Does your state primary have specialist staff

[AChickenCalledKorma]

Arising out of a discussion at a committee I am on at school, I'm curious to know what is "normal" in terms of specialist staff at a state primary. If your child is at a state primary, does it have specialist teachers? And if so, in what subject? E.g. languages, PE, music etc. I have the impression that ours is reasonably well resourced in this respect, but am not sure what is "normal".

Only for languages and art. They covet PPA time. I'm particularly pleased about the language teachers, who are native speakers.

They cover PPA time, although I'm sure they covet it too.

ds school only has specialist teacher for art, shes full time and was taken on as well as another full time teacher to fill the job of one very arty fantastic teacher.its a tiny school with 3 classes.

Our state infant school has a music co-ordinator (also a class teacher) but she's the only one who can play the piano....PE is taught by class teachers, languages only offered as after school clubs which have specialist teachers but the sessions are paid for, same goes for dance, guitars, rugby skills etc. We do have a dedicated SENCO though who does not have class teacher duties.

The attached junior school however has more specialist teachers - a french teacher comes in specially and I think certain music teachers but I'm not sure how much is included in the general curriculum and how much is a paid for extra.

We have a specialist science teacher for years 5 and 6 and we also buy in specialist music and PE teachers ( which the school, rather than the parents, pay for!) who cover PPA time.

We have specialist teachers for English Maths Science French and Music in KS2 (not PPA cover) and are considering it for KS1.

We have specialist teachers come in for P.E, Music, Drama and languages (French, native speaker). We are only a small village primary so I don't know how they do it but it is really beneficial to the children.

We don't have any specialist teachers - and I'm pleased with that :)

Our PPA is covered by senior teachers who don't teach classes.

Ours has specialist teachers for French and Spanish.They have another teacher who covers the whole school for music and art as well including the orchestra and choir practises. The whole school learns Tai Chi so the instructors are brought in from elsewhere too.

The only specialist is a teacher who has done some Speech and Language Therapy qualifications. She does one day a week of 15 minute one-to-one sessions and one day of group language sessions which last 45 minutes with a 5 children in each.

For languages and PE, and sometimes for Maths in small groups.

When you day specialist teachers, what do you mean? My brother is a primary school teacher with a BEd with maths specialism, and my sister has a maths degree and QTS, and they are quite different. My brother sprang't have maths a level.

Doesn't.

Sprang?!

Gosh - interesting to see how much it varies, and how many different specialisms!

TheFallenMadonna - good question. I'm thinking about teachers who only teach a specific subject. For example, my children's school has a teacher who teaches languages - she doesn't have a class, she teaches every class in the school, once a week. We also have specific PE teachers at KS2 - the class teachers don't do PE.

I'm interested to know how common that sort of thing is.

DS's junior school has specialist teachers for music, games and French.

DD's infants school has no specialist teachers (everything is taught by class teacher).

We have specialist pe who take ppa. I would count myself as a specialist maths teacher as I did a ba (ed)qts maths at uni and have been maths coordinator for over ten years. I work part time but have a day & a half a week to support children and teachers with maths. We have an English coordinator who's identical (literally we trained at the same place at the same time bizarrely!).

My school has no specialist teachers. In fact, our MFL is French, and yet our head of MFL can't speak a word of it! Excellent...

We have a pottery teacher, and the kids are taught swimming by the pool's instructor (lucky for them- I can just about manage a doggy paddle) but otherwise it's up to us.

Shame really. Very few teachers teach music as they can't read/ play music themselves, and lots of teachers are scared of the mess of art.

I'm scared of gymnastics, so my lessons tend to be quite tame. They're only little... they can learn to fall off the climbing frame when they're a big bigger and have stronger bones etc.

They seem to get specialists in for specific PE subjects (field hockey, cricket, rugby, soccer). 3 male teachers might have something to do with that.

Not MFL, yes specialist for Latin, have had specialists for paid-for music lessons & music club & streetdance. Maybe drama, too.

We have ones to cover Art, Languages, Music, Drama, Healthy Living (which covers food and PE) and PHSE.

Yes, we have a specialist Spanish, Singing, Music and ICT teachers who teach across KS2. We also have an AMAZING Sports specialist who takes all PE sessions and manages extra curricular clubs and games.

We have PE, music, MFL specialists. There is a teacher who just does ppa too.

When people say they have 'specialist teachers', is this just a case of getting, say, Mrs Smith who used to 'take' Y6, to become the 'English specialist' who only takes KS2 literacy?
If so, how can you fit daily literacy lessons in?

Sorry, this concept is totally alien to me, because I just don't know how you'd go about reorganising the school or the school day. At the moment, we use teacher's strengths within a year group, so one of us may take PE whilst the other takes art - that's as far as we go.

(Please can you ship me a pe specialist for my birthday?)

mumblesmum ds1 goes to a very large primary (500 children). As well as class teachers the school also employs a number of specialist teachers - for art, music and PE. These teachers take classes for, say, a session a week from Y1 - Y6. So the children get 'specialist' teaching in these areas whilst their class teacher gets time to do marking/prep.

I am pretty sure the funding works cause of the size of the school.

Our KS2 children move to the subject room in much the way they would in secondary school