Teachers and TAs!

What do you mean by truly horrific? That’s extreme! You must have worked in the worst school in the country?

Started as a T.A.
Qualified to HLTA.
Did PGCE, Then English teacher at a huge high school for decades. Then Head of English. Loved it. Until I didn’t, due to new SLT imposing ridiculous targets. Working 10 hours a day, and most weekends. Realised that if you divided my working hours into my paid hours, I earned more previously as a T.A.

Good TAs are worth their weight in gold, undervalued and underpaid. There’s a reason newly qualified teachers are leaving in droves. Education in the UK is a shambles. I loved the kids, the teaching aspect. I hope I made a difference. It’s the hoops SLT set that breaks so many amazing teachers.

There’s a long answer but the short answer is, on balance, yes. I’m 15 years into a teaching career, secondary school, middle leader.

Its been a long day, a very busy one. I've been doing lots of things simultaneously and haven't poured over posts forensically. Working out my lessons is actually the smallest part of my job these days. I've been doing it a long time, it is the same content most years with a minimum of tweaks and despite this, my classes are effective and the learning is great. I'm not going to get into an argument about it..I was offering my experience to the OP. Its fine if anyone else doesn't find it the same or doesn't think my teaching can possibly be good.

Anyone thinking of doing it needs to do work experience in a school - not just rely on comments from friends or strangers on the internet.
Some subjects have less planning and marking.
Some schools are easier than others.
When yiu have taught for many years, planning gets a lot easier.

Teacher 25 years in. Secondary. I’ve had a number of additional roles with responsibility but now in a full time just teaching role. 22 out of 25 periods a week. I like it because I like the school (area of high deprivation, lots of issues but fantastic staff and management). Yes teaching is hard and it’s certainly not the ‘family friendly’ role it can be made out to be but the key is I can’t stress enough how toxic some schools can be.

I work 4days as primary school teacher. It’s really hard. Behaviour management is becoming increasingly difficult. But the holidays are great. And the pension will be ok

Who mentioned data?

Who mentioned policies or marking?
Not me.

You said you do little prep to teach lessons - photocopying…it gave a really false impression to someone considering joining.
Little to do in teaching but photocopying!

I love teaching. Every day is different. I’m secondary, couldn’t stomach one class for the whole year!! I love teaching most of my school, seeing them start as children & leave as young adults with an idea of who they are… it’s so rewarding. Been teaching 10 years, will quite happily stay in the career for a while longer yet. Need to move schools soon to experience other settings!
I couldn’t stand being in a job where every day is the same or where I’m stuck behind a PC all the time!

No I'm not. I work in a small school where the SLT trust the professionals they have hired to their job without rigid policies about how often each book has to be seen or providing endless meaningless data. Kids come out of my class talking about what we covered. They have good recall and progress and my exam results are excellent. There is more than one right way to do it.

A was a TA before training for ordination. I did a lot of SEND stuff including the last 4 years doing 1:1 in a small mainstream primary school which I loved and after a bit of a rough ride in the job before that I absolutely flourished there. I do think a lot of it depends on the school, the leadership team and their culture and values.
As many have said the pay is not good.

My point exactly. But there is always a friend or a friend of a friend that knows a teacher that only works office hours.

I do wonder why so many teachers are leaving AND why they are desperate to recruit more, given what a cushy little number it is! Because as the OP keeps saying, the pay is OK.

Really? When does she do all the marking? What about break/before/after school duties? When does she do her planning?

If you believe her, do it. Sign up. Find out for yourself.

I am in this position now, although I have only been a TA for 12 years. I am fed up of the decline in behaviour, the increase in Sen needs and the attitude of the parents. Like you I am now able to take my pension from my previous financial services job. All the TAs in my school are working exclusively with SEN children. I am the only one left that is supposedly classroom based (year 6) even I have 2 SEN children in my class with EHCPs which I am expected to support as well as the rest of the class. There are no plans to replace me. All the TAs that have left in the last 5 years have gone on to better paid roles outside the education sector and are happier for it.

I have been a TA for over 20 years and have seen my job role change beyond recognition- but not the pay! It has got to the point that when children come up to me with things like teeth dropping out in the middle of class I do not have time to deal with them as so busy trying to do multiple interventions, deal with very challenging behaviour and support learning.

