also starting to worry, as these spelling lists are the only written examples I see regularly. It makes me question whether the teacher is consistently spelling things incorrectly during lessons or, even worse, not picking up on spelling mistakes my child might be making in her work.

AIBU to think that consistently misspelling words on weekly spelling lists undermines the purpose of the tests and possibly the children's learning? Or am I just being overly precious about something that doesn't really matter?

Let's hope the peer group you're buying for your child deliver, OP. Because it doesn't sound like the education will. He'll need all the rich friends he can get.

If a private school it may be true, and the dismissive response is more understandable.

Escalate to the head.

I used to work in a secondary school and was given the job of checking the reports before they went out to parents (mainly for consistency, so that eg if the child was called Charlie they weren't Charley or Charles). But I would find so many basic spelling errors, and sentences that didn't make sense.

Why on earth aren’t primary teachers with poor SPAG weeded out early in their training and given remedial English?

I know it was ‘fashionable’ among educators in the 70s/80s to say that spelling and grammar didn’t matter any more - it was ‘elitist’ to expect correct spelling, but I’d thought those days had passed.

You sound bitter and spiteful.

When our DDs were at primary school I ended up having to hide the monthly newsletter from DH because he would get so enraged by the poor SPAG. I virtually had to wrestle a red biro off him the time he decided he was going to correct every mistake and send it back to the school.

When my sons were little and came home from school with something like that I used to correct it in red pen and send it back

Just saying, it's rarely the "better education" you're paying for when you send your kids to private school. Luckily for them, nepotism and old school tie is still rife, so they'll be fine. 👍🏻

I can only comment on my own experience and this would not be tolerated by the parents or the head in our case. Our school deviates from national curriculum for spellings too so we receive similar lists - I don’t agree with them rote learning some of the words which are out of context but it’s small enough for me (and other parents I am friendly with) to keep quiet. I have not noticed any errors from any staff teaching my children

When the school went through a spate of spelling, grammatical and date errors in parent communication, multiple complaints were raised and the governors started to investigate. The errors were due to office staff failing to proof-read but the parents complaining were saying the school cannot pride itself on teaching English to a high standard if it is unable to read the content it delivers to parents.

Given that this is an independent school, it is entirely possible that the teacher in this case is not a qualified teacher (or a graduate).

The problem is that you can have a good degree from a university that MNers would approve of and people tend to assume that means you'll have good SPAG - but it doesn't always. I used to lecture at a Russell Group where loads of our students couldn't use apostrophes etc. - it did cost them marks, but they still got 2:1s. I suspect the same had happened in their other exams beforehand, their GCSEs and A-levels - that they must have lost marks for their spelling and grammar, but not enough for it to be a serious issue for them. I would always refer them to the many sources of writing support the university offered; very few took advantage of this because they didn't see the need (by university they are also often very defensive about already knowing this stuff, even when they clearly didn't and were getting feedback from multiple people that it needed addressing). Multiple times students I taught told me they were going to do teacher training and they were always lovely, bright young people who in many ways would be good teachers but it did make me worry a bit because I'd often think 'but you can't spell!'.

What a load of crap. My goodness!

As if parents would be happy to have non qualified teachers/people who don't even have a degree teach their children.

This may happen in senior schools where the chemistry teacher has no PGCE, but is a Dr/Prof and a specialist in their field. But, this is still something that isn't standard practice.

The jealously and glee coming from some posters is just too much!

Post a photo of the page?

Not true, I know someone who graduated with her History of Art degree and waltzed straight into a job teaching at a private school. Obviously not teaching History of Art either. But she did graduate from Cambridge, which is obviously all some fee-paying parents care about.

I agree, you should mention this to the head op. Teaching the children to read and write is literally the main aspect of the job, they need to be able to do it themselves!

We've been lucky, DC's primary teachers were/are great. Whoever writes the newsletters however....😬

I assumed 'they' was the spell checkers. It's the obvious answer.

They often use American spelling. I frequently get the wiggly red lines under words when typing in "British' English on my laptop.

DS's Y2 teacher spent a week telling them that WW1 ended in 1945. They made posters and everything. I pointed out that they'd got the wrong war when I saw the posters.

Three years later, the same teacher told DD that she didn't see the point in reading for pleasure.

Human error? I'd potentially kill someone with Human error.

So what happens when the kids put the correct spelling in the spelling test?

Not only is it possible
It's quite likely

You can set your spellchecker to UK English in Word.

I don't need to because I can already spell.

Edit: sorry that sounds snarky which wasn't my intention but I don't need a spell checker.

That's really really bad!

But it's clearly already happened. Most teachers take pride in their work but as with any other industry there's always one or two that just don't care. This teacher sounds like one of them. It would infuriate me and if this teacher kept making these errors I'd ask to speak to the Head Teacher.

Not unreasonable. Sounds like she gets ai to produce the worksheets