A Level teaching time/ fuding help

[Piggywaspushed]

Before going in to full attack mode with DS's sixth form, I want to get some facts straight. I am sure there are people who can help me on wonderful MN!

Can anyone explain how sixth form funding works? I recall hearing a couple of years back that schools are no longer funded 'per leg' as our head used to say, but that they have to prove they are providing a certain number of hours of 'education'? At my place, there was much discussion about how we would be able to prove this to DfE but I didn't pay much attention.

Now, DS has started full A levels in Spanish, business and politics. They have 12 x 50 minute lessons (all doubles) on the timetable per fortnight. In business and politics, two of these lessons (ie one double ) is unstaffed (we have this at my school so I am not unfamiliar with this concept, even if it is not the greatest idea in practice!) so essentially they are having 10 50 minute lessons (some of them are 55 mins : weird). less than a private school but I can live with it.

But here comes the big however..

However, in Spanish (where I also suspect the teacher is not qualified : she is a native speaker, young and not strong in the classroom ) there are FOUR non taught lessons, so only 8 x 50 mins with a teacher per fortnight. Since these are all doubles, he basically only sees the teacher 4 times a fortnight. This is unacceptable for so many reasons! In addition, in the large number of already untaught lessons, work hasn't really been provided or set and MFL is not exactly something you can teach yourself! In case anyone is wondering, this is it : the classes are not shared between two teachers.

I think the school is going to justify this by saying they have 12 lessons, but that's bollocks, isn't it? And it isn't the same as other subjects! I know in French 11 of the 12 lessons are being taught.

It's a shambles.

The one fact I do know is A levels are predicated on 360 hours teaching time and DH reckons that's about 9 hours a fortnight.

They really should have communicated this better, shouldn't they?

Advice? Help? Thoughts? Shared dismay?

My local school sixth form in Surrey is delivering all A Levels on just over four lessons a week. They say 5 fifty minute lessons and one supervised study period. It is a new plan this year.

are all open plan

Oh dear god one of those. They can use the money they're getting from your DS's sixth form funding that they're not spending on a Spanish teacher to buy some walls

So the school takes money from the sixth form teaching budget, then gets crap results, so pupils stop going there and it becomes a downward spiral. That doesn't make sense, surly heads are not that stupid?

Not wishing to derail the thread but ... how does funding work for 6th forms that do the IB? Required teaching is 26 hours per week!

5 hours each for 3 subjects
3 hours each for 3 other subjects
2 hours for Theory of Knowledge

Guided learning hours is a bit old fashioned. We are moving towards total qualification instead. Exam boards only suggest hours and those hours do not necessarily mean teacher input all the time.

We are plugging gaps with non specialists especially a key stage three. We can not afford to have teachers sat around in the staff room not delivering lessons.

user , I see your thinking : who knows that may well be the outcome butt he school will have many balls to juggle I suppose. I am supposed to be grateful because at one stage Spanish wasn't going to be running at all. The only reason it is was because a viable number of students opted for it. I think that probably irked them because it meant they had to provide a teacher at a time when they had a member of staff depart and one take maternity leave.

Wow horrid, I can see you are being pragmatic - but ,a s teacher myself, heaven forfend I have any free time time sat around in the staffroom otherwise known as PPA?! Do teachers not get frees at your school??

I thought it was Ofqual that actually regulated that the new A levels were supposed to amount to a certain amount of , let's call it, input time. I think it's a farce - even if it is expedient- to suggest that more than about one hour of it per cycle can be untaught. We are getting to such a divided school system again, where private schools are resplendent in small class sizes and awash with curriculum time and the state sector keeps having to cut back. I find it strange how little dissatisfaction there is with education quality and provision at the older end. the only press hoo ha recently has been over the grammar school massaging its results.

MN is areal eye opener. I shall not complain at my own school now about our 9 periods a fortnight and class size cap at A level of 25.

bringon - that sounds a lot : but it's possibly a non issue as I am not aware of a school outside the private sector offering IB : presumably because it can't be staffed/ doesn't work for league tables.

We get frees (PPA) but we are at the minimum. We all had contact time increased by one lesson last year including SLT so we did not have to recruit extra staff.

I am concerned that with just over four hours results will plummet.

We have over 25 in a number of lessons. Some students have been taken on who did not meet the entry criteria and have level 3 or 2 in English and Maths. It is all about numbers and getting funding in sixth form to prop up rest of the school.

Time to leave before the shit hits the fan

If that's' 4 hours a week horrid, that's still more than my DS is getting.

The galling thing is that , probably, all of you except the studentswill work harder on fewer hours (it's some law of economics isn't it?), results won't drop and it will become a precedent. Anything that has ever been introduced at my gaffe as a 'short term measure' or 'under review' has stuck.

