When I was hired as a sociology teacher, it was natural to assume that I would be used exclusively to teach sociology - and for the first year or so, I was. However, with staff illness, a few resignations and the occasional new appointee never even showing up, I have been asked (or told?) to teach in new subject areas.

Classes “offered” to me included those on courses such as leadership in the public sector (of which I know nothing), policing (well, I do know that you should call 999 in an emergency) and special educational needs (again, of which I know nothing).

The problem with being asked to teach a class that you know nothing about is that you inevitably end up teaching out of a book and maintaining the pretence (if you are lucky) that you know more than your students. Staying at least one chapter ahead appears to be the golden rule of bluffing one’s paying clients.

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One manager was once heard to advise a member of her team (who was nervous about taking on a new class she knew little about) to “wing it”. And even if you don’t “wing it” and do your best to prepare, the outcome amounts to little more than regurgitating a book which the students would probably be better served to read for themselves.

The FE workforce: the crisis of retention

In part, this current situation is the result of staff shortages, with some jobs lying vacant for months. The reason recruitment is so difficult is partly a pay issue - most roles are offered either on a sessional or part-time basis with the hiring of full-time staff becoming increasingly rare these days.

Anyone taken on for the courses I am delivering would have to start from scratch and prepare everything outside their contact hours for free. Preparation and marking are not factored into the timetable either - and who except the desperate would really wish to sign up for that? 

Explaining the second apparent reason why non-subject specialists are being brought in to teach classes is more difficult. This is because there are teachers where I work who are, in fact, qualified to teach the courses I have been handed. Yet, they have not been asked to do so. In some cases, they have even been moved away from their own specialist subjects to teach in curriculum areas that they also have little or no knowledge of. It would appear to make no sense at all. 

One theory is that these are political decisions. Line managers who don’t get along with teachers in their team cannot fire them (not without particular grounds and a potentially lengthy process involving tribunals) but may instead try to farm them out to other team areas. This would appear to explain some of the odd decisions in my college. People with years of experience in one topic find themselves shuffled around the departments with no clear rationale provided. Often these are older members of staff on permanent contracts who may not be as inclined to toe the line with new management practices and decisions. So the strategy would appear to be: stress them, demoralise them and hound them. Often this “does the trick” or at least leads them to accept shorter working hours on a reduced contract.

One way a senior colleague has found to get around this is to use flipped learning when given a course he knows nothing about. Rather than pretend to possess knowledge he doesn’t have, he simply gets the students to read up on key chapters and then asks them to present to him so he can ask questions and learn from them. And it seems to work. 

As for me, well I am more of a “stay one chapter ahead” kind of person, which means assuaging my guilty conscience of knowing nothing about the subject I am teaching in the knowledge that I have at least been proactive in my preparation. But I have decided after this latest firefighting on behalf of my employer, no more.

Next year if they ask me to teach more classes out of my area, I may just decide to “wing it” for good  - and quit.

Rufus Reich is a pseudonym. The writer is a FE lecturer in England