It does not help when the children with very challenging behaviour say 'I can do what I want', when talked to about their behaviour and then when SLT become involved, the child in question gets to do something fun in the office or in the classroom instead of the actual task, whilst other children watch and then ask why they are not allowed to do such a thing during lesson time. Then as a result their behaviour escalates.
I understand with certain children with ADHD or autism for example that being told off does not help matters but more children are being diagnosed by their parents and/or have gone down the private route and they are furious when their child (neurodiverse or not) is ever told to spend two minutes inside at break to finish their work.

I have had parents complain to me that their child is not allowed a reading reward despite the fact the reading reward is for reading at home and the parents do not read with their child. I love the kids I work with but it is harder than it has ever been.

re hours - yes, definitely a lot for a teacher often including whole days at weekends but:
a) you're looking at TA which is different - unless the school is shit, you shouldn't have much if any work to do outside your school hours.
b) balance out the hours over a whole year instead of just term time and it's not too bad (eg - I work 50 - 80 hours a week in term time depending on how close to productions I am but only 2 - 10 (estimate, obvs!) hours a week in holiday time. So it would average out to a 'standard' full time job.)
c) there's work and work. (eg, I'll be at school till about 7pm tonight and that's by no means a late finish for me, it's often 9 or 10pm). But here I am on mumsnet achieving nothing 😂I'll get up and get on with actual work soon!

Teacher here of 18 years. Yes it's hard but no two days are the same, it's interesting, the holidays are good and the pay is decent after the first few years. It is definitely a vocation and you have to really want to do it, you can't go into it half hearted.

DS is a HOD in a large outer London school. He's been teaching for 10 years and is pretty happy. He works very hard, particularly at certain times of the year. It's a pretty strict school and generally the behaviour is very good. The Head and SLT are generally very supportive which helps.
If you go ahead, choose your school carefully.

Mumsnet is much more negative about teaching than real life, I find. Maybe unhappy teachers are more likely to be online. Think how many schools there are - huge numbers of people are teachers and TAs. And, mainly, they aren't miserable people, they're largely happy enough in their jobs, appreciate the security and the holidays and have the same grumbles about workload that most adults do.

If the job appeals to you, you like children and you can manage on the low salary then it's at least worth giving it a go.

I'm probably instituionalised but I can't imagine doing anything that didn't involve coming to school every day and having a holiday every 7-8 weeks! It's really, really not all bad (though, as I said above, I teach really fun subjects than I enjoy doing myself out of school so the job/subject is literally my whole life).

Yes, I love it. But I teach creative, practical subjects (all Performing Arts based). I also have an English class and that's far less enjoyable (still like it but it's a job and feels like hard work whereas Performing Arts just feels like I get to do what I love all day and get paid for it. It's a massive amount of hours physically on site because of all the extra clubs and performances. But then we get massively long holidays which I also love, of course!

Things I don't love - the paperwork and some pupils' behaviour. But I can't think of anything else I'd rather do (aside from being a professional performer but a crazy number of teachers are failed performers 😉)

I don't think I'd want to be a TA - they don't get paid enough and I think I'd get frustrated having to do what the teacher asked.

Do you seriously think working 7:30- 5 every day x5 is worth the salary 😂. Many take more work home too. So add more hours on. Maybe parents evenings, extra curricular stuff after school, residentials etc. I think you are seeing the holidays but everyone i know who works in a school is KNACKERED by the holidays. My sister is always ill on her leave.

You are forgetting how draining just being in a classroom with 30 kids on your own ( or maybe a 1:1 Ta) for a school day is just doing the teaching bit. Never-mind all the things other people have listed before and after.

Go be the TA in the job you have gotten. Be actually in a school, observe the staff, the kids, their behaviour, their learning, the parents attitudes towards staff, the support from SLT. Speak to the teachers honestly for their advice on becoming a teacher. It’s a perfect opportunity to see school life and see if it’s for you.

@NeedYourOpinion In that case I'd start off as a TA and then see what it is teachers typcially do before deciding whether (or not) to pursue teacher training.
I personally don't regret leaving when I did but then at 45 I'm old!! 21 years in was more than enough for me!!