Is there anyone in management in a primary school can advise me?

[roisin]

I'm looking to get into teaching Primary MFL and/or literacy boosters/intervention. I've been working as a cover supervisor in a secondary school for the last 4 years working across the whole curriculum and ages 11-16, but focusing on English Dept and MFL. I also do 6 hours a week literacy intervention with small groups of yr7s. My degree is in German, my French is good, but I don't have QTS (and am not currently looking to go down that route). I do have HLTA accreditation, but no significant experience in primary schools. But I am well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of current PMFL teaching when it comes to secondary transition.

I'm planning to write a letter plus CV on spec to local primary schools asking them whether they might consider me for next September when they are thinking about their plans for PPA cover, literacy intervention and PMFL.

What sort of things do you think would come across well/badly in such a letter to schools? Do you have any advice for me?

Thank you for reading.

Which part of the country are you in Roisin?

Your type are in huge demand but you can not expect a huge amount of pay with no QTS.
Primary schools are always on the look out for quality PPA cover- someone who can hold their own in a class without too much support and MFL is on the up - lots of school where I am do not have it yet.Your experience with the older children is one to push but also you need to make it clear that you can do the little ones too.
Will think some more.

Thanks Spudmasher. (I'm in SW Cumbria.)
I'd be looking for pay at an HLTA rate (scale 4 NJC), which is still considerably less than an NQT.

I'm pleased that you think it sounds like an attractive proposition to a primary school. My own children are 9 and 11, but as I have a FT contract at present there is no possibility for me to get any whole-class primary experience.

Given that there are many primary teachers out of work due to the government training rather more than there are jobs for, I find it rather offensive that you wish to undercut NQTs and effectively do them out of a job. IMO PPA cover and MFL teaching in schools should be carried out by qualified teachers. Would you be happy for your children to be taught by someone without a teaching qualification? If you wish to become a teacher then I would say go for it and I would imagine you would be a prime candidate for the the GTP for which you would also be paid. If you are not prepared to do this then I think you have no business teaching classes of any age.

Sorry if this comes across a bit harshly but the replacement of teachers with unqualified staff is a scandal and one that many parents seem unaware of.

In my dc's primary schools and all the schools in their cluster, the MFL and PPA is carried out by qualified teachers only. Why would they employ a TA to teach? Have you spoken to any head teachers - they may give you an indication of whether the idea is a good one or not.

As londonone says, there are many unemplyed primary teachers at the moment who you would be up against for these positions.

Sorry, Roisin, we also have a policy of only employing teachers to teach, not TAs. We advertise it as a strength of our school actually - although we have many talented support staff, only qualified teachers teach.

We employ sports coaches. They do not have a B.Ed or a pgce and are better at teaching football to a bunch of Year 6s than I ever will be.
Why not recognise that some people might be better at it than others?

And a guitar teacher and brass.

Dd3's junior school have a TA with HLTA status. She takes the children for Art during the teachers' PPA time. We are all ok with this.

Good luck!

But they would be qualified in their field, spudmasher. We also employ specialist music coaches and sports coaches, but all have accreditation.

And many schools have MFL delivered by people with little experience of the language, who might (at best) have an ancient ropey O Level in the subject. The result that we see at secondary is pupils who have "been learning" a language at primary for several years and know only a small number of single words and a few phrases poorly pronounced. In addition many of them have already been put off learning languages already, because it's "difficult and boring".

But many schools simply do not have the funding in their budgets to employ someone with QTS to deliver MFL to every class.

I'm quite immune to the opinion that qualified teachers are always better I'm afraid, so your comments are water off a duck's back. My sons have both had elements of PPA cover delivered at primary by non-QTS staff and at ds1's secondary they also have cover supervisors. So no, I have no problem with this for the education of my children.

Many secondary schools employ cover supervisors (CS) with great success these days. On a daily basis I have staff coming to me begging asking me to cover their lesson because supply teachers repeatedly fail to ensure that the students complete (or even attempt) the work set, they don't insist the students behave appropriately, then complain if they don't. Secondary supply is hard to come by round here these days because of the spawn of the devil CS. Yet so many of those lucky enough to get a job for a day swan in and don't take the role seriously at all.

Yes, there are many unemployed teachers out there. Some of them are unemployed for a reason.

Phew - and breathe! Sorry if that was a bit of a rant, but some of the comments needed a response I'm afraid.

Thank you for everyone who has posted on here so far, please do continue to give me your views.

"And many schools have MFL delivered by people with little experience of the language, who might (at best) have an ancient ropey O Level in the subject"
I'm interested in how you might know this is the case, Roisin. We all had quite a lot of training in teaching the Wakefield scheme in our school. I would also argue that knowing how to teach per se is also helpful when teaching MFL. Of course it helps to have decent subject knowledge, but you might also say the same about primary teachers' subject knowledge in Science, History, Geography, Music, etc. Most decent teachers ensure their subject knowledge is up to scratch in the areas they teach, and our lesson obsv, Ofsted inspections, performance management targets, etc, ensure that this is so.

And my ropey A-level helps my French teaching!

i couldn't agree more that the way MFL is taught in many primary schools is poor this is because as usual the government came up with a scheme without thinking through the practicalities of how it would be implemented. However the solution is not to simply let anyone who fancies it have a go the way to deal with it is by employing qualified MFL teachers.

The reason you are employed as a cover supervisor roisin is not because you are necessarily good but because you are cheap. Now I have no problem with schools employing cover supervisors for the odd day of sickness cover and the odd course however they should not be covering PPA or long term absence, the only reason that school management do this is to save money, pure and simple.