Another teacher bashing story or is this the reality of our education system?

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www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9395084/Children-being-taught-by-under-qualified-teachers.html

Link from the DT... Note, not DM so it must be true?

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9395084/Children-being-taught-by-under-qualified-teachers.html

When I started my PGCE 20 years ago I was expected to teach 2 subjects, a major and a minor. English was my main subject, in which I have a degree, and History was my secondary subject, in which I only have an A grade A level. For a variety of reasons I dropped out and never taught, but had I completed the course I would have been able to teach either subject.

meh, our PE teacher taught us one module of Economics A level, and our Economics teacher also taught IT

in one of the countries top selective state schools

I agree with the article insofar as to say that the subjects I found most interesting at school were the ones where the teachers were most enthusiastic.

So maths teachers don't all have maths degrees, they may well have a physics or engineering degree which means they have a good level of maths.

My old maths teacher's degree was in chemistry, she was a perfectly able maths teacher. She also taught computer studies, she had no computing qualification, but in the 1980s not many people did.

In some subjects you can't have a degree (or it is rare) ssuch as citizenship and PHSE - no degree to take.

Soon schools will no longer have to employ qualified teachers anyway...

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6064221

news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_lords/newsid_9628000/9628758.stm

Whoops wrong thread!

BF - I was beginning to think insomnia was getting to me :) Thanks for clarifying.

To the question - a grumpy me asks, does it matter? On another thread some are arguing that being highly subject qualified doesn?t make you a good teacher anyway.

By the same argument I wonder whether being qualified as a teacher makes you any good either.

When I was a lad very few teachers had a degree at all. Most were generalists (unless you went to grammar school where they employed subject graduates who were not trained as teachers).

Have things changed or has this always been the way? Well, certainly in my subject it?s been the case that many of those teaching it were never subject specialists and still arent.

Most of the science teachers in the schools I've taught in had degrees in other subjects and only limited enthusiasm for the subjects they were being asked to teach. Of COURSE the children feel this- you can't summon up enthusiasm day after day after day without cracks showing. The prevalent feeling among SM was that "one page ahead of the children" was fine, that it was all in the delivery. That's the same rationale that meant they were seriously considering leaving TAs in charge of classes while teachers got on with the important business of keeping their notes in order and drawing up pretty spreadsheets (I kid you not- pretty spreadsheets get you good marks at your PGCE).

Pile o'shite. That's my verdict as non-practising secondary school teacher. The whole system short-changes children, and no small number of highly motivated teachers willing to donate their lives will palliate the glaring problems and skewed focus of those in charge of education.

FWIW I am a language teacher without a degree in the subject. I am however bilingual and more able in my subject than most people with a degree in it. Many fellow language teachers are in the same boat- which may skew the MFL figures quite a lot.

Pile o'shite. That's my verdict as non-practising secondary school teacher. The whole system short-changes children, and no small number of highly motivated teachers willing to donate their lives will palliate the glaring problems and skewed focus of those in charge of education

My sentiments entirely :)

I would question though how important "enthusiasm" is either. I know we are supposed to produce the all singing and dancing lesson to ?engage" pupils but frankly I always say to my pupils that lessons will not always be fun but they will always be effective (which I think is far more important). Judging by the uptake I have in my A level classes, the young people agree with that approach.

Sadly I don't think so, duchesse. More likely it reflects our abysmal attitude to languages - simultaneously that 'anyone can learn them' and 'we just can't be bothered'
At the school I taught in, the German teacher was 'one page ahead' - having classes at college and passing it on at school the following week. I'm not totally opposed to 'one page ahead' at all subjects/early levels but for languages???

Sadly I don't think so, duchesse. More likely it reflects our abysmal attitude to languages - simultaneously that 'anyone can learn them' and 'we just can't be bothered'
At the school I taught in, the German teacher was 'one page ahead' - having classes at college and passing it on at school the following week. I'm not totally opposed to 'one page ahead' at all subjects/early levels but for languages???

At secondary school I had two teachers of Physics who didn't have physics degrees, nor teacher qualifications.

The first was an okay teacher, not inspiring, but not totally off putting either. I think his qualifications were in something related like electronics, but he'd been teaching for several years when I had him. He got things wrong though, sometimes dramatically wrong, and he wasn't brilliant at being questioned around the subject because he wasn't that knowledgeable.

The second teacher had been involved in research for something like British Rail, looking to improve signals etc. I had him in his first year of teaching, having worked for them for about 20 years before. I think he had a degree in engineering, but I might be misremembering. He was an excellent teacher, knew his subject inside out (or at any rate had researched it well before teaching us) and was very good at engaging a class on the whole range of things we had to study.

So the problem is with underqualified teachers, is that, just like teachers, you get good, okay and bad ones... as in any other profession.

Degrees are not necessarily a better indication of deep knowledge and enthusiasm for a subject than alternative qualifications. Duchesse's example of MFL is a good one. I also had better maths teaching at school from a biology teacher and a physics teacher (for whom maths was a secondary subject) than from maths teachers.

I taught maths and computing. When I started out I had a PGCE and a psychology degree. This included some fairly stats heavy courses, so I had no problems dealing with A levels and GCSE maths. My computing degree I did part time while I was teaching.

In all honesty I think that while I was more interesting in teaching computing, I was a better maths teacher. I specialised in teaching Maths resits and students with low grade expectations and I had pretty good record of getting my students through with a C grade. Its been said before, but frequently the best teachers of a subject are not necessarily the most qualified ones. When I started teaching maths I had to re-teach myself some of it e.g. calculus. That process of re-learning and struggling initially with a subject gives you an insight into how students can struggle to grasp concepts and can help to identify where the sticking points may be.

I'm a secondary biology teacher. My PGCE apparently qualifies me to teach all three sciences up to GCSE, and in many schools I would be expected to do just that.

I think this is odd. Biology and chemistry I can do, as my degree covered both. However, physics would be a struggle - I don't even have physics A level. I think in science (well any subject really) - it's important that you know what you're talking about.

Luckily I don't inflict my lack of physics knowledge on any students as my current school has enough physics specialists.

my maths teacher was an architect