Teaching maths when you only have GCSE

[xsquared]

Not me, but I have several colleagues whose subject specialism is not maths, but either because of a shortage of qualified maths teachers, or for whatever reason, they are teaching numeracy or maths up to GCSE foundation level.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a snob and there are plenty of effective teachers who are not officially "qualified". On the other hand, I have seen several examples of poor understanding of maths from the teacher, leading to giving wrong information to the class.

What is there to do? Nobody wants to teach maths anymore.

What is the secret of schools in S Wales??

I'm guessing that in south Wales teacher salaries are comparatively good and house prices low. I returned to live here and the schools I know have low turnover and good retention rates.

There isn't much of a commuter culture here in south Wales and it is difficult to travel. I once had a call from an English recruitment consultant who couldn't get why I wouldn't consider a job in Aberystwyth when I lived in Swansea.

So teachers stay put.

I don’t have any issue with teachers like Fallen doing a SKE course and training to teach maths. It doesn’t normally work like that though, a timetabler will just see someone under allocation and stick a bunch of maths on their timetable.

The idea that people are out there who can barely pass GCSE themselves teaching it is horrifying. I feel bad when I don’t get 100% on an A-level paper!

No, I am unusual! The school where I did it were great for allowing people to actually train in a second specialism. Quite a few biologists did Physics SKE too.