Teachers Who Are Bottom of the Class at Spelling

By SARAH HARRIS

TEACHERS who cannot spell properly were blamed yesterday for a litany of mistakes in pupils’ work.

The schools watchdog Ofsted said they fail to correct glaring errors which even their pupils later spot, leaving the children confused about what is correct and lacking in confidence.

Education experts say the problem has spiralled because so many staff members went through the education system at a time when there was undue emphasis on ‘trendy’ teaching methods which have since been discredited.

Ofsted examined the teaching of English in secondary schools between September 2003 and April 2005. Its inspectors found the teaching of writing had improved and even grammar was ‘ sometimes well taught in lively starter activities’.

But the report adds: ‘It remains the case that spelling is inconsistently treated in many schools, both in teaching and marking.

‘Pupils frequently comment that their weaknesses in spelling are overlooked by teachers.’ It adds: ‘Although such comments often ignore the time spent by teachers in correcting mistakes in pupils’ writing, they serve to highlight the lack of a systematic approach to improving pupils’ spelling in some schools.’ In a review of primary schools over the same period, the inspectors said more needed to be done to ‘improve the quality of pupils’ handwriting and presentation’.

They add: ‘This is an aspect of writing that has been neglected by some schools in their current efforts to improve standards overall.’

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said it was essential that teachers who are ‘cavalier’ about spelling are brought up to scratch.

He said: ‘Many teachers came through the education system when spelling was regarded as unimportant.

‘They may not have learned it properly themselves or, at the very least, they think it’s unnecessarily fussy and gets in the way of creativity.

‘What we now realise, of course, is that precision in use of language is extremely important.’ Referring to the numbers of teachers with poor spelling, he added: ‘It will be possible to achieve consistency over time but we really did start from a low base.’ There were widespread problems with spelling and grammar in last year’s GCSE and A-level exams.

The country’s largest exam board, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, said that pupils were writing at length in their GCSE exams without using any full stops or commas.

Another board, Edexcel, said that even the most able students were making ‘almost unforgivable errors’ because of an appalling grasp of spelling and punctuation.

Some used slang such as ‘gonna’, ‘ain’t', ‘wanna’ and ‘shoulda’.

Other pupils used text language such as 2 for too, m8 for mate and u for you and littered their work with expletives.

Earlier last year, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority provoked controversy by telling examiners not to deduct marks for basic mistakes on the main writing paper in national curriculum tests for 14-year-olds.

The OCR examining board also told GCSE English literature examiners not to penalise poor spelling and grammar.

Markers complained they were forced to award ‘ludicrously high marks’ to candidates whose command of grammar and sentence construction was ‘simply non-existent’.

s.harris@dailymail.co.uk