We knew this year was a bad one for daughter, but this week there's been too many things that have just confirmed her teachers are... <ahem> struggling.

So far his year we' ve had:

- numerous spelling errors on lists of words the class has to spell each day for homework ( e.g. 'seperate')

- Teacher after a discussion about forces pushing and pulling things, CORRECTING daughters assertion that muscles always pull. She was told, "No, muscles push"..

- Teacher asking "what's the product of 5 and 7?" and marking daughter wrong whe she answered 35. - CORRECTING her to the answer 12.

I'm seriously pissed off that my daughter is not only NOT being educated tjis year, but seems to be being actively DIS-EDUCATED by these fools. Is every parent expected to review every conversation their children have with every teacher to check for fundamental errors and untruths?

Daughter will be leaving this school at the end of the year - but perhaps it's time for a bit of a chat with the principal? There must be a reason daughter's classes marks at all ona downward trajectory compared to the other classes ink the same year.

any thoughts? is this a common experience?

I would hope that your experience would be rare. Why on earth have you left it this late in the year to meet with the principal?

There have been a number of discussions throughout the year (without any satisfactory resolution I might add) but the feedback from daughter this week was 2 of the incidents listed above and gives me more fuel for a rant.

It's clearly too late to salvage this year for this daughter, but it may give us an opportunity to influence the path ahead for daughter #2 in terms of which teachers she is given in future.

We had a similar experience with our boys in their old school, one of their teachers had a very noticeable bias toward the girls in the class and the boys suffered as a result.

Tiddler 'lost' grade 5 in the UK because of a total bitch of a ****wit teacher. It still gives me nightmares that there was little we could do when it was not in my daughters interest to move her to another school. You have my complete sympathy with regards to the guilt and anger you are feeling. The only thing I can offer is confidence that your daughter will move on and will succeed. It took Tiddler about 3+ years to completely undo the damage the bitch did to her both psychologically and educationally but we did have a the move over in the middle which probably didn't help looking back.

Good luck with the new school.

As boys went through the grades 2 years apart you would notice HUGE differences in what they learnt.. Ie maths, one year 56 pages of text book completed other kid 146 pages completed. I can remember the grade 7 teacher asking who had covered what in maths? It really was that potluck.

Preference for particular kids by certain teachers - disturbing.

The teachers everyone wanted always getting ALL of the teachers kids in their classes.

However my kids went to primary over 4 years ago, I thought the amount of what teachers had to cover in primary was more regulated now, maybe not.

Not that unusual, no. When you think of the UAI required to get into teaching there are going to be many who teach because they can't do much else. Spelling, grammar and maths are often weak and it would be no surprise to me to see errors on boards in the classroom (I have, many many times in my career in education!). I'm not surprised by b*tches in front of the board either - my second son was picked on by his K teacher (and he had her in year 2 as well) because he was gifted and she was mediocre to say the least (did muck him about educationally for a few years though!) - teachers can be very spiteful and take out their dislike of you on your kids and school hierarchies don't like dealing with dissent or disciplinary matters (too difficult!)

Good luck to your daughter next year! She deserves a good one!