Any teachers on here?

There's always one!!!

For the vast majority of teachers, it's a minimum of a 50 hour a week job.

The marking alone is hours and hours a week (minimum 5 classes for core secondary subjects, sometimes 6 or 7. 30 kids a class. Total minimum of 150 kids taught. Each book has to be marked every other week minimum. 15/20 mins per book.). Add in planning for 25 lessons a week. Those are the very very basic tasks. Plus mock exams. Data entry. Extra tasks.

Statistically teachers who work up to retirement at 60-65 die within 2 years of retirement. There is a reason for that.

There's also a reason most of us get out of the profession early. Because it's unmanageable.

Out of everything listed I think having a TA for only a couple of hours per day instead of the full school day is unusual.

Thanks for the explanation. I wouldn't even dream of taking out any perceived frustrations on my child's class teacher. I firmly believe that educational support from home is very important and forms the basis for effective learning in school if the child is able. I am always mindful of the tough job they have wrangling 30 sometimes unruly kids with not much other support. We thankfully have quite a sensible bunch of parents in my DCs class. The parents would probably get in between our teacher and a potential trouble maker in defence of the teacher!

We had a giant Swizzells sweet tin that everyone raided at some point during the day!

Yep. Standard.

We had chocolate too!

Very standard. I spent a LOT of my own money on supplies. Often worked 12 hour days if not more with prep work and making resources etc.
Was kicked, spat on, pushed down stairs, groped by a students dad.
Deputy head once locked me in a cupboard to shout at me.
The day I left I was pregnant and felt physically unsafe when I was put in a room with a student throwing chairs and asked to wait with him.

As far as I know it's not got better.

I still work in a school but in a totally different role (exams) so don't have the face to face crap to deal with as only ever see students under exam conditions

We had a Crying Room too, with fresh toilet rolls brought from home.

This unfortunately is the reality. My oldest (Very bright, caring, great with younger children) really wants to be a primary school teacher. Part of me is very proud of her, but a bigger part wants to tell her to think of something else, that teaching whilst incredibly valuable, is either a very hard or an impossible job and she really doesn't need to struggle her entire career

Eep! Errant apostrophe!

I'll add that a good HT does make all the difference.

I worked in an area with 'multiple indicators of deprivation'. We got a very good inspection report and our HT told he was retiring while he was 'still at the top'.

A misogynist took over and my working life became utterly unbearable. I was a middle manager and the man seemed to set out to make my life as difficult as possible.

I'm trying not to out myself here. The HT started by picking on the women. We didn't buckle and he then moved on to the male middle managers who had thought him the best thing since sliced bread.

Our school had never been an easy place to work, but he destroyed the camaraderie that's we'd had. He's no longer an HT, but the damage has been done.

Others have mentioned the workload. One thing that I definitely don't miss is using my weekends and holidays to catch up marking. Thank goodness I no longer need to use my Christmas holidays to grade prelims/mocks. (Some subjects do take much longer to grade than others.)

I'm half Eastern European. Cousin's in my dad's country of origin have told me that things are getting bad there too. They actually had a school shooting a couple of years ago.

Yep that’s pretty much the norm - sounds actually quite good/mild really.
Good colleagues get you through it though so maybe she just needs a change of school before giving it all up.

It was am independent school which finally gave me burnout…though I agree they can be more manageable, mainly due to smaller classes reducing the marking load.

Same but s3condary. We don’t need the comments some have made about the relative difficulty of primary/secondary. They are just different. Both have always been hard but are now verging on impossible. I retired early due to burnout but managed a few years of supply after that - there’s more control. I’ve now even given that up.

There are many ways to teach and many different school. Finish the ECT time there somewhere else and find your place. I would be loath to give up when it came so different in different places.

Yes, most of mine are gone now.

Staff that is. Not kids!

Before l got out, my stock room was known as The Crying Room. Everyone would go in and cry.

Theyve all got out now. It’s awful.

If you genuinely don't know how teachers work 50/60/70 hours a week, then I am guessing you're not actually a teacher?

Even if you did manage to find a utopian school where all planning/marking/behaviour/parent communication was taken out of your hands, you would be aware that it is not normal and other schools expect more from their teachers?

And if you really were teaching Y6, I'd be very concerned you weren't marking practice SATs papers to track progress, and even worse, doing regular deep marks of their writing considering it's TA for ks2 SATs writing.

And with all your "experience" I'd wonder why you don't have any additional responsibilities? Even if you didn't want to progress up the ladder, it's standard in primaries to lead a subject after NQT/ECT.

And with 6 children with SEN in your class plus a further 2 needing EHCPs/1:1s is be very concerned you weren't meeting their needs if you aren't spending time providing scaffolding and adjustments.

I'm surprised your school have kept you on if you refuse to attend mandatory after school meetings.

And if be curious to know how (Y6 especially with the standard WhatsApp dramas) behaviour is like in your school if you don't have to call parents/write incident reports/update behaviour logs.

Even if you are a teacher, I'd worry about your competency if you are completely ignorant to the difficulties in education at the moment.

Me too. I was going to do supply but the notion lasted until the tattie holidays then I gave away all my resources.

I work in farming. I have met a surprising amount of ex-teachers involved in farming and smallholding. So far, everyone has said that it is much less stressful, less hours, you don't take your work home, and it's so much easier without having to deal with people every day!

Accurate, apart from the parental abuse.

After 30 years in classrooms I moved into a specialist role visiting individual children in schools. I cover a fair range of South London and adjacent areas so I see every kind of school.

Schools vary enormously in terms of behaviour, even in schools a kilometre apart.

Workload can vary - some schools buy in Maths and English schemes while others still have each teacher producing 4 or 5 PowerPoint each day.
Marking expectations are so different from when I trained. Granular levels of analysis which kids can't/won't even read back.
SLT can vary. Some are incredibly supportive. Some are cunts.

But it is still a relentless role where you are on show all day every day.

Children's behaviour and parents' behaviour are unrecognisable from when I qualified nearly 40 years ago. Noone can focus for longer than a few seconds. Everyone thinks that their concerns need to be dealt with now or else.

On a good day, it is absolutely joyous.

There are not enough good days for me to recommend it to anyone else as a career.

My daughter is a first year ECT in large primary school. Seems a reasonably supportive school but she has to share a TA and has been having issues with behaviour from children with SEN and also with none. She says the SLT are overwhelmed daily with calls on radio for support. She says the children are disrespectful and downright horrible at times.
She is sticking with it as obviously she is only first year ECT but is starting to have doubts due to staffing issues (sharing TA, children who should be one to one not having this support, affecting her mentoring time), behaviour of children, use of iPads as standard as part of teaching at the school (everything accept English and Maths) and the distraction they cause constantly.
She has wanted to teach for many years and is very good at it but the changes in children’s behaviour is becoming very noticeable now. I think she will look at changing schools for next school year to one without iPads and see if that helps at all.