Substitute all the time

[purpleme12]

My child started high school in September

For the second half of last term (maybe longer?) they had about one lesson of proper PE, what it was supposed to be. Gymnastics and hockey.

Then after that the teacher must have been off because there's been a substitute. So they've either done gymnastics but not the proper one with the teacher teaching them, they basically just do whatever gymnastics they want to do or everyone does dodgeball (which she'd done in the first part of the term already).

My child is active and is actually one who really likes PE and really gets something out of it. She was really loving that she'd be doing gymnastics, something she could be good at, and really liked the hockey when she did do it.
And I feel she's better at PE than the academic subjects as well.

This term it's still a substitute so far....

Is this normal??
Is this something I just have to accept?
I don't like that she doesn't seem to getting the same opportunities in PE than she does in the other subjects when she's one that gets so much out of it.

It is normal to have cover teachers for prolonged periods these days due to teacher shortages, unfortunately. Schools don't just use supply teachers for no reason. If they were able to provide a permanent teacher, they would. Hopefully it's only temporary.

Supply teachers are common in secondary schools, certainly. At least the supply teacher is a PE teacher and not a general cover teacher otherwise they’d be sat in a classroom doing something desk based instead.

There is nothing you can do about it as a parent, so from that point of view you can only accept the situation. Presumably she has lots of opportunities outside of school for sports if she is already an active child.

Teaching isn’t particularly appealing as a profession atm, so I’m afraid this is normal, and will become increasingly so.

Totally normal.

Teaching has a horrendous recruitment and retention problem. Probably some of the adults that your child thinks is a 'teacher' is actually a cover supervisor.

Not ideal, or right, but sadly very normal.

Very normal. Our school is good and in a decent area. Mixed big city comp. Both West with good transport links. We have a lot of subs all the time. Teachers go sick for all sorts reason of leave and it’s hard to recruit. Schools is harder areas location wise & demographics may have a torrid time

Sorry @purpleme12 yes this is relatively normal. I would say I am slightly surprised at PE – that is one subject where there is actually not a shortage of qualified teachers. So I doubt if it is an inability to appoint (as it might well be if a maths or physics or French teacher left). But very possibly the teacher is off on long-term sickness – in which case it will be supply or maybe staff cover supervisor. When I taught in a school we were lucky enough to have a small team of cover supervisors on staff, who had different specialisms, which included a PE expert (and a humanities specialist, MFL specialist etc). Sounds like your DC's school may have similar.

Do they do sports activities out of school? If not I would look into that as with the best will in the world, two hours of PE a week in a class of 30 is unlikely to hit the spot with a sporty child. 11/12yo is a great age to start lots of sports, including athletics, rugby, badminton, climbing.

State high school PE and sports are usually very limited as they don’t have the funding for more than a couple hours lessons. Sport has to be done outside really. The only schools I know that have brilliant sports provision are £20k year near me

It’s not great but quite normal. I believe PE has to be taught by a qualified teacher or someone with a sports coach qualification (certainly this was the rule in primaries I taught in - TAs couldn’t be left to cover PE unless also sports coaches), so as above you’re quite lucky they’re still actually doing some PE and not something inside. Most lessons covered in secondary school will be TAs/cover supervisors not qualified teachers. My guess is the person covering is not confident with hockey or gym, both of which have the possibility of serious injuries if not managed well, which is why they’ve stuck with dodgeball.

It might be worth asking if there’s a pla going forward; if it’s continuing long term they might need to do a timetable swap so different classes are left with the unqualified teacher and your daughters class gets some lessons with someone qualified.

At least it’s easy to do sports outside school if school provision is shit, unlike geography, DT or whatever. Are there lunch clubs she can join at school to do the sports she likes?