To think droves of teachers will make the decision by husband made today- to leave

I don’t blame him, I’m a TA, sometimes I get hurt daily, I’ve been bitten, punched, kicked, pulled to the ground etc, it’s endless and exhausting.

Schools have moved beyond just Education and we have the back-door ‘privatisation’ through the introduction of MATs.

This has devalued teachers and devalued education.

Really sorry to hear this OP. All teachers and school staff are heroes in my opinion.

I can’t blame anyone for wanting to leave (I left for health reasons 10 years ago from a support role, it wasn’t too bad then, although the head wasn’t at all supportive of my cancer diagnosis).

im sure he will be great in an industry role and wonder why on earth he bothered. The school system is broken. 💐💐💐

Yes, I agree.
The system is well and truly broken.

Yes, no idea what’s happened with parents. If I had a letter sent home to my parents I’d have not been able to sit down for a week (not advocating this approach of course, but the point is that there were clear, punitive consequences).

The reason private school kids do better is because behaviour is better - and that is because parents pay. Whether that comes easy to those parents or whether they have sacrificed, borrowed and taken on extra jobs to fund it, the parents are 100% engaged and poor behaviour reports are actioned and supported by parents/school working together.

I taught for years in private and state schools, and the private schools are the place to go if you want decent behaviour and respect. Not all the kids in state schools were awful, by any stretch, but certainly a large enough proportion to make the job miserable.

The key difference is quite simple: private schools can bin any/all miscreants for any reason they like. If state schools could simply expel all the miscreants they would be very different schools. But where would you send all the kids excluded from mainstream?

Schools need to start showing some backbone and kicking the misbehaving kids out of school. Let their parents deal with them.

This.

The job has changed, I say this as someone who has been doing it for almost 30 years.
When I started in the late 90s we had 2 children in the whole school who needed additional support. It would be unusual to have a class with only 2 now. Last year I had 6 children diagnosed with neuro-diversity and 2 on the waiting list (3 required full time 1:1, 2 of them even needed support at breaks and lunchtime). We also have an increase in anxiety/mental health and almost no support from outside agencies. I also see increasing parents with poor mental health.
There is also a greater expectation of schools taking on the parenting role. We have 4 children coming into one of our Reception classes who are not toilet trained. That used to be very rare. We have more children with speech delays, unable to put on coats/shoes, unable to use cutlery.
We are now educators / SEN specialists / social workers / counsellors/ parents / S&L therapists.
Whilst demands on teachers have gone up, pay and support has gone down.
No wonder staff are leaving.

IKR.

I'm very lucky to have never experience violence or that level of disrespect from students... maybe because I am a female teacher in a boys school. But what I cannot tolerate anymore is the bully culture rife in schools amongst staff. I am sick of it and looking to end my almost 20 year career because of it

He should take a break and then get a job in a good private school.

So sorry this happened to your DH. Hope he is able to retrain in another career ( think there are specialists who support ex teachers, at least seen a website/agency mentioned). Really hope he can get some counselling to deal with what has happened to-date.

Labour will never recruit 6500 teachers - few uk grads can afford those starter salaries with the debt they leave uni with and they won’t cope in these schools either. They’ll have to look overseas, and they (from the Aussies, S Africans etc that I know who did it) will leave after 2 years. The teachers in independent schools will not join the state sector - they’ll get overseas postings or retrain.

It’s disaster waiting to happen. This is not down to funding - it’s down to social attitudes, parents who do not value education and who believe that no-one has a right to discipline their child, and weak leadership in schools.

All of this. The monetisation of phonics is horrifying; people making obscene money out of one of the very basic education entitlements.

I’m leaving this year after a decade teaching. It’s either find something else or have a full breakdown. I don’t want a job that’s actually 5 jobs in one where you’re only paid for a fraction of what you actually do.

The state of funding for SEND children is another reason schools are quite literally drowning. I spend hours on referral forms, for the parents to then be told to go on another parenting course or suck it up and wait years for alternative help.

Our school systems desperately needs more funding, more qualified staff and less pointless ofsted hoops to jump through.

My dsis was teaching in an English primary school when one of the fathers got in to the school and pinned her to a wall by her throat. It took five other staff to drag him off.

The reason - she had told a 9yo he could not wear his new football strip to class.

It was the final straw for her, she resigned after 22 years, leaving her school without a deputy head and a safeguarding lead.

Some parents are nothing more than animals, raising their children to be just as bad.

Someone I know left teaching and trained to be a train driver. She wishes she’d done it earlier. There is far more to it than meets the eye. Yes there are shifts to negotiate and with children that’s hard but the pay and prospects for development are good and she loves the fact that when her shift finishes that’s it for the day.
I can’t remember how many were in her cohort when she trained but I do know she was one of 3 ex teachers on her course.
There are plenty of options for ex teachers that wouldn’t necessarily come to mind.

My DS is in reception year in a mixed area and I am shocked by the sheer number of parents who are openly criminals. Who have absolutely pots of money while having typical low wage jobs. It’s part of the degradation of wider society. They are brazen and in 10 years it’ll be their kids spitting at their teachers in the local secondary and they won’t give a shit. I’m working towards a move to private.

Imagine them working minimum wage in a care home looking after peoples vulnerable elderly parents.

Doesn't bear thinking about.

Between AI and automation, there's going to be no jobs for such people and they'll just keep on having children who'll be likewise disastrously raised, that's if they even survive the standard of parenting these people will practice. At least in times gone by badly behaved people could be put to work on farms and in factories which tired them out. At this rate it's not just going to be the ageing population which will put a strain on the welfare state.

This is a random question maybe but when I was at secondary school (1990-1995), the school wasn't responsible for my attendance I don't think. (Although the mystery of truant officers lurking in the local towns was there).

If I bunked off, I took a note in the next day. If I misbehaved (just the once!), my dad got a phone call at work, via his secretary, and I was collected from school. The shame! There was no way the school would babysit me until the end of the day.

Now, it seems, parents can bark 'they're your problem, you sort them out' and the school has to manage the child until hometime.

Maybe I'm misremembering but I'm sure there was a change somewhere. Now, I'm all for all children having an education, but the kids who didn't want to be there were their parents' problem, not the school's. I've looked at it and maybe the 1996 Education Act? Or was it around safeguarding?

Please ignore this ignorant comment.

your husband survived 6 years, that is well above average. Th fault is not his it is the management that doesn't support him, and impose a proper behaviour policy in their schools

Give him my sympathy and best wishes - he will find something far easier, more interesting and better paid

I come from the generation where most of us would have been smacked bloody hard if we’d sworn at a teacher.

No advice, but I’m really sorry. Teachers should be respected and admired, I certainly wouldn’t want to do it.
Teachers at the local school are certainly not treated this way.

My DD school building is literally shut down due to safety concerns. Local council are arguing with the school as to who should foot the bill. Teachers have been working tirelessly to make temporary classrooms in a ten day turn around and have found classrooms offsite in other schools for other year groups (working over weekends to move equipment from sites to not affect pupil to teacher ratios). After seeing how the local authority and the DofE have treated them (and how some students & their parents are treating them) I dunno how they are working as they are. Ofsted have just deemed them inadequate and have declared they must become an academy. No trust wants to buy a broken building. It leaves everyone in limbo. Behaviour and attendance is shocking, parents are fuming but the teachers continue to try to educate our kids. The local council continue to do sweet FA.

YANBU, but Labour and their VAT on private school fees will sort it all out. Or so they claim.

On another thread today, I read that teachers are the most whinging profession. Are teachers whinging or is it now almost untenable?
Is it that some people aren’t suited to teaching in some state schools?