The exodus continues

[Feenie]

timparamour.com/2016/03/07/the-story-of-the-teaching-crisis/

[toomuchicecream]

Thank you for posting the link. What a well written, thought provoking piece.

[Feenie]

It is well written. So depressing how these stories are coming so thick and fast. Where will it end?

[pieceofpurplesky]

Excellently written and very true piece

[jellyfrizz]

I was actually laughing out loud at this (whilst simultaneously feeling sad and angry at the state of education).

disidealist.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/teacher-retention-more-than-just-an-image-problem/

[SuperMoonIsKeepingMeUpToo]

Excellent article. I left secondary teaching three years ago and will never return. I honestly thought I'd be there till I retired but the prospect of another term, let alone 20 years, was unthinkable. SLT became the enemy, no longer the nurturing support they were in the days of yore. Like many others, I'm just depressed and worried for my kids who are going through this stressful and results-driven 'education'.

Every time I hear that quote of Wilshaw''s about morale I feel sick to my core. Evil bastard.

[phlebasconsidered]

In my one form entry primary, five staff members are leaving in July. None through retirement or capability. Only one over 45. Only one with a new teaching job. The rest have just had enough. We still haven't filled a post that was vacant from last term.

And we're a good school. My local academy primary, which is two form entry, has nine NQT's. Half of them are giving up in July.

I worry for my class and my kids.

[Feenie]

Thanks for that - I agree with you, some of it is laugh out loud funny, but it all points to the same thing.

[Fyaral]

Im leaving after Easter, four years in and going to the civil service. Cannot wait. I feel like a massive weight has lifted from me.

[Cetti]

Twenty of us left the same school last July. The usual Leaver's speeches had to be abandoned as we'd have been there all night. The school is pretty much staffed by NQTs now. Only a tiny handful of over 40s left and 2 over 50s.

The "Teaching Crisis" is starting to get some media coverage. Why does no-one know about the funding crisis?

[cdtaylornats]

The grass is always greener - a friend of mine was a software engineer, manager of a section with 6 people and left to be a maths teacher. She loves the lack of stress and not working 15 to 16 hour days.

[Feenie]

Don't make me laugh! The dfe's own survey shows teachers work an average 60 hour week - and that's 2 years out of date, hours are much worse now.

[noblegiraffe]

Bet she also doesn't love the pay cut.

At last count 3 of my department of 10 will be leaving this year (so far) and we have failed to recruit anyone on 3 attempts. This is a department where we used to have no or one leaver per year and no problem recruiting.

[noblegiraffe]

Incidentally I asked Michael Wilshaw about his comment re teacher morale when he came on here for a webchat a couple of years ago:

noblegiraffe
Sir Michael,

"A good head would never be loved by his or her staff, he added: "If anyone says to you that 'staff morale is at an all-time low' you know you are doing something right."

You made this comment a couple of years ago. Do you really believe that low staff morale is a sign of a good head? Don't you think that it's more likely that low staff morale would lead to higher staff turnover, teachers being off sick, stress, less goodwill for extras etc, which is not good for the children?

Michael Wilshaw
Hello,

As I have said on so many occasions, my words were badly misinterpreted. Before my appointment to Ofsted, I was recounting a personal story to headteachers who were preparing into go a failing school in order to improve it.

I read a letter to them from a member of staff in a school that I was endeavouring to turn round, who refused to improve his practice. He was aggrieved that I had challenged him to do better and used staff morale as an excuse to cover his own weaknesses in the classroom.

My point to the headteachers was that they would occasionally come up against similar members of staff who would use this as a means of intimidating the head from doing what was necessary. It goes without saying that good staff morale is a pre-requisite for school improvement. However, headteachers sometimes have to do some difficult and uncomfortable things to get a school into that position.

Sir Michael

(He actually signed his post Sir Michael)

[Cetti]

cdtaylornats

"lack of stress"

Just out of curiosity - what do you imagine that a teacher's job is actually like? Genuine question. For example, how do you think the teenagers of 2016 behave when in groups? What do you understand when we write so often about the obsession with data-gathering? How long do you think marking takes?

Many others, like me will testify that of all the jobs I, or they, have had, teaching is by far the hardest. I did my PGCE when I was 26. My previous job was as a field archaeologist, basically doing heavy manual labour for as many hours in the day as it took to get the assessments we did finished. I arrived home physically tired. Yet young and fit as I was, nothing compared to the crushing exhaustion of teaching. And that was years ago - things are much, much worse now.

[dangerrabbit]

There’s a very interesting piece by Michael Rosen about the land issue here: michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/gove-nicked-our-schools-and-handed-them.html?m=1

[Feenie]

I remember your question, noblegiraffe.

Poor, misunderstood Sir Michael!

[cdtaylornats]

Cetti All I know is she feels a lot less stressed in her current job teaching Maths. As for an obsession with data gathering as a team leader of a software group I have to account for time worked by my team on various projects and if I haven't allocated all of the time against cost centres then I have a problem, if I go over the planned resource allocation I get Project Managers demanding explanations that I can't allocate time to give.

At least you don't get dragged into work in the middle of the night because one of the systems has gone down and wont restart.

Every job has stress points, fighting for budgets, watching a project I've been working on for 6 months get cancelled because someone thinks we should do something else. Watching a new software build go in at midnight because we will only screw up a couple of hundred flights if it fails then as opposed to a couple of thousand during the day.

[BombadierFritz]

Oh well. All we need to do is get loads of software engineers to retrain and the maths teacher shortage will be sorted. Perhaps the maths teachers could swap?

[noblegiraffe]

My DH is a manager/software engineer type. He spent the evening playing computer games while I've been marking and planning. He also gets paid double what I do. It has been the same every evening this week, and I'm part time.

[christinarossetti]

I hate this 'oh the teachers are making it all up. Everyone has some stresses in their job' bollocks.

4 out of 10 NQTs leave within a year. I don't think plumbers, electricians, caterers, accountants, solicitors etc etc are in the same situation.

[Everytimeref]

After being told by ofsted that my marking which took me 3 hours on sunday to do, wasnt detailed enough I would love to swap places!

[Feenie]

I often wonder about the mentality of people who crash these threads, particularly in the Staffroom.

I wouldn't dream of rocking up on a thread about social workers, or nurses, and telling them it's all bollocks because every job is stressful, because I am NOT a social worker or a nurse and therefore I really don't know.

[cdtaylornats]

I didn't say its all bollocks, I said every job has stressers and if you leave teaching in the hope its all fun and games then you are in for a surprise. I gave one example of someone who was less stressed no she is a teacher and all of a sudden I am insulting all teachers and am wrong about the example I gave!

So I am sorry, far be it from me to suggest any teacher could be happy in their job and that anyone doing anything else might be unhappy.

[jellyfrizz]

Thanks for your concern cd, I worked outside teaching for many years so am leaving teaching with my eyes wide open.

[Feenie]

The thread is about a profession in crisis and the huge problem with teachers leaving in droves.

I'm not sure your anecdote of one person going into teaching adds much to that discussion, tbh.