Teachers : what's the worst thing about the job now?

School home contracts are already in place.

Spot on!

Behaviour - some students seem untouchable.
Workload
Micro-Management by our bloated SLT (Head is part time) It’s all ‘stick with this policy until we say it doesn’t apply to that pupil/situation’ Consistency -bollocks!
Far too much to do with too little time to do it leads to the constant concern you’re not doing your job properly.
Lack of investment - my school hasn’t had proper heating for at least five years! 🥶
I’m planning on seeing my youngest through school and then looking at something else. So three years left.
I changed my career to come into teaching but have been a secondary teacher for 20 years.
Most of my colleagues feel the same. I honestly don’t know who will be left in the profession if it carries on this way.
When it goes well it’s such a brilliant job but that’s rare these days.

Is there a country that does education well? Are there any aspects that could easily be put into place here?

How do you have less admin? What admin could be dropped instantly? What is essential?

How do you improve behaviour? If current offerings don't work, what would?

Maybe there needs to be a briefing session for parents whose child is about to start school or change school, setting out expectations on both sides; also a parent/school contract to be signed at the beginning of each school year. If the contract is not signed or the child's or parent's behaviour falls below a minimum standard, the child gets sent home and the parent has to deal with the child all day or find someone else to do it. But I suppose that's really just another way of arguing that schools should be able to exclude disruptive pupils at the drop of a hat. Which they absolutely should.

Workload (I feel like I have a full time admin job and the teaching gets in the way of the admin) despite ofsted flagging workload as an issue

SLT - constant criticism and micro managing

Resources - we have no resources and I'm fed up of providing them myself in order to teach effectively

None that wouldn't require a lot of money and more people willing to be teachers.
Just for starters...
More PRUs
More special schools
More TLAs
Less contact time
Smaller classes
Some way of tipping the balance of responsibility so that everyone remembers that students are at least as accountable for their results as teachers are

Ban phones/iPads etc to U16s

I left 15 years ago for the reasons number 2-5 on your list.
It's interesting to see how things that were an issue 15 years ago have just got worse and worse.
I didn't leave teaching because of behaviour because the behaviour was good in my last school, an independent girls' school but colleagues who have recently left there said even in that school the behaviour was starting to become an issue.
Number 6 on your list would have become an issue if I'd stayed and they were just starting to introduce parents being able to email you at any time of the day or night.

They are probably the members of the family who can spell 'moaning' though. They are probably aware that schools are part of the real world too. Are you under the impression that there's an unreal world?

Oh! Work experience! We had a pupil sent home because they refused to be separated from their phone and put it in a locker like all the other employees. We put activities on for them in school and they refused to follow staff instructions so we had to send them home from that. Parent said it was our fault because work experience changes the kid’s routine and they didn’t like that. Had the parent sat their kid down and talked through how work experience/college/just leaving school etc would change their routine? Had they prepared them in any way? Had they bollocks.

Also had another one kick off because kid applied to go to a local swimming pool for work experience that they had previously been kicked out of for anti social behaviour. Swimming pool said no. That was also school’s fault as well, apparently. 🙄

Yes to all of above, if you can afford it. That said, the behaviour and entitlement won't be much better at a private school.

Lack of funding for SEND, so we have children who ten years ago would have never been expected to go anywhere near mainstream, now are dumped there, despite it not being what the parents/any professionals want, without 1:1 funding.

Dealing with KS1 pupils who are non verbal, in nappies and dysregulated in a large class of 30 is hard enough, but add in all the other pupil with needs (we have 7 children in one y2 class on pathways for diagnoses-all requiring endless forms for the staff to complete and adjustments parents want put in place) and it becomes unmanageable. Plus all the rest of the class who still have to all make continuous progress!

The curriculum is too vast and inflexible, Ofsted is ever-looming, stressful and career-ending and workload is through the roof. I don't know a single primary friend/colleague who isn't planning an exit strategy. Secondary friends seem happier somehow, I'm not sure why, though some of the behaviour they talk about sounds absolutely abysmal.

Yes but it’s all at the mercy of government funding. We need a far, far better SEN provision, first of all. One which will allow the children with SEN to access specialised curriculums to suit their needs. The inclusion that’s being pushed simply isn’t fit for purpose. There are genuine concerns around this about a two tier education system, however the approach we currently have is impossible.

We need children to have far, far less screen time, but I am very aware that one of the main reasons children are having so much screen time is that parents are simply overworked, stressed and exhausted themselves, and opt for the easiest option, which of course is detrimental to the children. So we need a better general work-life balance for everyone. But capitalism the “cost of living” does not allow for that.

We need SLT who have actual management training. A former PE teacher who has specialised in BTEC Sport for the last 10 years does not necessarily know how to manage a department of English teachers in their 30s and 40s, as much as they may think they do. Better funding CPD will fix that.

OMG, if only more parents were like you...

True. But DH has family in east Asia and the attitude towards education is completely different. Parents make huge sacrifices to contribute towards their children's education. That doesn't seem to be the case in this country.

I'm not a teacher but I do have two kids in primary school (Yr7 &10). We were never able to message teachers in primary school directly but we can in secondary school.

Why are parents able to email teachers directly? This surely opens up teachers to abuse. Doesn't seem right to me.

Lots, but they require more money than any government is willing to spend, a cultural shift which is hard and nigh on impossible, and they also acknowledge that inclusion into mainstream at all costs is not working, which is seen as a moral failing rather than reality.

To be fair, we are in a cost of living crisis.

So are there any solutions?

Ive had a catch up on this thread and I am saddened to read about all of your experiences.

What would you suggest for parents? I think I'm reasonable, I am trying to parent well and create boundaries, I am willing to work with teachers etc. But it sounds like this a lost battle. I don't want my child to miss out on an education due to lack of funding and resources, or to end up getting hurt due to violence. Do we look at private schools, home schooling, tutors...?

It's not just behaviour. It's the refusal of many parents to contribute to school trips so we can actually afford to take their children places. Usually the same parents as our worst behaved students as well.

Yes we also have the same issues with work experience. So many local businesses now refusing to take on the Y10 students from the schools in our town due to bad experiences with students not turning up, behaving badly, not doing the work, talking to staff, superiors and customers inappropriately etc.

Not just work experience, for vocational placements too. So many mechanics, plumbers, construction firms sending back/failing or complaining about the apprenticeship or placement students we send them due to all the above.

It’s not even the case anymore that bright (but not academic) sparky and earnest kids who wanted to work with their hands and enter a vocation and do some hard graft are out there in large numbers for employers. The kids who don’t want to do academics don’t want to do any vocational or trade work either or any type of job at all apart from filming on their phones. There’s no pride or work ethic out there. My friend owns a painting and plastering company and hires school leavers. He said it’s utterly impossible to leave recent ones unsupervised to do even the most basic tasks as they do no work, on phones constantly, show up late or not at all and cannot interact with the public professionally. He said it is a world apart from the stock of school-leavers he hired for the same role two decades ago.

I left at Christmas. In no particular order:-

1. Behaviour
2. Being undermined by SLT
3. BS initiatives
4. Toxic management
5. Workload
6. Daily emails after 9pm

😮