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Whether you're a permanent teacher, supply teacher or student teacher, you'll find others in the same situation on our Staffroom forum.

Failed Final Teaching Practice Primary

26 replies

grownuplefthome · 09/02/2021 20:41

Can anybody advise me please, my daughter is 21 and just been told she has failed her 3rd year teaching practice, she was told three weeks ago by her class mentor that she was going to fail if she didnt agree to a cause for concern , MJ was worried that this would impact on her final result if she didn't agree to it. The teacher has given her very little support and with covid restrictions the university has not sent the uni mentor into the school. She lives away from home and in rented accommodation I am very concerned as she isn't sure now what to do she seems to be left alone to get on with it - she was given the opportunity to not complete this week at the school, but she said she would go in till the end of the teaching practice because she didn't want to let the children down. I feel she has not had the support she needed throughout this final year and if she had taken a year out she would not have been in the same situation.

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MrsHamlet · 09/02/2021 20:52

She can't just fail like that. If she is on a cause for concern, her training provider needs to get involved.
I've put trainees on cause for concern many times and they always have really specific targets to meet and clear timescales.
She needs to speak to her training provider urgently.

grownuplefthome · 09/02/2021 20:55

She has emailed her uni tutor, but she hasn't had a reply, last two years her teaching practices were high 2s and all assignments high 70's to mid 80's%

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MrsHamlet · 09/02/2021 21:02

Assignments aren't really relevant because they're the PGCE bit.
Has she got a copy of the cause for concern? Who put her on it? The classroom mentor or the senior one? Do the uni know?

annie987 · 09/02/2021 21:09

I’d be tempted to advise her not to finish the week and instead sided the time getting in touch with her uni tutor. If she doesn’t complete the practice (I.e this week), she may be able to redo it rather than fail it.
Any concerns should have been raised by the school tutor

annie987 · 09/02/2021 21:09

Oops
... long before now.

MrsHamlet · 09/02/2021 21:16

But if she doesn't go back in, the school won't take kindly to it.
It's a mess but made worse by the uni. I expect contact from them within 24 hours of raising a cause for concern.

grownuplefthome · 09/02/2021 21:33

She was placed on it by the class teacher, but the uni were advised, she has not seen anyone from uni in person this whole academic year, she will finish the practice because she is dedicated, but today the moderator didn't even attend the school, the class teacher has said she has failed her, but how can one teacher be so differing in judgement of her skills against two others? MJ even asked not to be placed in the year group she is in now, but has!

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MrsHamlet · 09/02/2021 21:40

She really needs a copy of the cause for concern and what to know why exactly she has failed. 3 weeks from the start to the end of the process is very little - unless it's standard 8

grownuplefthome · 09/02/2021 21:51

what is standard 8 please?

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grownuplefthome · 09/02/2021 21:53

she has been told, by the class teacher, that she isn't confident enough to leave her in charge of the room, even though two previous years teachers said she had good command of the class.

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MrsHamlet · 09/02/2021 22:01

Professionalism.
Has she got a copy of the paperwork? And is she in a union?

NathanJ2 · 09/02/2021 22:06

I was in the same boat as OP's daughter on my PGCE a few years ago. I saw the practice through for the kids but managed to get my uni to see the school hadn't been supportive. That was in the June and in the following September I did an extra teaching placement to complete my PGCE and get QTS, which I passed with flying colours. Sometimes it really is the school that's the problem! I'm now successfully working as a Reading Teacher in a Special School.

grownuplefthome · 09/02/2021 22:11

I dont think she is in a union, and at the moment. she isn't responding to me, she is very hurt as I understand x

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MrsHamlet · 09/02/2021 22:15

If she intends to go back into school she must join a union. It's free for trainees.
Unfortunately they won't represent her now for something that's already happened.
She needs that paperwork and she needs to speak to her tutor or someone in the placement office ASAP. You can't just fail a trainee... even the one who told my colleague to fuck off was given another chance. Not by me - I told him to leave and him escorted from the premises.

HamCob · 10/02/2021 13:14

I've mentored PGCE & Bed students in the past and it all sounds very odd.

Usually a cause for concern would be logged early on in the placement with both the student and the uni. An action plan focused on the areas of concern would be put together with targets and timescales.

Also, it wouldn't solely be the decision of the mentor in school to fail a student. Their opinion would feed into the decision but the uni would have the final say. If a student was at risk of failing then the uni would have been having some frank conversations with them well before now. If you are sure that none of this has happened then she needs to push for the opportunity to do another placement.

grownuplefthome · 10/02/2021 13:43

Thank you I will forward her your message. X

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annaSab · 10/02/2021 22:51

Like others here have said if the Uni has not beenin scho and the schoolhas been unsupportive I would question it. Get all the paperwork together and complain to the uni. A similar thing happened to me in my final 4th yr tp. In the end they stopped using the school. After that I repeated the tp in another school who were lovely and with a different uni mentor who could not have been more different.
It will feel like the end of the world right now but def question this. Any concerns should have had actions plans out in place. Good luck.

grownuplefthome · 11/02/2021 09:46

Thank you to everyone who has offered advice, my daughter went into the school yesterday and asked for all paperwork regarding this and will begin the process of complaining to the uni, the only problem now is that she will get no funding for next year and her house contract ends in June, she lives away (70 miles) and has been told she might be able to retake the teaching practice in September. Watch this space.

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yt65 · 25/03/2021 12:10

My daughter is in the same position - 3 weeks from the end of her 3rd year placement, having had no experience during the 2nd year due to pandemic and been told she needs a supportive plan and may fail this placement - has had very little support from the university all year. Any ideas how to support her would be appreciated as like the original post she is lacking confidence now

Chillychangchoo · 25/03/2021 17:07

Probably a blessing in disguise.

