Compliant easy child sidelined?

[Saz12]

DD will sit gcse equivalents in May 2027. (Scotland, so theyre called Nationsl 5's here).

State school, so 7 subjects, which is standard. She doesnt have the same teacher throughout in ANY subject... as in, over the course if a week she'll have 2 lessons Teacher A, 1 lesson with Teacher B, 1 lesson with random staff member. The worst is Spanish, where she has 4 teachers each week, BUT the class has 10 pupils doing Advanced Higher (basically the final year of A level) alongside 20 doinv Nat 5 (GCSE equivalent). School has around 1,000 pupils, so not that small.

Transport to decent alternative option would probably mean I have to quit work (We're rural, no viable bus service, 15 miles each way too far to cycle & unsafe anyway).

FFS, is this ok??? Its a well thought of state school. She might do well DESPITE the teaching situation.

I'm sorry your DC is caught up in the scandal that is the apaulling lack of funding in our schools. I hear the same from many parents and know several kids who have had up to 8 teacher changes a year. Many schools are now fundraising for basic supplies like pencil and paper!

Moving your DC to a new school at this stage might be quite disruptive and you may end up facing the same issues there.

Is tutoring an option?

I was a school refuser, and go through my GCSEs basically by buying the revision books for the subjects (more than one where available, to cover from various angles) and just hammering those (I was a school refuser, so barely in school, but still wanted to pass my GCSEs)

I'm in Ireland, and over here there have massive tutoring schemes called Grinds - you can join online grinds which give you amazing classes and exam coaching. I've not seen anything to the same extent in the UK, but it's been a while since I've had to look, so it would be worth seeing what's available

The teaching and learning your DD may experience may not be as chaotic as it might appear to you. I have taught a GCSE class where due to timetabling the teaching was split between me and another teacher. We agreed to divide up what parts of the curriculum and exam prep we would each teach and kept one another informed as we went along, sharing concerns about specific students and their progress. I think the students in that class achieved the similar levels as students who were taught by only one teacher all year. Perhaps some even did better than would have been expected as they received two sets of eyes on their work. Of course, if your DD is feeling that the changes in teachers is ad hoc and uncoordinated, then that also may be the case.

This is proof of how badly Scotlands education system has declined in recent years. I believe the snp is at fault.

It is also true that well behaved kids who get on with the work are often overlooked. Those classes must be hell to teach with such a turn over of staff.

I know very little about your exam system. However, in England, there's loads and loads of help on YouTube for gcse, for all subjects. I am guessing that the subject content for your exams is similar to ours.

There may be specific videos for your exams. If not, I recommend Mr Bruff for gcse English. There's also a lot available on BBC bitesize.
Good Luck.

Ex teacher in england

it doesn’t sound great. (Btw it doesn’t sound like your child is sidelined due to her personality more that the school is struggling for teachers generally)

what you can do:
look at reports and predicted grades (presume these are a thing in Scotland) and check whether she’s on track in the subjects that she needs in order to carry on studying/that she wants to take further.

in England that would be maths and English (as otherwise you have to resit) plus whatever she wants to continue with.

if she’s not on track or you are concerned, consider buying revision/study books or getting a tutor - many many tutors work online now so even if you are very rural it can be done.

then look at next steps. Do you/does she want to continue where she is or change at the next change point? If she’s that bit older could she do the journey herself? (Obviously public transport is an issue).

focus on what is needed for the next steps.

Thanks for all your advice. Realistically, moving schools now isnt going to be helpful to her, even if it was practical.
Im heartened that the shared teaching mightn't be as chaotic as it sounds. Shes doing well, got great test results & reports last year (theyve only been back a week this academic year).

I think I'll keep an eye just now. She has study /revision guides for a few subjecrs already...

Yeah in England a level teaching (16-18) is often split between two teachers anyway with eg one teacher doing pure and one applied (in maths) or each teacher taking separate modules for physics and the like.

so if doing 4 a levels 8 teachers would be standard.

i taught many shared classes at ks3 (age 11-14) as my school usually prioritised gcse classes which meant the younger ones had shared classes (more than one teacher). We usually arranged to split modules or agreed that (for example) if I had one lesson a fortnight I’d do all the topic tests in that lesson so I was pretty much just supervising assessments and the other teacher was doing all or most of the teaching,

yes there will be a plan even if it’s the teachers catching up once a week and saying eg we need another lesson on adding fractions and can you do subtracting and then I can do the topic test on Friday.

Ds had two teachers for his Chemistry and French. Chemistry was awful as each teacher independently taught different modules each week and neither finished them in time for prelims. They told the kids it wasn’t going to work and they were both completely disinterested and seemed pissed off.

French wasn’t too bad, one teacher did oral and listening and other did writing and reading (or whatever are called, it was a 5 years ago).

If she needs support for English there is a BrightRed English NAT5 Course Book (not the study guide) which we found good for working through RUAE with ds as he just didn’t “get” English and thought it was a waste of time (not my strongest subject either 🤣). He did the exercises over several weeks and we’d talk through, letting him lead, and try to understand the answers together, he made up mindmaps of the different language features (I helped him with design of the first one) and the skills there also helped him with his Scottish text. It also has some hints about portfolio. Working through it set the foundations and skills he needed to work on for his English higher.