No teacher for A-level - need an advice

[JTro]

Hope someone can advise me what to do in this situation. My DS is in Year 13, one of his A-levels is Further Maths (FM). At the beginning of this school year, students doing FM chose what to do: 2 majors or 4 minors. My DS chose 4 minors and on the first week of doing his 4 minors he found out he has no maths teacher who will teach them ( it's 4 of them). Since then, Maths Subject Leader said that they need to teach themselves on Google Classroom, where she put some study materials while she try to sort it out very soon. Later on "very soon" transformed to "by the end of the half-term". When end of half-term happened, she said "at the beginning next half term it will be sort it out". Yesterday was first day of new half-term and of course the issue is still there. Now she says "it will be sorted out soon". At the same time, his Head of Year approached him and stronly advised to drom FM A-level and do AS-level instead, my DS refused. After that Head of Sixths Form approached him and again "strongly advised" to drop FM A-level. As his predicted grade for FM is B, I suspect this is their attempt to solve the issue by less painful way for them, but not taking into ccount his best interest. As all this happens through talking with his Maths subject leader, it looks like they will push him and few others to study FM themselves as long as they could and they are really missing out on proper studying and they do the same level on tests as other, who do have a techer. I need an advise how to approach school regarding this issue and finally make them to teach these 4 students properly. Should I contact Head teacher, or go straight to Governors? Just for reference - I am not familiar with A-level system at all, he is our first who is doing A-levels, and probably it's a norm when students learn themselves?

It doesnt really matter how many other teachers there are and other classes there are, there is no teacher for your sons class - the other teachers are not hanging round twiddling their thumbs, they will have full timetables, and not be able to take on another class.

The school does not have enough teachers. I imagine they did have enough teachers when they made the original offer, but have lost one, for whatever reason. Maybe health, or promotion, or whatever.

This is not an unusual situation, if we have a teacher off long term sick, we can't find anyone to take their place

No, but if they don't have a teacher the choices are that the school stops the option of doing 4 minors so the pupils don't do 4 minors and have to swap to major/minor or they cover the material themselves.

It should be picked up much earlier if my DS and other 4 are not important or inferior to others as they have spent a whole year doing maths and FM! A whole year wasted time and efforts!

Everyone should be treated equal, that's my understanding.

But the problem is that school is doing this option of 4 minors and other students are doing it.

but

there

is

no

teacher

and

I

don't

know

what

you

think

anyone

can

do

about

that

Thank you for your attention, but if you go back to my original post, you could notice I did not ask you specifically to do ANYTHING about it, especially in such a nasty way. What I was asking is advise how to handle it. You do not have to reply to me, from now on I'll just ignore you, so you would not feel obliged to do something about it.

you have asked what to do about it. I have told you. There is no teacher at school for what your son has chosen. So he can change his choices. Or study outside of school with a tutor. It doesn't matter how many times you say you want him to have a teacher in school, there isn't one, Whether they will find one or not, no one can say. Many teaching vacancies attract zero applicants

Our head teacher has been requesting via the school newsletter if any parents are able to teach maths as they have advertised repeatedly and can’t recruit.

You can complain to the governors and the head if you want but they will all be fully aware they don’t have enough teachers!

For this stage I am not going to complain to governors as the complaint procedure should be followed, I emailed to Head of Year, so we'll see. There is a full set of maths teachers in school, the open vacancies are for Chemistry teacher (maternity cover) and Examination officer.

Surely by "handle it" you mean "what can I do/ask them to do"? If there isn't a teacher there isn't a teacher.

What is your suggestion/solution ?

If there is one teacher available of course they will prioritise 30 pupils over 4 pupils. It's a grammar school so the class with 30 pupils will produce more top grades than the class with the 4 pupils.

I think that your choice is to do AS (3.5 A-levels is enough for a top uni) or pay for tutors etc privately and take 4 A-levels.

There is a national shortage of teachers (especially in maths) and I think it's terrible that they keep making promises that it will be sorted in 6 weeks time and your son believes them.

