Unfortunately, Uncle Tim is correct.
I like art and believe that a teacher of art needs technical ability. Demonstrably, I don't have that ability and would never attempt to teach art. However, a teacher of English is apparently not required to be able to write English which complies with established standards of grammar, spelling and punctuation. What hope do the students have?
Some teachers of English appear to know only one meaning of colon, namely 'the intestine between the caecum and the rectum'. Many of these teachers react like a colloquial version of their semi-colon when asked to account for their performance. Like a seer, they claim special knowledge and ability that is beyong the understanding of the critic: ironically such teachers are unable to make most people understand what they are trying to say. Paradoxically they usually assert that they are seeking to make the language simpler but can only express themselves in arcane and comples language that few understand.
The object of language should be to communicate effectively. The established standards enable flexibility where it facilitates effective communication. But lazy, careless, convoluted and jargonistic expression should not be confused with literary writing styles.
Many teachers of English claim that their technical deficiencies are actually a literary writing style or within the bounds of accepted flexibility of expression. By doing so, they confuse those seeking to be educated and degrade to language that they are employed to teach.
Verbal communication is always less grammatically rigid than the written form. However, it is difficult for most people to learn effective communication beyond the most basic level without learning the ability to express themselves in writing.
In my view, a person must be able to demonstrate highly developed skills in literacy before being made a teacher of English.
P.S. Disclaimer. I rote this quickly without a re-reading. I am not an English teacher. Please, forgive gramar, spelleng and puntuation errors!

Candide's reference to "aliteracy" makes a very good point. Too many of those who should be leading the way either don't know or don't care about the basics of English. Unfortunately, we have had years of institutional dithering in education policy. As policy shifted to favour "expression" over structure, we have had teachers accepting woeful spelling on the basis of "as long as they know what they mean..."!
I have a great deal of sympathy for teachers (I am married to one) but I don't believe they should have allowed modern obsessions, such as the pursuit of frustating, ever-changing and increasingly abstruse organisational CSFs, to divert them from their real duty.
Because of the reduced emphasis on sentence structure (or grammar, as it was known),and lack of guidance to ensure soundly based automaticity (thanks Odonoko), many young people go into the workforce without basic skills and are unlikely to ever improve their English. That is a terrible shame.
Many really bright people are unaware that there are any rules. I employed a very bright young systems programmer who was brilliant at obeying the arcane code rules of computer languages, but he mispelt his own 6-letter name, and had problems constructing coherent sentences.
Finally, one of the ways we understand our own language rules is to study other languages. I learnt English, Latin and French so I always thought there were rules and structure. I hope that is being repeated now, perhaps with Asian languages.

Sounds like 'Baxter Sin' is an English teechur.

Tim wrote this teechur quote:

"Work programs would not be accepted at Moderation meetings if they did not reflect these changes, and a student would be disadvantaged if she were not familiar with these processes."

In Queensland, 'moderation panels' are made up of the subject teechurs, so to misuse a quote 'they would say that wouldn't they?'

Let's be brutally honest about Education Queensland. It is a 'failed state', and never mind blaming the young teachers going into the system for all the ills.

I pulled out of a course work Masters in Education, having completed a research Masters in Asian Studies, simply because the Education Faculty had designed something that amounted to little more than keeping a teenagers diary as a major part of one of the units. It was absolute rubbish, and would not have got a start in the Arts Faculty.

This was supposed to be 'cutting edge' Internet based learning. If that example is the experience across the board in Education Faculties across the wide-brown-land, there is no point blaming the teachers they churn out in factory-like rows.

But also, the Ed Qld senior management is drawn from a monocultural gene pool, of classroom teechur-turned-principal, with little or no training on the way through.

Imagine a paddock of sunflowers, all facing East as the sun rises, and West as the sun sets, such is the management style of Ed Qld, a Stalinist cess pit of un-imagination.

And not covered in the Masters attempt to divert blame from people like Bligh, who presided over all this rubbish for years without ever attempting to reform anything, is the sad fact that the Qld Studies Authority allows and therefore encourages ID and Creationsim, not only in science classes, but in any class at all.

Is it any wonder Ed Qld is so hopeless?

Sadly, Blue Cross, teaching is not only woeful in Qld, I had the experience of a year (form 6) of education in the mid 70's in Melbourne. Though I came from a non-English speaking background and my spoken English was just OK, my Australian English was non-existent, my written English was advanced in comparison to the natives.

In the non-English speaking world, grammar and foreign language learning is an integral part of education.

Not teaching English properly does not only eventually affect English teachers, it affects teachers in all subjects. I have 3 children and like Tim, I've often marveled at the convoluted, nonsensical preambles and instructions to assignments.

For some peculiar reason, using lots of jargon is perceived to illustrate authoritive knowledge of a subject and intelligence. It's quite amusing to see how techno-babble can cut pesky questioners off when they veer into areas one is not so sure about. Try it at work and marvel at the power of B.S.

PS: I passed my HSC, I cottoned on quickly on the power of techno-babble. Even in chemistry and biology.

In year 12 my English teach took maternity leave part way through the year. Without a teacher for several weeks and only sessional staff filling in (like the school art teacher who was unfamiliar with our set text), my mother suggested to the school that this was inadequate.

The English coordinator replied that 'English is a subject where you can teach yourself. You just need to read the texts and think critically. However, if your daughter is struggling, we do run literacy classes for students with language difficulties'.

My mother's response: 'My daughter is not illiterate. If she were I would have hoped that you would have already been aware of this. As to your suggestion that the role of the English teacher is redundant, then please tell me why exactly you are employed?' (Go Mum!)

The teacher then stumbled out some incoherent response. It appeared that the school depended on parents (and students) having the unquestioned belief that teachers know best despite all evidence to the contrary.

Now I work in the youth sector and illiteracy is a key barrier to young people being able to create positive pathways into better futures. I'm also a PhD candidate and I tutor some undergraduate students whose writing skills are often so limited that the bulk of my time is spent going over major grammatical/sytax issues in their work. Added to this, it seems that the ability to spell is apparently unnecessary.

I am left bewildered when I sit back and realise that this is the product of ten years of compulsory 'education'.

Quite so, Kathryn D... I too tutor undergrads as a PhD candidate and the marking is mainly concerned with fixing the failures of schooling, amongst the younger students but not the mature age ones I hasten to add.

I prescribe a good dose of Strunk and White.... the course set-book on grammar and punctuation, from the Journalism course.

Good-on your mother for calling them to account, I also do this at our school.

Australia's schools really need parents to 'engage', as the jargon goes, with what happens. Most parents seem not to care or notice though.

My Y10 son, who gets As for most subjects and 'report card' columns, is 'engaged' in explaining to his teechurs that he clearly has no need to undertake 2.5 hours of homework each night as demanded because a) so little goes on in class he gets it all done there, b)the various teechurs ideas of homework, including the deputy who 'bansheed' the entire Y10 cohort for sinning-with-their-homework only know how to set more and more of 'the same' exercises, and, frankly, if you can understand the exercise there is little point in continuing to 'prove' that.

I've complained to the local Director about all this but, as always in EQ, there will be no case to answer and life will continue totally unaltered as if nothing had ever been raised.

Such is the 'thinking' on homework, as a result of politicians whingeing and various other silliness that hovers around skools from such as The Australian and Kevin Donnelly, that the exercise has been reduced to measuring the time, not the content or purpose, of homework... and even class efforts.

These low grade views and reactions permeate Australia's 'education' systems... to our national detriment.

And, sadly, it is clear that neither Rudd nor Gillard are really interested in changing any of that with their still-born 'education revolution', being yet another political fixit sham.