What qualifications do teachers of these after school French clubs need to have?

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Are they actually qualified teachers? I have pulled DD1 from hers as despite the teacher assuring me she taught at different levels, taught them all from the most basic level. DD1's French is pretty good and there were others in the group who also had a reasonable grasp of the language. I did raise it with the teacher and she said rather snottily that revision was always helpful.

I also thought her French was rather crap - spelling mistakes in things she had written - not the printed sheets.

They are possibly not qualified teachers if you mean in the sense of having a PGCE, but then again QTS means nothing in a non school environment. You will find that the majority of dance/music language etc teachers don't have QTS but that doesn;t mean they are not qualified.

My firned runs one of these clubs and she has a French degree, and has lived in France and married a Frenchman. I would expect degree level education which would have included at least one year studying in France.

Then again another friend of mine who is a "qualified" French teacher in a secondary school has to teach GCSE spanish. She is literally always one page ahead of her pupils in the textbook!!!!

depends on the set up. my dad was a classroom assistant in a special school, he ran the french club. his only qualification was that french is his first language.

That is what I'd have assumed too islandofsodor. However, I have known people who fulfill all of those criteria and whose written and spoken French is still not so great...and they have still been teaching the language in schools
So she might or might not be a qualified teacher MrsSchadenfreude.
Mais vous etes surement un peu plus exigeante et bien renseignee que le plupart des parents Britanniques, non?
I run an afterschool Latin club at my dcs' school and I am not a teacher but a parent volunteer. My Latin is accurate though, and so is my English. And I offer differentiated Minimus
Are you paying for this session?

Ds's school(and a couple of other local ones) have recently dropped the French club they used - it was crap and run by mad old women. They are atill earning money by not teaching children properly elsewhere. It's an appalling situation.

I couldn't care if she is qualified or not - I used to teach French and German privately, and am not remotely qualified to do so, but my standard was adequate and I was reasonably competent. But she seems to be taking large amounts of money off the parents for doing relatively little and some of what she does is downright inaccurate.

They have started teaching French in the shool - the class teacher teaches it, but has no knowledge of the language and she gets along with CDs and the internet.

I'm just generally pissed off that my DDs are going to lose the French they have already. And no, I couldn't teach them, I don't have the time or the patience!

Thank you for your comments too! Am v envious of you teaching Latin, Marina - can my DDs come and learn with you, please?

PS Was it your relative who used to have the English children's bookshop in Tervuren, by the way? I hope her profits haven't gone down too much since we left!

yeah, that great idea of all primary schools teaching languages, cos of course that's all it takes isn't it? a cd and the internet! one step ahead of the kids and a crappy accent but hey, they're only 7 year olds so who cares [slightly bitter linguist sourpuss face emoticon]
are there any other classes nearby that you could put your dd's in at the weekend?
sorry it's not working out for you. i started running french classes after having a similar prob with my own kids.

LOL at slightly bitter linguist sourpuss emoticon morocco, I pull that face a lot too. I think we have discussed this vexed topic on MN before, as well.
Luckily the dcs' French teacher is a native speaker and ds, who loves languages, gets on fine with her and has quite a nifty accent for a Sarf London eight year old boy. But I do get the impression that she is not too hot on classroom discipline
And, oh, MrsS, after Tervuren, having someone teach your children French from CDs and the Internet must be deeply depressing
Bienvenue a Londres indeed
In order to benefit from my amateurish but v. enthusiastic Minimus club you'd need to relocate to a part of SE London that is off most people's postcode radar, sadly
Cousin is unbelievably almost at retirement age, so she is starting to hand over the reins a bit. She has not mentioned a specific dip in profits though

We have a flat in SE11, Marina. Would that qualify us? Although not living there at the mo.

I really liked Treasure Trove, especially when it was in the basement of that lovely house. Hope your cousin hasn't suffered too much from Amazon. We always used to go to her for birthday presents, and she had an encylopaedic knowledge of children's books.