QuidditchQueen · 25/03/2021 18:39

I had rubbish training like this.
If the tutor is not responding she must escalate within the university.

LolaSmiles · 30/03/2021 16:31

When I've had to go through the Cause for Concern route with a trainee, it's usually because (some of these):

  1. Their classroom management is so poor that teachers do not feel they can safely leave the class with the trainee
  2. Their subject knowledge is so weak, and lessons poorly planned as a result, that their teaching is causing little to no progress being made by pupils. In the worst situations, the trainee is teaching lessons with factual inaccuracies in.
  3. Their overall professional conduct is poor eg they aren't meeting deadlines, aren't following basic expectations, they aren't talking to their class teachers

At this point, I would usually let the training provider know that we have concerns, and that it will become a Cause for Concern should the trainee not act on the feedback. This means the training provider can check in with the trainee.

Then the thing that tips it from a learning or training journey into a Cause for Concern is that the class teachers and mentors have spoken repeatedly to the trainee about these areas, the trainee has been given clear targets and direction, the trainee has been signposted to CPD where appropriate and the trainee has repeatedly not engaged with the training process.

Once the Cause for Concern goes in, this triggers a meeting with me, the trainee, and the training provider to discuss concerns, all agree a way forward and this is all formally recorded. Whilst I'm not saying this is the case for your DC, there have been times when I've sat in meetings with trainees, with the training provider, and the trainee has claimed they had no idea there were concerns and nobody supported them / the Cause for Concern form came out of the blue.

Some schools can be very unsupportive as well, as I've heard when I've been in ITT meetings, but typically I find they're the ones more likely to pass them on a mix of 2s and 3s for someone else to deal with later.

Your DC needs to get all her mentor meeting notes together and all her lesson observations as that will show where her strengths and weaknesses are. It should also document what support has been offered (or not) in these areas. If she hasn't been having regular mentoring then that's probably a bigger concern than the uni tutors not being in.

grownuplefthome · 30/03/2021 17:51

Ok, thank you for your feedback, sadly my daughter didn’t have any support from either the school or university she is currently in touch with one of her tutors, I feel that she would have a cause for a formal complaint for lack of communication and support and bullying from the class teacher who constantly criticised her accent.

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LolaSmiles · 30/03/2021 21:00

I'd written a reply and it's just refreshed Angry. Apologies if the second attempt sounds abrupt.

I hope you didn't think that I was disbelieving your DD. I just wanted to give you as her mum a frame of reference of what's typical.

The accent situation could be a valid claim of bullying, or it could be reasonable feedback. One of the Teacher Standards explicitly covers use of Standard English and sometimes people mix accent and dialect up. If she's speaking in a way that sounds regional, but is otherwise understandable to the children and she is using Standard English then I'd agree with you that she has a case to complain on this grounds. If she is being regularly challenged for using non-standard English (eg 'incorrect' grammar that's associated with a region, slang words and phrases that are regional) or she's communicating in a way that is difficult for children to understand then it's valid feedback, albeit something she might not like to hear.

In terms of next steps for raising the complaint for lack of support, she will need evidence of how and where support is lacking.
For example, if some normal procedures have changed due to Covid, but there's replacement options then she needs to be clear on that and comment on where the covid time procedures haven't been followed.
She would probably benefit from collecting all her mentor meeting minutes (every provider I've worked with has this as a log form that is kept by mentor and trainee, with some asking it to be uploaded to a central platform). These will show what's been discussed, her strengths and weaknesses, her targets to work on and any tasks she's directed to do/CPD the mentor has organised or suggested.

Trainees should also be observed regularly and over the course of the placement that will usually involve someone other than the class teacher. In secondary we tend to have ITT leads, but in primary I know sometimes the head or the deputy does this, maybe a Key Stage leader in larger schools. Each formal observation will contain a summary of the lesson, plus development targets for her to work on.

If there's not been enough support then these documents will tend to reflect this eg. Not enough observations for the time on placement, missing mentor meetings. They're quite useful for a black and white starting point.

Beyond that, these records would also highlight if there were concerns about progress. For example, where I have had concerns about a trainee, it's all over their mentor notes and observations over several weeks. If your DD has been told she has Cause for Concern due to classroom management and behaviour then I would expect to see that a mentor has discussed this several times, with suggestions as to what to do next. If this isn't present then that adds to your DD's case that she wasn't aware of concerns. If it is in the documents then it's a more grey area and could be a situation where a bad fit placement experience plus a trainee not listening to feedback has culminated in a bad situation.

I don't think you've got grounds to complain that she asked not to be put in a year group and was placed in that year group. Trainees don't tend to get a say in their timetable, unless there's something from a previous placement they need to look at (eg. Placement 1 was all KS3, and a course requirement is to teach across 2 key stages so the second placement must have some GCSE).
Equally, I don't think there's grounds to complain because one placement has graded her lower than others. This can, and does, happen for a variety of reasons.

Regarding the Cause for Concern procedure, your DD needs to see what the procedure is and check if it has been followed. Where it hasn't been followed then that can go into the complaint.

Hopefully that doesn't sound to harsh, but I think for her complaint to have weight, she needs to focus on the clear ways that things were missing, otherwise it becomes "nobody supported me and my last placements said I was great".

hedgehogger1 · 30/03/2021 22:38

I and a fellow trainee had a bullying teacher on one placement. She used to hide out photocopying!