What is it with useless supply teachers?

Question

Apologies to good supply, but working in a school I see some of the most useless excuses for teachers ever.

Why do schools hire obviously incompetent and poor teachers as supply?

Does anyone else have really bad supply or is it just my school?

just for answer 3 - I dont hold with the non specialist excuse

As a teaching assistant I am expected to be able to help children in every single department in school and have a working knowledge of that subject up to GCSE level.

This is without a degree and using personal knowledge and common sense. It also is with a much tinier paypacket at the end of the month.

I think someone who has a degree should be able to do better in class than just sit on their backside or do crowd control.

Answer 1

dont no but i once had one who locked herself in a cupboard, accidentally i hope.

Answer 2

I do a similar job though in special needs schools. Most of the teachers I have spoke to prefer supply for a number of reasons. Paper work has become a burden so if you do supply you don't have to do all the planning. If a teacher suffers/ has a bad time at a particular school they can just move on. No commitments. The pay is better for doing less as most get work through an agency. Your details may look good on paper but this does not demonstrate how poor the supply teacher really is.

Answer 3

You sound like someone with a grudge and seem to have some problem yourself with your finding your job too demanding. This is really a question you should take to your school admininstration since they hired her.

Supply teachers are normally hired to cover for absent teachers at short notice. However, they have to be prepared in advance for what any given class they may be given.

Many supply teachers will find themselves teaching in more than one school - quite possibly within the same week - and need to become aware of the different way each institution will work.

Either way, the admin is in charge of dealing with this situation but no one is stopping you from bring it to their attention.

Answer 4

Newly qualified teachers have a real uphill struggle in their first year, they are being exposed to a student group they have not met, so totally vulnerable in the classroom. Also high expectations from the classes they get to teach, regardless of their speciality subject. Teachers have to show an acute awareness of litigation and avoid any possible problems that could destroy their career before they even get started. So what is wrong with supply teachers; their vulnerability and ungrateful students.

Answer 5

I think you are being a bit harsh on supply teachers. They are drafted in at last minute, often to a subject in which they are not specialist and they are given maybe a txtbook page or a worksheet and that is it. As soon as the kids see a supply teacher, they think they have a lesson off so the supply teacher has their work cut out. I think you should cut them a bit a slack, a lot of them do great work....sometimes its more crowd control than teaching.

Answer 6

Perhaps some of the blame lays with the regular teacher. A good teacher has lesson plans prepared ahead of time, and work ready for a supply teacher to give to the students. S/he also has registers up to date, seating plans up to date, and all the administrative info caught up. It is very difficult to walk into a classroom cold, with no lesson plan available and no record of what the children did yesterday. That makes it pretty hard to provide continuity or reinforcement. It also makes it difficult to enforce order in the classroom if the students themselves are not used to keeping order or working cooperatively.
Not all supply teachers are incompetent, but some regular classroom teachers certainly are.

Answer 7

I agree. However it goes beyond supply teachers in our school! Unfortunately i have the displeasure of working with one of the worst teachers ever! She is rude, arrogant and nasty to the students. She is obnoxious and cruel. I have never known such a nasty vindictive woman. The next time i hear her belittle a child i will be reporting her!
Sorry rant over!

Answer 8

I also work in education,in my opinion these people,in the main are retired teachers/heads who are only interested in spare cash. At the end of the day,the kids suffer.

Answer 9

As a supply teacher myself but with Sixth Formers instead of school children, I think that you have every right to ask that question but I think that you should also question why some permanent teachers are also useless!

I also share your experience of watching poor teaching/professional practice. I went to work as a supply teacher at a college in central London (which will remain nameless) in January this year, because the previous college that I worked at in Essex (which will also remain nameless) as a permanent teacher was second rate and treated me very badly. I was an NQT at the time and was also concerned about how the central London college would treat me, but the students and my new boss treated me extremely well. I was amazed at this, especially as I found out that I was the 6th teacher that my students had had within the space of about 2 months and that the permanent teachers that I worked with just 'did their own thing' and when I asked questions about things that I had never done before, such as coursework, they passed me back from one to the other, with the excuse that they were both rusty! Consequently, many of the students had low levels of motivation and therefore only turned up to lessons when they felt like it, as they believed them to be so awful and didn't know who would be teaching them from one week to the next. On top of that, one of the colleagues who 'did her own thing' was paid far more to teach the students than I was both as a supply and permanent teacher, yet she was always bleating on about how stressed she was, how much work she had to do, how she'd like to do this or that in her lessons, but didn't 'have time' and how she much she wanted to be paid for doing this or that! At the same time, she was struggling to finish the course on time, seeming to go off sick whenever her 2nd year A level students need to ask her a question before important coursework deadlines (although she always denied this whenever I passed on the students' complaints about this) and therefore annoying quite a few of them and tried to palm some of her workload off onto me whenever she could, even though I had my own work to do and was understandably a bit nervous after my bad experience at the Essex college. However, I felt so sorry for the students that I went into the classroom and worked my socks off for them and whenever I didn't know something, I looked it up and did the best that I could. As a result, many of the students did improve their attendance and punctuality (or at the very least had the decency to phone ahead and tell me that they would be late/absent) and appeared to be satisfied with my teaching, apart from the usual grumbles and groans that students have! I also found that despite their low levels of motivation, not ONE student gave me a hard time (apart from the usual chatting etc) in the classroom.

From this experience, I would therefore say that the poor standard of teaching that you (and other students) have come across could be for the following reasons:

1. The college doesn't realise that the teachers aren't qualified to teach the subject/sector that they are in (good CV etc) and remain blissfully unaware because instead of asking for help, these teachers try to kid their bosses, staff and students, that they know everything about anything you ask them! Alternatively, the college is aware that the teachers aren't qualified to teach the subject properly, but is so desperate to avoid cancelling classes (and thus losing money) that it will hire the teachers, anyway!

2. The teachers aren't poor/incompetent but they're not communicating (not always their fault) with their colleagues when planning and preparing lessons. As a result, they don't have a clue about what the students already know, what to teach or how to teach it!

3. The teachers aren't poor/incompetent but they are not managing their workloads properly and forever try to pass it onto the next gullible colleague who comes along, in order to cover the courses within the time set. Alternativey, the teachers are poor and incompetent or just lazy, especially when it comes to planning and preparing for lessons!

4. The teachers aren' t poor/incompetent but aren't being suported properly by the college when trying to implement/understand the discipline system, so they have difficulty establishing/maintaining their authority in the classroom. Alternatively, the teachers are just plain useless at disciplining students and making the lessons interesting enough to encourage students to work!

5. The teachers could be good at doing it but they just can't be bothered! They are only there for the money! I.e. the teachers are poor and incompetent/lazy about teaching because they're not fully interested in what they're doing!

6. The teachers aren't poor and incompetent but are having personal/health problems which are affecting their ability to teach!

By the way, I want to emphasise that I'm referring to ALL teachers that are thought of as poor and incompetent, not just supply ones! I also want to stress how good a job most teachers do! Personally, I feel that very few teachers are actually rubbish at teaching altogether. In most cases, 'poor' teaching is usually down to something else, so to all students out there, please give your teachers a chance before writing them off as totally useless/uncaring/lazy!

Answer 10

You have to wonder why they are supply teachers...in the current job climate almost anyone can get a job, yet they choose? not to....