19 teachers in first year

[dubscot03]

Is it common to have more than 1 teacher for a subject in first year. My son has just been given his timetable and has 3 different teachers for maths and 3 teachers for English etc.. totalling 19 different teachers.

It happens but it’s not normal. Someone has made a complete hash list f the timetable. You usually would only get this in a couple of subjects.

Hash of!

Two teachers is not that unusual - if you have a part-timer in English/maths/science, it's almost inevitable. It can usually be managed well - they'll often split the syllabus between them. Three is very poor timetabling. A good timetabler might also try to avoid the same class being hit with too many subjects being split, but if maths is set then that's difficult to do.
It's very early to have next year's timetable, so it's possible that it will be "tidied up" between now and then. Certainly if I was one of the maths teachers, I'd be looking at the department timetable to see if some swaps could be made to avoid the three-way split.

That's what I thought, not sure how this will work. I think I will contact the school.

Thanks for the reply

I’ve worked In a lot of schools and it’s fairly normal esp in “good” schools. It’s so staff can teach their specialism.

Thanks @lanthanum , this is my first time using this site, so not sure how to reply directly to message. Hopefully they sort it out maybe I'm better to wait and see.

Is it possible that if he hasn’t yet joined the school these are the three teachers that will be covering different sets when the pupils are streamed in some way? So year 7 English teacher could be anyone of these three for his particular class, rather than he will have all 3 all year.

From the timetable it looks like these are his allocated teachers. My older son went to the school (now at Uni) he was lucky and only had 1 teacher per subject, he said some of his friends had 2 teachers. He found 3 teachers strange, I'm hoping it's a timetabling error as can't see how this will provide consistency.

DD has always had separate teachers for English Lang and English Lit and one year she had a job share in English Lang- hence 3 teachers for English.

3 teachers for maths sounds odd though. (Except at A Level where 1 each for pure, mechanics and statistics is very normal!)

Good to hear it can work never thought it could be different parts of the curriculum they will be teaching. Think I’ll wait and see how goes.

Have to say I'm pretty surprised by so many positive replies here.
Most likely it's a shared group - but timetabling constraints meant that both the teachers couldn't teach one of the lessons so a third teacher was required. I would be incredibly surprised if it was so specialists could teach different areas of the curriculum in y7 - although it could be presented that way. There's a good chance at least one of them isn't actually a maths teacher I would think .

3 teachers for Maths and English with a total of 19 teachers is ridiculous. Either the person making up the timetable is incompetent or there is a serious staffing problem.

Secondary teacher/SLT here. That's a mess of timetabling. Some KS3 core subject classes having 2 teachers because they can't make it all fit for 1 teacher and timetabling A level and GCSE takes priority is relatively common. But usually there will be a lead teacher who plans things to make it consistent and a second teacher who "covers" the lesson that doesn't fit in the others' timetable. But I've never seen, and would never allow 3 as a standard timetable. It's just too disjointed. I would be asking questions.

I just realised you said "first year" OP. Presume that you are in Scotland. That's definitely not normal there either (I used to teach there) and is the same as Year 7. The argument about teaching specialisms really doesn't come into play until later. At first year level it's very much a "broad general education" and there's no need to be seeing that many staff in a week. I also worry for the teachers as just think how many more pupils that means they each see. And therefore how much more thinly spread they are in terms of getting to know them. You will end up in a position where they don't even know half the names by Christmas.

The one good thing is if you are in Scotland that all the timetabled teachers will at least be specialists. It's not like England where anyone can be made to teach anything! Short in science? That's ok, the PE department all did a bit of sports science in their degrees so that qualifies them doesn't it?!

Ds had 2 teachers a few times and it only ever worked well for French where you need to be practicing all the skills throughout the course, they taught the same topics at the same time with one teacher focus on reading /writing and the other on listening/talking.

Other subjects such as chemistry and maths they split the course between the two teachers (I assume easier for teachers to plan), but it put more pressure on ds as he was always learning two topics at once.

One class got chemistry unit 1, time to revise, end of unit 1 test, unit 2, time to revise, end of unit 2 test, time to revise before prelims. His class got a mix up of unit 1/2, everything running late, they were still getting new content the week before the tests and then they got both end of unit tests in the same week, just a week before prelims so no time for feedback before. Both teachers constantly let the class know they were not happy with the way they had to teach, he knew from the other class they were miles behind, all of which did wonders for his motivation. He scrapped an A but it completely turned him off chemistry which was previously his favourite science.

In English they had two teachers with completely different ideas on how to structure answers and it left them confused.

From ds's experience we strongly believe the continuity of one teacher is much better, but there isn't anything you can do about getting 2 teachers other than prepare your dc and ensure they stay organised and on top of the work. 3 teachers is ridiculous.

Thanks for all the comments, sorry I should have mentioned were in Scotland although realise y7 is the same. I will email the school to get an understanding and check if it’s a timetabling error.

I contacted the school not good news they are struggling to recruit maths teachers so one of the teachers is a sub and they’re not sure why he has 3 for English as also has a sub, so they will check that. Hopefully they manage to recruit for maths and sort the timetable for English.

I think it's quite common. I've just looked at my S2's timetable and she has 18 different teachers with multiple teachers in Maths and English. She's had 5 different Maths teachers this year due to problems finding Maths teachers for maternity cover. They have been well coordinated so it's not been a problem. She has found the Maths very easy though, might be more of a problem if that wasn't the case.