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

So recruitment doesn’t seem to be the issue, but retention is; what would help with retention?

I didn't even last half a term as a TA in a special school. I just didn't feel like it was safe with the level of staffing we had and when the teacher had her break I was in charge of the class with an agency TA (some had no TA experience at all and many had no experience of SEN work) for support. It was just impossible.

Three weeks ago I drove my brand new 30 minute old car to the supermarket where a child promptly scraped her umbrella down the entire passenger side while I was getting out of the car.

When I pointed this out to the mother I was told to shut up Karen. The kids then proceeded to chant Karen while the parent laughed.

The problem is this generation of parents not the little darlings they are raising.

Thankfully there was no damage but that’s not really the point. I wouldn’t have dreamt of scraping someone’s car and neither do my kids who are well rounded, polite individuals. There were always consequences for anything they did wrong and they have grown up with this in mind.

I feel for your husband. Driven out of the profession he loves because the soft approach to parenting has just gone too far

That’s because it’s a selective girls grammar.

I’m sure you would say that the job ‘wasn’t right’ for the other 40,000 teachers that left the profession last year (before retirement age) as well.

Or maybe, just maybe, there is an issue with the job itself…

Move to as affluent an area as you can afford.

My nephew is a science and maths teacher and loves it, 3yrs in (did PGCE in first lockdown, was working in the city in a corporate financial role previously) he has just been been promoted to head of year 7 plus runs the environmental/sustainability initiative. He does work in a super selective all girls grammar in a very nice area so I guess that makes a huge difference. He only ever speaks positively about the students' behaviour and attitude to learning, and that if the parents. He also has a very supportive and equally committed SLT and other colleagues.

My wife quit teaching about 12 years ago. Thankfully she had other career options she could fall back on. Usual reasons already listed here. Lack of management support, crap parents, crap kids, crap pay, long hours, working weekends lesson planning and marking. Final straw was having her phone nicked, the thief being caught on cctv red handed, no police involvement, no return of her phone, no apology from the pupil and a few days detention as punishment before the smirking fool was back in her class.

I was delighted when she quit.

Yeah usually made by guilty parents

Sounds like the system isn’t broken but the kids are.

This is what happens when kids aren’t a little bit afraid of their parents, and everything can be blamed on ‘mental health’ or other diagnoses.

Their brains are totally fucked and addled by screen use, junk food, weed and vaping.

All this rubbish about ‘regulating’ themselves with harmful crap needs to stop.

Our country is being drained by people who are frankly black holes of ‘need’ and holding us back

Sympathy to your DH

bingo! Wondered how long it would be before the holidays comment appeared.

No idea how anyone manages to teach these days, at secondary level. There's always been bad lads but the pressure to be rock hard these days with SM and TV shows the way they are, creating these roadmen, it's violence and abuse for teachers. Blame the decisions made in the 80s to remove any sort of punishment for bad behaviour and the namby pamby state. Its been downhill ever since.

This thread really worries me. I have a newborn and a toddler so we’ll be entering the education system in a few years. I want experienced teachers who are happy in their jobs and well supported! Can’t afford private, don’t want to/can’t afford to home school.

There is definitely an element of poor parenting and parents not supporting and respecting teachers. My parents would have been appalled if I had spoken to a teacher the way some pupils do. I would have been punished at home- I don’t mean physically, but no going out with friends etc. my own children were fully aware that such behaviour would not be tolerated.

Yes, and add on to the the hundreds of hours of pointless work created by HTs or MATs to "prepare for OFSTED" every term, rather than time being given to actual teaching.

Yes! A whole massive industry of education advisors has emerged from the chaos-preying on heads and MATs who are terrified of failing Ofsted and losing their jobs. They pay thousands of pounds for these twats in suits and clipboards who haven’t taught in years to come in and terrify their staff into working harder and harder and doing more and more, because Ofsted ‘might’ ask to see x, y or z.

Schools also have to pay thousands of pounds for schemes of work, new reading schemes, new phonics schemes, subscriptions for things that used to be free (under the previous government). School budgets are now being paid directly into the bank balances of publishers and advisors purely out of fear of Ofsted failure!

This is exactly the kind of attitude that is contributing towards teachers leaving in droves.

And none of the parents would ever admit that their precious little darlings were to blame. They're all just "spirited".

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. I found that it was having parents' expectations holding them to account that made a difference in private, though obviously it's great if SLT are also doing their job. And obviously not all kids in private school are perfect, but if they are going to get shit at home for their bad behaviour in school (who wants to waste tens of thousands on educating a kid that can't be arsed?), then it certainly helps motivate them to get on with their work and behave in a civilised manner.

It's SUCH a shame for the kids/ families in state schools who want to work. It is such a disruptive environment a lot of the time. If I could afford to privately educate mine I would, but instead we're homeschooling, as, having been "on the inside", like hell am I putting them in school with some of the behaviours I've experienced. (We actually started off with ours in state school, but after 2 years gave up and pulled them out, as it was just hideous for them).

I don't know what the solution is. Teachers can't be expected to work with kids like the ones mentioned in this thread - it is horrific - but I don't know how you get kids to stop being hideous if the parents don't care. Which sadly I think is the root cause of a lot of this predicament.

Very unlikely, most teachers enjoy the holidays too much. U don’t go into teaching thinking it’ll b a breeze, sounds like it just wasn’t the correct job for him as the students didn’t respect him.

YANBU... working in a school is the worst at the moment. We need a serious change in accountability/attitude for parents who allow or seriously ignore disrespectful behaviour (said in a broad sense, I understand there are some situations where it's far trickier than that). Major changes in children's lifestyles and time spent on the Internet. Addressing the major effect the lock downs have had on a couple of age groups.

Just a general knowledge that NOBODY should have to endure physical or verbal abuse, and that children have to learn its unacceptable, or else we fail not just the teachers but the children too as they leave education.

That sounds really awful. What is he up to next? Are there other teaching roles he can consider in nicer environments? Adult education or a better school. So sad to lose talented people from education

Your dh’s experience is dreadful. Why was there so little support from SLT?
I’m an invigilator and have also been told to ‘fuck off’ and had papers thrown at me. In this situation I request that SLT remove the pupil from the exam room. I now work in a college instead.

I left last year. My heart is still in the classroom but the lack of work/life balance was making me ill. I taught in special schools and for myself, there is nothing as rewarding. The biggest reason for my leaving was the lack of trained and appropriate support staff - you cannot do the job without them. So many experienced TAs left due to a low wage that doesn’t reflect their skills and qualities, combined with the challenge of doing the job of two after funding cuts. Too many untrained agency staff, with little training and sometimes less patience. I still feel guilt over prioritising my physical and mental health and leaving.

It sounds like parenting, rather than the system, is broken!

In 30 years time, when the current generation of school kids are grown up, I hope they study what the fuck went wrong in the parenting of their generation and what caused it. Or maybe they’ll actually agree that it was the system, and not them/their parents?

I can remember being in school. Can others not remember that? Can they, now they have the rose tinted glasses of procreation, not recall how shitty kids can be? And remember how their own parents disciplined them?

Or was my (that is, current parents of secondary aged children) generation actually the first affected by a shift in parenting? Was there something in the way we were raised (shifting to a very consumeristic lifestyle… facing “easy living” in comparison to the past/no true challenges… first generation of the internet and being connected to everything) that triggered our failures in parenting?

I’m so sorry to hear this but sadly unsurprised. I work in a school office and we deal with bad attitudes and rotten emails on a daily basis and that wears me down as we work so hard to try and give our kids the very best but some parents are just out for a fight.