Parent/teacher meeting with difficult teacher

[Esme69]

My dh and I are meeting with our dd's p6 form teacher today. She is a very difficult lady, very volatile and unstable.

The thing is that the standard of work in her class is terrible. The children are hardly given any homework and whatever they are given is of such a low standard for ed, doing 2 and 3 times tables which my dd did back in p3, and very basic grammar, and there seems to be no structure or logical progression in the work.

How do we best approach this? Should we ask for an educational plan for that year, or is there such a thing? What are we entitled to ask for, or expect from the the teacher, in terms of what they should be learning this year?

We are nervous of this meeting as any implied criticism of her could lead to an antagonsitic situation, (this teacher is very unpopular, as children all seem to slide back in her classes instead of coming on but the Head Teacher is very weak and lets the school run itself pretty much.

So just trying to get an idea what we as parents can practically ask for and expect from this teacher without getting into argy bargy.

Have to go now but will be back, TIA.

Won't be much in the way of a year's plan - just topics per term. There'll be a more detailed specifics of topics for each week for the current term, and an even more detailed day-to-day for Maths/English at least for the current week (on a Tuesday, the chances of having next week's planned... probably very low since you don't know how the current week's going to pan out - that's perfectly acceptable).

Be warned however that my planning generally makes sod all sense to anyone else reading it, that I can vouch from being on supply that other teachers' planning often makes limited sense to a supply reading it and it'll quite possibly make naff all at all sense to anyone not fully assimilated into educational jargon, abbreviations and general gobbledygook - oh and be covered in red pen alterations.

just because she doesnt dish out reams of homework doesnt indicate a bad teacher, in fact studies show that kids progress at the same rate with or without homework.

When you say there seems to be no order to her planning, it may just seem random as she is trying to keep it varied??

I would make sure of all your facts before going in as to be fair, she must be meeting all her performance management targets and lesson observations for her to be teaching

Thanks Euphemia, meant to get back to this thread ealier but RL got in the way!

The meeting didnt go too well. The teacher refused to hand me over a copy of the term plan, saying that she didnt feel "comfortable" doing so, and that she had NEVER been asked for such a thing in all her career, (which I find hard to believe ) then she went over some stuff about how the new curriculum teaches stuff in a totally different wat than what we were used to and that is prob why the homework seems disjointed and a bit simple.

It was all highly unsatisfactory and I am at a loss as to know what to do next.

Maddy 68 - It is not the quantity of the homework thatbothers me but the quality. DD is doing stuff which she did in p4 and she is now in p6. Plus they often get no homework at all, and this teacher has been seen popping out from school in the middle of the morning to do a bit of grocery shopping, I have seen her myself.

By October she had taken 2 weeks off for sickness and has a history of this. Not one parent who has had children in her class has a good thing to say about her, and in fact in this present class, two sets of parents have been in to see the head about the fact that she is picking on their child and bullying the child in front of the class.

This lady should not be allowed near a classroom!

"and this teacher has been seen popping out from school in the middle of the morning to do a bit of grocery shopping, I have seen her myself."

No, really? That can't be right - who is her class left with, and how do you know she isn't buying stuff for school?

Actually the amount of homework does matter. Maybe in the short term it is not obvious but in the long term children will have forgotten most of what they were taught.

I know that there is an EYFS coordinator for Nursery and Reception, literacy coordinator maths planner etc. Who are responsible for Y6? She can't be making her own plans without a framework set up by the coordinators can she? I have small children and I don't know much about older classes.

Do yo have any support on this from other parents?

I don't set much homework - reading, tables, go and collect/investigate/think about, etc, and nor do other good primary school teachers I know, both on MN and in rl. It doesn't matter at primary school - the sky doesn't fall in and children don't forget what they have been taught!

Well, I think you're absolutely right to have concerns and I would have too in your shoes.
However, as a teacher, I would take exception to a parent asking to see my plans. We send out termly documetns outling what we're covering in each subject, which should suffice. Beyond that, you will have to speak again to the Head, or maybe the Head of Governors.

If there are serious collective concerns re this teacher then a joint appeal to the HT to raise standards would be in order, with the prospect of taking higher - has that been tried?

If it is more just dc being ill-served would a note in book/planner saying dc found the task particularly easy/raced through it with no difficulty etc work, do you think?

However, I have been known on occasion to leave the school premises on school business, in a free or nip to the shops for chocolate essential supplies at a lunchtime. I'm not sure you can use that against her unless you know she had been timetabled to teach at that time.

You wouldn't have seen my planner either although an outline of the year would be available if requested once I got onto the computer and emailed it to you, but it wouldn't give more than topic/themes/NC strands to teach. I doubt v much you'd see actual SOWs since they are fluid and I wouldn't want to be held to account for not sticking to them to the letter or for work you did not see take place. This is not to deny your concerns, only to say why this info would not be freely available.

I did have one parent at parents' eve reach across for my mark book!