New recruit teacher is inadequate

[BoboChic]

This, basically. DD in Y7 started secondary school 2 weeks ago. One - and only one - of her teachers is totally inadequate. He is a new recruit. Parents and pupils have noticed pretty quickly that he doesn't have the first inkling of the subject he is supposed to be teaching. One approach has already been made to the school to alert them. What are the best words to use to describe this situation? Inadequate? Lacking subject knowledge?

This sounds like a complete over reaction. First few weeks of year seven and there is one teacher the kids don't like, hot housing parents freak out and go on a rampage trying to get him sacked without ANY facts. Grow up.

There ARE incompetent teachers, but far fewer than you would think, most are weeded out by the rigour of the PGCE and NQT year.

it's also worth pointing out that for most middle-class parents, the situation now is wildly different to when they were at school (this for the UK, I realise the OP is talking about France). When I was at school in the 1970s and 1980s, there were a significant number of teachers who were completely incompetent. They were less qualified (some wouldn't have had a PGCE, some would have a 2 year Cert Ed) and it was at that point both very difficult to fail your PGCE and very difficult to not get appointed after your probationary year: the shadow of RoSLA meant that a teacher who had a pulse was appointable.

But today, the situation is very different. Passing a PGCE and probationary year and getting QTS is difficult, the drop-out rate is high (in some cases for bad, but in many cases for good) reasons and the accountability measures mean that teachers who can't deliver aren't carried by schools frightened of embarking on competency proceedings, as was the case a generation ago. My children's school education is coming to an end, and I've not encountered a single incompetent teacher and I've only encountered a couple where I thought "yeah, OK, but I wouldn't want you teaching my child two years running" (and, notably, they were all older). No teacher under fifty is likely to be incompetent, simply because they would have been weeded out.

With my "child of teaching union activists" hat on I'd say that in some cases schools are trigger happy and embark on competency proceedings at the drop of a hat when support and coaching would be more productive, but in 2015 schools are quite focussed on the interests of the consumers (yeah, as measured by metrics which you can argue with) rather than the producers. That's overall a good thing.

There are far fewer crap GPs, too. And opticians. And any other regulated profession. They've all decided that allowing 5% of the cohort to ruin the credibility of the 95% isn't good business.

oreos

If there are no facts [that point to lack of competence] then the school will deal with the spurious complaint and the teacher will continue to teach. No?

Why assume hysteria when a parent just wants their child to be correctly taught? (in this one subject, they are not displaying this concern about all subjects)

Posters should stop letting their imaginations run wild. I have no information from teachers at other schools: my faith in my own abilities to analyse the situation is rock-solid

Thank you, pickledsiblings, for the expression (euphemism) "out of his depth".

Yes, there is massive shortage of teachers in France, as in the UK. Schools have to make themselves more attractive to good candidates than their competitors and this is the underlying issue.

Just make sure 'out of his depth' isn't conveying that you are accepting of his errors because of the overwhelming situation the teacher finds himself in.

It's certainly kinder than the statements I've offered previously so that may be how you want to present your issue.

Blimey, no wonder teachers feel so undermined/bullied by parents sometimes.

I think I'm going to focus on the fact that his subject specialism (an MFL) is not the subjects he has been appointed to teach (I have found his CV on LinkedIn) and, while I am not averse to teachers teaching subjects in which they are not formally qualified, I am averse to teachers teaching subjects about which they have inadequate knowledge (in this case, less than the DC).

Was there really any need to ask the other parents to join the gang, so to speak, instead of just handling it as an individual? It all smacks of bullying to be honest.

No, it doesn't, it smacks of common sense. If a parent has concerns about a teacher, it makes all sorts of sense to talk to other parents to see if they have similar concerns, in case the parent is wrong or has misinterpreted something, or in case it is something peculiar to their child. It also makes absolute sense if a number of parents have concerns to present them together. If a parent does so individually, the school's response is highly likely to be along the lines of "No-one else is complaining, your child must be lying to you" or that the parent is being over-fussy. If a number of parents demonstrate the same concerns, with evidence (of which there seems to be plenty here), the school has to pay attention and can't marginalise or pick them off.

This exercise that he set....was it from a book or one he had devised himself? Are you a native speaker, and the subject in question is that language?

Longtimelurker, why do you claim that this concern is based mostly on hearsay evidence from a 7 year old?
(a) This child is 11;
(b) It is based also on evidence from other parents;
(c) OP has cited very specifically the fact that it is also based on evidence from several pieces of incompetently marked homework.

Thank you, inimitable. It's exactly that: parents double/triple check their impressions as no-one wants to make an unfounded complaint or raise a false issue.

