Uh oh. England needs 47,000 extra secondary school teachers by 2024

[noblegiraffe]

In order to cope with a projected explosion in pupil numbers at secondary level, we’re going to need 47,000 extra secondary teachers.

Recruitment for this year is down by 19% on last year, where recruitment targets were already missed, so it’s looking unlikely that this will be met.

Measures the DfE have taken to address this crisis:
Scrapping the limit on the number of times you can take the QTS skills test
Telling teacher trainers to lower their standards and stop turning away unsuitable applicants
Offering £40,000 bursaries for ex military to train to teach
Workload challenge posters
...um...?

Measures the DfE have taken to cause this crisis:
Total revamp of the curriculum and exam structure in a ridiculously short timeframe
8 years of pay cuts
Michael Gove
Performance-related pay
Slating us in the media
Denying that there’s even an issue
Crapper pensions that we won’t be able to claim anyway until we’re already dead
School budget cuts leading to redundancies, larger class sizes, not enough resources, experienced and expensive teachers being managed out
Cuts to mental health and SEN provision putting greater burden on teachers
Trying to force all schools to become an academy and the rise of chains like Harris

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-england-needs-47000-extra-secondary-teachers

Just you see, by 2024 the one remaining maths teacher will be teaching all the students in the country via Skype. Marking will be done by randoms recruited on Fiverr. All exams will be multiple choice so they can be machine-marked. Ex-teachers will make a fortune charging £50 per hour for private tuition.

[Clavinova]

Recruitment for this year is down by 19% on last year

Things are looking up then - TES were reporting a 40% (then 30%)drop in applicants a few months ago!

[converseandjeans]

I enjoy being in the classroom but am done with all the other crap. Definitely won't be able to teach until I am 67 - it would not be fair on the students. When I started 17 years ago I assumed it was a decent job with security - but I have seen many people managed out and don't feel safe.
Just trying to work out my next step

[pieceofpurplesky]

Exactly like you @converseandjeans I love teaching but have had enough. After twenty years I can't see me lasting much longer. Meddling from governments, ridiculous targets for students and SLT pressure are my three reasons

[MrsWooster]

They shouldn't have turned the worlds best job into a nightmare of data, teacher-bashing and us-v-them between slt and teachers. This is what has caused good teachers like me to leave.

[converseandjeans]

purple but what job do we go to? I still need to earn enough to live 🙁🙁

[CuboidalSlipshoddy]

Number of 21 year olds (ie, potentially applying for PGCEs): 826 000.

Number of 16 year olds (ie, applying for PGCEs in five years' time): 697 000.

Number of 11 year olds (ie, starting secondary schools today): 785 000.

Number of 6 year olds (ie, starting secondary school in five years' time): 842 000.

So there's a 15% drop in the number of potential applicants.

Take, as a rough approximation as I can't be bothered to add the individual years up, the current 11-16 population as 2.5(785+697) = 3.7m. But in five years' time on the same basis, the 11-16 population is 2.5(785+842) = 4.1m. An 11% increase in numbers, with a 15% drop in the pool of applicants.

[admission]

To quote numbers in the actual TES article, it would be better if the figures actually added up.
There are currently 208100 teachers which at a P/T ratio of 15.1 is 3,142,310 pupils, but the article says actual pupil numbers are 3,191,780. Similarly the expected number of teachers required in 2024 is 254,822, which at 15.1 equates to 3,847,812, when the article quotes 3,838,700 as the actual expected pupils.
Also the difference between 3,838,700 and 3,191,780 is 646,920, which at 15.1 is a need for 42,842 new teachers not 47,000.
How can anybody put any reliance on such figures when they do not make any sense?

[Appuskidu]

Measures the DfE have taken to address this crisis:Scrapping the limit on the number of timesyou can take the QTS skills testTelling teacher trainers to lower their standards and stop turning away unsuitable applicantsOffering £40,000 bursaries for ex military to train to teachWorkload challenge posters...um...?

Ooh don’t forget the advertising campaign on the telly!

Remember-the one with the pretty dynamic young people in clippy cloppy shoes that said ‘great’ teachers could earn fifty billion pounds a year!

I don’t think that helped much either!

[TalkinPeece]

But will the politicians listen ?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43484831

[noblegiraffe]

I think, admission that they are not looking at the pupil-teacher ratio being 15.1 in 2024, but the average between now and 2024 being 15.1 As the pupil-teacher ratio is currently below 15.1, it will need to go above 15.1 in the future.

The full TES article if you have a subscription says that they used the methodology used by the Institute of Fiscal Studies in a 2015 report, which I guess is slightly more complicated than dividing by 15.1. Agree it looks nonsensical! But even needing 42,000 more teachers than currently is pretty bad. That’s not just the figure they need to recruit, but also additional teachers on top of that to replace leavers.

[StealthPolarBear]

No problem. It's such an easy job and with long holidays. They'll have queues out the door of people wanting to do it

[Appuskidu]

Has a ‘spokesperson for the DfE’ commented yet? They usually pop up at the end of any article about education saying something like-: A spokesperson for the DfE says there hasn’t never been a better time to be a teacher.

Nothing to see here, chaps-more along now.

[noblegiraffe]

The DfE say there are more teachers than ever!!!!!