Just checked, there is no shortage of maths teachers in this particular school. Open vacancies I listed above. If they have problems with teaching these 4, it should be picked up much earlier, exactly first week of studying, should not be promisisng to "sort it out soon". Last promise was done yesterday, it's look like they do not even consider to sort it out in any way, only by pushing him out of A-level. He is adamant to do a full A level, and I support him

DS2 is doing a full A level OCR FM but is not doing all four - I think it's statistics, mechanics, pure and further pure? - because his college don't cater for all 4. I can understand that if he wants all 4 they would say stop at AS. But he could still do less than 4 and still have a full A level. Makes no difference to uni application.

But DS2 is also only doing 3 A levels. His college won't allow students to do more as it is in excess of uni entry requirements.

His school started with a new initiative (exactly when he started his A-levels) - all of them are doing 4 A levels, full stop. 1 A-level can be only dropped if the student is not doing good at it (not my DS's case), it was specifically emphasized on parent's meeting when all A-levels were discussed. He would love to focus on only 3 A-levels, would they allow him to do it at the beginning, he would get much better grades for the remaning 3 (Chem, Phys, Maths) than predicted and would appy to the Uni he dreamed to go from when he was 9. It would be a different picture now.

PocketSand, the third one is definitely Algorythms, the 4th I think Calculus (but not sure)

well, if he doesn't even want to do FM, why doesn't he just do the AS?

Doesn't sound like OCR. If he can't drop down to 3 A levels because of college bizarre rules he should drop to 2 majors in FM. It really doesn't matter.

If he needs to know it, it will be taught at uni. There will be lots of applicants who have studied different exam boards and different elements. He needs to focus on entry requirements if he wants to go to uni. Even they only want to know if students were good given what they were taught.

Right. As far as I understand it- and this situation is weird- there are enough maths teachers, but for some odd reason just four children have been asked to teach themselves a whole A-level.

OP, nobody is understanding the four minors and majors thing. That's obviously something the school has come up with.

This seems like a fairly simply thing then.

The Head of Year is not really the person to deal with. It's the Head of Maths. There should also be a member of senior management who is responsible for the academic stuff. Email them. Copy in the Head of Year, by all means. To be honest at this stage I'd be copying everyone.

I've dealt with a lot of parents this week. They often have way longer to compose emails than we do. Keep it short, because that means there's fewer words obscuring your main points.

I'd just say something like, 'We're concerned that our child has now been without a teacher for ten weeks. Can you give us some indication of what's going on? Can we arrange a meeting or a phone call to discuss this situation?'

It's very weird, and a bit 'grammar school' i.e. on the surface it seems like they're giving the kids responsibility and opportunity- but it is basically quite neglectful and sloppy. They're relying on the fact that the kids are bright and motivated to cover up for poor, or in this case, none, teaching.

It is 100% OCR, just checked. Probably they called these FM part a bit different internally, I don't know. We'll see what solution will be offered, hopefully on Monday I'll get a reply, so far nothing except dropping to AS level and learning themselves was offered.

Not all maths teachers are able to teach further maths A Level. In an ideal world all secondary maths teachers would have maths degrees and be able to teach any and all aspects of the course. But that is not the case unfortunately.

yep, thanks for summarizing it!:) The thing is I have no other contacts other than Head of Year. Was trying to get Maths subject leader school (!!!) email through school, was told it is confidential, so he is the only point of contact for me for now. Will update as soon as I get a reply

indeed, very few maths teachers are qualified in maths

OCR has two compulsory papers, Core Pure 1 and 2 which make up 50% of the marks. You then pick 2 from Stats, Mechanics, Discrete and Additional Pure, which are each worth 25%

There isn't an option called Algorithms, or Calculus. If he is doing Stats and Mechanics, then he can't do the other options, everyone has to do the Core Pure modules.

I genuinely don't understand the set-up and I don't understand why they can't join the class with the teacher. If it's because they aren't doing the same options, then taking the same options as the class would be better than not doing FM.

Further maths teachers are rare btw, even among maths-qualified teachers.

Right, just digged through school communication emails, and found these regarding FM (taken from school official course description):
The Pure Maths is 50% of A Level Further Maths. The other 50% comprises Options. Options are to take 1 major and 1 Minor, or to take 3 Minors. Minors are Mechanics, Statistics, Numerical Methods and Modelling with Algorithms. Majors are Mechanics and Statistics.
So, DS is doing Pure maths, and 3 minors.