Ineffective teacher

[Advicerequest]

One of my son's teachers is hugely ineffective. Extremely slow, confused and Unconfident. I have discovered (on the grapevine). that she was nervous about teaching the course and had share this with other teachers. Today my son discovered that she is using the notes of a former student (a levels last year) to teach the class. My son is having to compensate by teaching himself his a level from the internet which is extremely time consumjng. I talked to a former student who told me that this teacher had a reputation for being one to avoid.
I have approached the school tactfully but they are reluctant to acknowledge just how rubbish the teacher is and are monitoring my son (but not actually much practical to help other than giving advice on reading). It's a private school! My son is having zero issues in all other classes and loves all his other teachers. I'm not sure how to deal with this situation. Should I escalate? He has 18 months to go.

Here we go again... 🙄

You dont have to quote do you read and move on.

Using previous examples of good work is used by many teachers as a teaching tool. It's encouraged by exam boards who provide them too.

The teacher will have been thrown in at the deep end. It happened to me with GCSE History a few years ago.

It's a shame you didn't engage more with your own teachers. Especially the literacy ones.

@LegalAdvice4Education amazing how quickly you found this thread "Hannah".

Sheesh, bots aren't what they used to be.

Off you pop.

You could always take your own advice.

Just made a post go over there to vent its not fair to take over someones thread.

This. A friend works in a prestigious grammar school, she's head of economics. Her biggest stress is recruiting staff. Last summer they had one application for an A level economics teaching position. She had no choice but to appoint him and now has to manage a minimally motivated person. And remember, this is at am outstanding grammar school with a good reputation for treating teachers well and with generally highly motivated pupils. There is an enormous retention and recruitment crisis in teaching and many excellent and hard working teachers have left because the job has broken them.
So, to all the mumsnetters who told teachers to leave if the supposedly easy job was too hard, we've followed your advice and you don't seem to like it.

As an independent school teacher who is teaching an A Level equivalent subject that is not in my subject area (alongside my actual subject) this year because of cost cutting measures, I sympathise with your son's teacher.

Please bear in mind that this isn't your son's teacher's choice. She will have been asked to teach the course by senior management and it is therefore senior management's responsibility to ensure that she is adequately prepared to teach.

In my case, I was sent on a weekend residential course at the start of the school year, and I have a very supportive and proactive Head of Department who has given me comprehensive resources and planning to help me. If I hadn't have had this support, then I would be struggling massively.

Stop gossiping and going behind this teacher's back to find out about how shit she is from as many people as you can - how unkind! - and go to the Head of Department directly with your concerns, with whatever SLT member who is responsible for Teaching and Learning cc'd in. The Head of Department for the subject area should be ensuring your son's teacher has the support and resources they need to teach the course. If the school has put this poor teacher on the spot due to their own staffing or financial issues, they need to be taking responsibility for mitigating the damage to students through choosing to put an essentially unqualified person in front of them. The teacher is, I'm sure, doing the best she can, but senior management at the school need to be held to account to ensure she gets the support to teach effectively.

I might also add that this situation is going to happen more and more in independent schools, who are trying to attract more bums on seats to pay the increasing bills by offering a wider variety of subjects at sixth form level, without considering who is actually going to teach these subjects. Throwing non subject specialist teachers in at the deep end and just expecting them to get on with it is really not on, and parents speaking up about this is what's needed to ensure teachers are given the support they need. Complaining to the poor teacher is really not going to help the situation when the problem is not of her making.

Well said.

Private schools have no obligation to hire qualified teachers... I also don't see anything wrong with your child putting in effort to teach himself, that's a highly valuable skill.

Well, there is something wrong with your child having to teach themselves when the parents are presumably paying the school a lot of money to do that.

However, as previous posters have said, schools can't magic teachers out of thin air. However, they can better support struggling teachers.

At my DD's private school - there were numerous complaints about the GCSE physics tutor. She has lessons observed and was given time to improve. There was no improvement , so she was replaced.

The school CAN do more. Especially as you are paying for your DS to receive a good education.

There are some teachers you just wont gel with. But it doesn't sound like this is what this is

@chopc of course she was rightly replaced if there was no improvement despite support. They were fortunate to find another physicist though.

You don't become a genius by relying on teacher's, I'f the knowledge is there then its down to the individual to make the most of the texts