My DS got an A in Spanish GCSE but that was a combination of good teaching ,t he relatively low demands of MFL GCSE pre reform and natural ability - definitely not hard work. His indicator grade will be quite low as his other GCSE results were less than spectacular so, statistically, I imagine they will not see him as under achieving until he gets a D or lower. Such are the vagaries of A level target grades! I, on the other hand, would expect someone with full marks in Spanish GCSE to go on and get an A - B at A level.

hadn't quite finished my thought, there : ... and he isn't getting the teaching - expertise or time-wise- to secure that kind of grade.

I am working to ensure results don't drop but will only have an impact on a small number. I have some kids in the class who are 7/8/9 who will be finebut others who are 3/4 max are doomed to fail.

The school has not even started English re-sit lessons yet.

All we are doing is driving kids towards private tuition to make up the shortfall.

Whereas the local independents are laughing. The kids who went to Tiffin sixth forms are happy they made the right choice to move

We did 7 hours a fortnight Higher and 5 hour a fortnight Standard for IB. Funding is the same as A levels, and IB is an expensive option for state schools.

Sorry, 8 hours Higher.

Indeed : we have never had private tuition ourselves (being a maths teacher and an English teacher...) but more and more do in the ordinary comprehensive sector. MN has made me realise how commonplace tuition is really.

Luckily for us, we each have a friend who teaches Spanish so we do have a back up plan but it really shouldn't have to come to this. And DS is quite an awkward sod who resents and kicks against any interestinterference in his education.

fwiw, I think one of the biggest GCSE to A Level leaps is in MFLs, especially from the old spec GCSE to the new style linear A Levels.

over the week we teach each subject for 5 hours (6 x 50 min lessons) but they are also blocked, so 1 full morning and 1 full afternoon so we do get very close to that time rather than waste any time when they are single lessons.

Our 6th form lessons though are not covered if we are off ill, only if long term illness will some cover (usually via the department)

I don't think sixth form lessons are ever covered anywhere are they cricket?

DS has 9 hours per fortnight in all 4 subjects (they still take 4 ASs, then usually drop to 3 A-levels). One of his subjects has 27 in the class, the others are 10-18. All lessons are an hour, so it is basically 4 lessons in 1 week, 5 in the next in a fortnightly timetable.

All 'free' lessons are in a specific supervised area, with individual workstations / areas divided by partitions.

One hour per week is compulsory PE of some type.

Also have a couple of hours per fortnight on EPQ and a couple of hours with a speaker / looking at UCAS / careers, that type of thing.

So over a fortnight of 50 hours, he has 36 hours 'subject' contact, 2 hours 'PE' contact, 2 hours 'EPQ' (currently contact but will become more independent, though supervised), 2 hours of looser contact - could be a whole sixth form or year group speaker in a lecture style, for example - and 8 hours of supervised private study.

In Y13, he will have fewer contact hours in total, as I think he will have fewer subject hours, the PE does not have to be on school premises so may (if permitted) include e.g. cycling, and while supervised private study rooms are available, it is no longer compulsory to study there.

State comprehensive in a historically underfunded county.

"I don't think sixth form lessons are ever covered anywhere are they cricket?" I know a local school that does but they are unusual; whilst the odd lesson is ok, we had a member of staff who was off for quite a quite a while last year and even though the department tried their hardest to offer some cover they couldn't obviously cover every lesson with a specialist so the students really did struggle during that time period. When the staff member returned to ensure the students were fully prepared, they worked a lot of extra hours teaching the students after normal school hours

I Hope the following helps re-assure you re study hours Piggy.

DS is at supposedly top London Indy, they have very long holidays AND abandon normal lessons after May half term for "enrichment activities", like writing a 3000 essay on any subject for the school to mark! This means he only got 29 weeks of actual teaching in lower 6th, I've counted. There are 7 lessons of 40 minutes for each subject a week but many are singles so you lose a lot of time moving around. I calculate that even if he got the whole 280 minutes a week for 29 weeks that only gives about 135 teaching hours, way short of the 180 hours required.

I am actually quite shocked at the shortfall particularly in view of the amount of wasted time he has to spend at school for long lunch hours to facillitate clubs 6th formers don't attend and compulsory community activities. Younger DCs are already aware that I will never pay for 6th form again.

Goodness cake. the enrichment and stuff is fabulous but it does sound like you were short changed! I guess complacency can set in in schools with high achievers!

Complacency sets in because the parents step up. Its easier to make up lost classroom time for essay based subjects, but I don't know anyone without a maths tutor and most have science tutors as well unless parents are Drs or science graduates.

If you do end up tutoring at least you're not paying twice and you know you're not alone.