They don’t mention more pupils than ever and teachers are leaving in droves but not signing up in droves.

[noblegiraffe]

Ooh don’t forget the advertising campaign on the telly!

True, the DfE have spent millions more on TV advertising this year. I saw Nick Gibb tweet the latest advert and the comments were all instantly ‘teaching is crap, don’t do it folks!’ which perhaps undermined their message a bit. Same on Facebook.

[TuftedLadyGrotto]

I left 2.5 years ago, secondary. I wouldn't go back at the if you paid me £100k a year.

I loved teaching, did it for 11 years. They've destroyed it and education

[UKsounding]

Because we have an excess of teachers in the city I live in Canada, a lot of my ex-students have taken jobs in the UK on graduating teacher training. Invariably they are back after a year or two, and I never hear complaints about the DfE or SLT making their lives a misery.

I constantly hear how badly behaved, rude and disrespectful UK kids are to teachers in the classroom. The young Canadian teachers I speak to get fed up of crowd-control getting in the way of teaching anything and come home. We have at least the same "evidence-based practice" burden of data-collecting and box-ticking and lack of prep time problems. The pay is good and teachers have a strong unions and great pensions. The critical piece for the young teachers that I talk to though is that there is much less tolerance for discipline issues by SLT and parents back teachers more. The result is that we have an excess of trained secondary teachers in almost every area (the exception is French).

Pretty much all the comments by teachers on this thread are about pay and benefits though...

[BossWitch]

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. He he he. Ha ha.

This makes me slightly happy. In a way that probably makes me a bad person, but still

Also giggling at noble's (entirely accurate) listing of Michael Gove as a measure taken by the DfE to put people off teaching. Fucking Gove!

[BlessYourCottonSocks]

I am spending my Easter holidays marking 32 pieces of A level coursework. 4,500 word essays.

I currently have 53 Y12s - so next Easter is looking MORE fun...

I am wondering how many pupils SLT will take into the Sixth form next year - and whether there will be shortly be over 30 in each of my A level classes like there are in my GCSE classes.

I am considering how much longer I can continue upping the hours I work every week to get through my workload.

[noblegiraffe]

never hear complaints about the DfE

Someone who has only been in the job a year wouldn’t really be well-placed to make comments about education policy though.

[Snowysky20009]

This is why I gave up teaching.

[clary]

U.K.sounding one of the main reasons I left teaching after 6+ years was the poor behaviour which I couldn't control, meaning it was impossible to teach. Not enough support and consistency in dealing with it from SLT.

Not the only reason - stupid workload and mental exhaustion also did not help. But yes, I got fed up of bein g sworn at and talked over. Much nicer in my new job 😀

[noblegiraffe]

So what do we think will happen when the DfE fail to recruit these 47,000 extra teachers?

Class sizes can only get so much bigger before they won’t fit in classrooms any more.

Teachers of shortage subjects giving lectures to large groups, possibly being broadcast using e.g. Skype? A possibility I’ve heard being put forward by the head of the NCETM for addressing the shortage of maths teachers.

Teachers being roped in from abroad? Ireland - I heard it’s getting harder to recruit from there now. Canada is increasing in popularity as a source - interviews done by Skype if at all.

Another issue is that these extra students will need schools and classrooms. Free school applications seem to have dried up, the DfE are desperate for new academy sponsors, especially in the north. Where are these schools going to come from? Will LAs be allowed to open them? Maybe they’re hoping that once they’ve given the Catholic Education people what they want that they’ll solve the problem by opening up a tonne of new faith schools?

[Appuskidu]

So what do we think will happen when the DfE fail to recruit these 47,000 extra teachers?

I have been thinking about this.

What should happen is that the workload is massively culled so that all the trained, experienced and fantastic ex teachers want to return. But I’m fairly sure that won’t happen!

I’m in an LEA school where we still (as far as I know) need qualified teachers. Am I right in thinking that’s not the case in academies?

How is that move going so far for the government/DfE-? Are unqualified teachers being widely and successfully used-can they just scrap the PGCE altogether to save a few quid?!

Something will implode in the next few years-but I have to say, no matter what is chosen as a solution, you can’t argue with the fact that you NEED a warm body in front of classes of 30+ kids, with some sort of effective classroom management to stop children killing each other/leaving the room-let alone focusing on learning anything. A Skype lesson broadcast to hundreds of schools won’t do much good if children are playing up/need the toilet/have a nosebleed/don’t understand.

Or will it be a Skype lesson accompanied by a TA (on miminum wage) armed with with a cattle prod, to keep things in order...

[noblegiraffe]

From The Times “Teachers could take on more of a “pastoral carer” role, according to Henry Warren, former director of learning and innovation at Pearson, a global education company.

Research by the Times Educational Supplement has shown that England will need 47,000 more teachers by 2024.

Mr Warren cited the example of Bridge International Academies, at which teachers deliver scripted lessons from electronic tablets. Lord Nash, then education minister, met Bridge two years ago to discuss its low-cost model of education.”

Anyone surprised by Edtech companies being quick to leap on this as a moneyspinner? Scripted lessons from electronic tablets

[Piggywaspushed]

I was about to post about that! You beat me to it!

Who does the marking then??