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

Wiggleyfingers
I fully sympathise, but can I just say the insecurity is from that we don't understand how the child is doing. Results of assessments aren't shared, there is no subjective data sent home that schools have plenty of, and in the two meetings we are given vague reports with no indication of how they are actually doing. Or told okay or well - what does it actually mean?? There is no context well okay or welll excelling or well enough or well for themselves or well as in top of class/year? Is it A,B,C,or D or what percentile are they? Or where they are in age/months? This would have been a lot more comprehensive but schools don't send any such data home (because then parents ask questions I guess) and it causes anxiety and indirect questions and extra workload, less directly. And speculating

I'm not a teacher, I dont have the patience nor the enthusiasm. I do have great sympathy for you all though. My family is full of ineffectual parents and I struggle to enjoy spend time with most of the DCs. They all seem to think they will be "influencers" and one of my cousins DC has a youtube and tiktok channel at the age of 6. There's always excuses for tantrums and poor behaviour and never the lack of boundaries, unrestricted screen time or lack of time spent doing stuff outdoors.

The children tell us it. I ask them what they did in their half term. The majority will say ‘nothing, just played in my xbox’

Absolutely. My God, the amount of times ‘anxiety’ has been used as a catch all for just about bloody anything.

Parents who refuse to allow children to feel uncomfortable feelings or be pushed slightly outside their comfort zone and instead make sure their kid is constantly appeased are seriously the bane of teachers’ lives.

How do you know that particular parents are not interacting with their children and that they’re stuck on screens all day? Do the paremts actually tell you that or do you just assume?

Parents who forget that in the hour long lesson, a class of 30 gets 2 mins each of my time, excluding any whole class teaching I need to do. So, no I can't offer lil Johnny 1:1 explanations every time, or give Martha 7 reminders to work.

MAT were brought in under the premise that the school would have more autonomy over their budget, curriculum etc. and improve standards.

What it actually did was remove a parents ability to complain about the school in any meaningful fashion, enable MATs to buy schools cheap sell off the grounds and make profit (form what should be a non profit organisation), Allowed MATs to find ways to get rid of problem or generally undesirable pupils. Whilst allowing the Leaders of the schools to give themselves massive pay rises whilst reducing money to departments and get rid of experienced (expensive) members of staff.

All whilst the government enabled ofsted to increase the amount of "failing" schools so they could be forced in to these trusts which when they themselves failed were allowed to offload the schools into other failing trusts.

And it allowed the government to bitch about teachers and the state of education whilst giving themselves a free pass for fucking the system up.

Behaviour and attitude due to poor parenting from all backgrounds.
Unreasonable parents.

There are some amazing parents and well parented, respectful students but they are sadly becoming the minority.

Yep. Parents excusing every behaviour under the sun because their kid has SEN. I now teach classes where nearly 50% of the kids have ‘special’ educational needs (aint gonna be ‘special’ for much longer!) and so many of their behaviours are deemed acceptable because of their ADHD/ASD etc. It makes the job fucking impossible to be honest.

And, before anyone asks, yes I am trained in SEN, yes I do know how I’m meant to ‘deal with’ certain behaviours and traits but for me personally, it’s the parents expecting their child to have 100% attention and understanding from all the teachers when there are 1500 other kids in the school. It’s an absolute joke!

Parents are awful. I was deliberately hit in the face. The kid’s parent complained to the school that he was upset that I had told him off. Whenever I email home about anyone, the response is always, ‘Well, I understand why you are upset with X, however…’ followed by a 1000 word essay about how horrible I am and how wonderful their shitty kid is.

All you parents who do this, and who object to all school rules and regulations and have the time to spend hours shrieking at us and coming up to school to abuse our reception staff - why don’t you home educate your revolting off-spring yourselves? Our lives would be much better for it. And you could try actually parenting, them, too.

Multi Academy Trust, basically privatisation of education.

Can you explain MAT? Why don't local authorities run schools? I'm confused. I used to think it was state and independent sector but now realise it's more complex than that.

What are those things JulierSierra?

We’re no longer allowed to send all staff emails. They have to be vetted by SLT first and are often sent too late to be of any use by the time they have been checked.

Unless you work in a school you just can’t understand what’s going on. The level of violence in our school is so regular that when I was assaulted outside of school in an unrelated incident I hardly reacted at all. I am so desensitised to it that it was just like any other day, but instead of a child it’s an adult.

My child’s secondary school is the same. High levels of violent behaviour. Children who disrupt the whole class regularly and consequences have no effect. The child that’s most challenging - i randomly met the parents on an introductory evening event at the beginning of term and they were very middle class, professional people. Apparently the child tells my child they couldn’t care less, don’t read emails, won’t come into meetings at school, too busy, not interested, he just does what he likes. Brilliant. And no the area isn’t deprived, quite the opposite.

I’ve been teaching for years - part time.
The behaviour of children is appalling. Children don’t have respect for teachers because they are exposed to too much through TV , iPads etc. less discipline at home. What I’ve noticed as well is how unhappy children are now.
in the near future there are just going to be NQT s that’ll last for a few years - and then leave - because they’ll realise they’re just banging their head against a brick wall.

I forgot to add SLT. The only time anyone hears from my HT is when they send an all staff email complaining about some minor thing that could have easily been addressed directly to the person they’re passive aggressively complaining about. Otherwise, it’s crickets from that office.

This totally nails it. Oh that they were all like you… Yet more today about how their children is being bullied… mostly someone isn’t playing with them 🙄

@Lifeisnoteasy84 & the other hundreds of similar comments.

It wasn't until I started using Mumsnet that I became aware of how much parents resented us.

It’s possible to find a job challenging but still find it enjoyable overall.

All the above plus
SLT that organise training then when you put that training in place come into the room do exactly the opposite then pull you up for it.
HTs that have a hit list of teachers that have disagreed with either them the SLT or their favourite teachers.

Use your union for support, learn the fine points of your contract and value yourself.