Look, I get that this isn't your first language and I'm usually the last person to pick holes in people's grammar ... but it is relevant here.

Am I understanding rightly that you have issues with the way this bloke is teaching English grammar, and its not his or your first language?

You say DC were totally confused as they are all fully master this particular aspect of grammar.

If that is a fair sample of your own English grammar, are you sure you are able to analyse his? There are mistakes here that are glaring to a native speaker.

So all this knowledge, criticism of work, parents getting together has happened in 2 weeks?

Strikes me as a group of parents you all liked the previous teacher so much that it didn't matter what the new one did, they wouldn't be 'good enough'.

I also don't know how you know what he was appointed teach by finding his CV on linked in, unless you have access to his actual contract which I doubt very much

It's quite easy to work out though bubbles.

If a teacher says on linked in that his specialism is say French and German and he's employed to teach Latin...particularly in a situation where there are no Latin teachers...

Bubbles, you do realise that the children concerned have moved to a new school? Why would they necessarily all even know the previous teacher?

herethereandeverywhere - thank you for your suggestions. They are great but a bit too aggressive for the person I am dealing with in the first instance. I need jargon and euphemisms at this stage to soften it up and not hurt egos.

The teachers who you and we all loved and supported for the past 8 years and got you to a very high standard were in fact wrong and this new person, whose ideas are completely different to any you have seen before, is right?

Jeeves ^ This is from the OP own posts.

OP I will give my pov as a french citizen.

Some teachers are crap. I've had some when I was at school. However, I can not imagine anyone who would actually go and complain to the school about it with the hope that said teacher will be replaced.

Unless your dc is a fully private school, the teachers will NOT be appointed by the school. The HT will have very little to say about the candidates as such (ie if the 'academie' only has that applicant, that's what you will get esp if it's for a 'remplacement' of an existing teacher). That teacher might not have the right 'training' from his CV (The effort you had to put in to find it would make me feel like I had been stalked though) but it might also not reflect his knoweledge (ie he might have preferred NOT to teach that subject and therefore left it out from said CV) so I would be careful about that.

Jeanne - of course English is my first language and one stray extra word in a post written on MN on my phone on the bus or in a cafe is hardly indicative of anything.

Kevin - as I have said previously - don't let your imagination run wild. You are not describing the situation we are in.

I'm sorry - I got confused by the references to French and assumed it wasn't.

But ... it's not 'one stray extra word'. Your grammar isn't great. That's fine, no one cares, certainly not me. But are you sure you know when he's getting it wrong?

I said year 7, not 7 years old, which would equate to being 11.

I just stated this because, it has been known in the past for parents to take what their children say as gospel and then run with it. For incompetantly marked work, there is a slight difference. But again it depends on what we are talking about here.

In the past I've had parents of year 7s leaping about all over the place complaining about things like marking, lessons etc, when the way it is done at secondary is just different.

I'm also very wary of parents using terms like "inadequate", when they are using information gathered over a little more than a week and a half.

Raise your concern, but only about your child, don't go in and say "We all think that". Don't ask for jargon to make your complaint sound better if you don't think it will stand up on its own.

A fair bit of this smacks of bullying and its unfair.

SheGot - yes - and it's rather worse than that. A British teacher of French and German could very conceivably have done A-level Latin and be a perfectly competent teacher of amo, amas, amat to 11 year olds. This is a lot more baroque!

Jeanne - calm down. This is MN. We write as we speak on here.

Btw, as a student, I have been in the situation where I was learning Greek (Ancient Greek instead of the more 'usual' Latin). There was very very few people who actually had been teaching it recently (well ONE person only who happened to leave before I did my Alevels).
So we had another teacher, one that HAD learnt Greek but had NOT taught it for YEARS. If he had been doing his CV, I doubt he would have put Ancient Greek on it lol but it also doesn't mean he wasn't suitable to teach.
Yes he was rusty. Yes sometimes he got it wrong but somehow we all manage to learn what was right and progress and get very good marks at A levels.

What I a trying to say is BE CAREFUL about that CV. It might or it might not reflect the ability of the teacher.

And one last word of wisdom.
My dcs are bilingal in French but have to do French in secondary. They both have been moaning about how said teachers can't speak French ie their accent is sompletely wrong.
The oldest one also has spotted errors written on the board (ie they were BASIC mistakes for some one who should be fluent). Do you think I should go and see the school and ask them to get rid of most of the teachers in the school because of that?
These mistakes don't stop the children from learning French. They don't stop them to progress and get very good results for the GCSE and A levels. They just aren't as perfect as a (good) native speaker would be. Not a big surprise there.