Guess whether teacher recruitment targets were met this year

I choose secondary because I wanted to teach my degree subject but many were surprised I hadn’t chosen primary, most seemed to think primary would be easier in particular behaviour so I guess this is how many perceive it.

I don't think primary teaching is oversubscribed these days either, although not as bad as secondary. The schools I have worked in the past few years and my children's school have all struggled recruiting and especially holding on to new teachers. I think a lot of people think primary teaching will be fun and creative and then find themselves getting bogged down in data and targets.

I read that lots of women who have young DCs decide to go into primary as they think they understand those children better.

I do personally think the perception 9truth?) that behaviour standards have slipped must put off lots of people from entering secondary.

Is it maybe also to do with the BEd route? Are lots of those primary teachers actually coming via 4 year degrees? Many of the PE teachers are.

History is the hard one to explain. Perhaps it suggests there is very little else one can do with a history degree?!

I don't want to mention Finland again - but the government really ought to consider why there is never a teacher shortage there! Clue :It's not about pay.

I think there’s the perception that primary teaching is “easier”, when in reality it’s just different... but I think more people are happy to consider primary teaching for that reason. I’m not a teacher myself but numerous teachers in the family, both primary and secondary, including a DC currently doing PGDE in a shortage Stem subject. No £25k bursery for him, but he’s taking some sort of deal to be placed in a random school for reg year (likely to be a remote Scottish island or highland area).

All those poor PE and history teachers who will end up teaching science, computing , maths, English , DT , MFL etc etc...

Strawberry it is the same across the public sector 40 000+ nursing vacancies, at least 1 in 5 children’s SW posts are vacant etc etc.
Yet this government repeatedly tells us everything is ok. You’d think more would be done to ensure trainee teachers, SW’s, nurses etc and those who want to return to these professions following a career break are welcomed and supported.

It's the same for all the new GP's the government also promised.
No one wants to be a GP anymore, the NHS is struggling to cope with underfunding and too few staff.

I dare say it's the same for all public services.

Tories have a lot to answer for (I am not a Tory voter) although to be honest I don't trust Labour either.

I suspect you need to focus on both.

When are they going to realise that the focus needs to be on retention not recruitment?

It’s not rocket science either. Choose a curriculum. Stick with it. No - no tweaking allowed! Let teachers become experts again. Increase PPA time to 15% minimum.

Job done.

As a SCITT Trainee we were teaching 11 hours a week with little or no support form our placement schools and also having had little or no help before we started from our training providers.
I was talking to one of my fellow trainees (a career change trainee like myself) she feels that the training is expecting too much to soon especially when combined with the course work/assignment requirement for the PGCE and that maybe the whole thing should be spread over 2 years including the NQT year, maybe the course work could be completed during the summer holidays after the first year and then you could do a wider number of placement schools so see different approaches. I know many who I was training with who also had small children were really struggling with the work load we'd lost three after a couple of months for that reason (again all on 25K bursaries) it seems such a waste of money and potentially good teachers.
Not sure f this is the answer but I thought it was an interesting suggestion.

Haha- the lady from the FT is already saying she had no idea how fucking hard teaching is!

And that's teaching 7 hours a week...

When I trained you got a bursary, a golden hello and your student loans repaid at 1/10th a year for ten years. You also got payrises and a final salary pension :) They still never got to 100% recruitment for my subject but I think in the current climate you may get people snapping your hand off if you went back to the recruitment and rentention bonuses of the early 2000s.

Frankly I couldn’t see a single ‘rewarding’ thing about being a teacher. I hadn’t really taken much interest in cliched ads. As a graduate on a better salary than I would earn for some years as teacher I started off genuinely enthusiastic and with a huge passion for my subject and a delight in telling others all about it. but I was actually told that that passion for my subject was not needed that lessons could be boring as long as the students learnt something and if I was passionate about my subject teaching was the wrong career choice because it was an exercise in getting kids through exams successfully not in inspiring them. Couple this with endless criticism; that was a very good lesson but ....... 20 mins later I quickly realised that what I thought teaching was was far removed from reality.

And this doesn’t even touch the issue of retention of staff once they’ve trained. English is brutal at the moment and schools must be losing English staff at a higher rate than they can be recruited. Anecdotally, the turn over of staff at my place is about a quarter to half the department a year. But that might just be the nature of my school.

BubblesBuddy
They are offering £25,000 to students who want to train as teachers in these subjects though so I do think that is a start.

They are only offering £25,000 in some areas and it is dependant on degree level.

There is also no requirement to even enter a classroom on finishing the course, so many students are pocketing the cash and walking away.

X-post with back there!
Ok, no HE fees for those training and staying in teaching for five years?

How long do we think it will be before there's no HE fees for anyone training as a teacher?

They are offering £25,000 to students who want to train as teachers in these subjects though so I do think that is a start.

Hardly. I know of 2 people who are just doing it to clear some debt. No intention of actually staying in teaching.

The real issue is retaining staff once people find what it is actually like. If they were able to retain people who actually have a passion for teaching, the crisis wouldn't be there and there would be no need to think of ways of tricking enticing people in.

Haha- the lady from the FT is already saying she had no idea how fucking hard teaching is!

I've been teaching for four years and I feel like the job is already unrecognisable to what it was even when I first started. People are leaving the profession in droves (myself soon to be included) and it is very sad.

At my school alone two NQTs who started in September have already given up, and that's in a smallish primary with fewer than 10 teachers. £25,000 wouldn't be worth it to me now (and only a small percentage of applicants even qualify for a bursary of that size, I think I got £4000 for my training).

Sorry that should say new not knew!

They should be beating wannabe teachers back with a shitty stick, and those already in teaching should be settling in nicely for life. You get 13 weeks holiday (and I know everyone works during the holidays, but if you have kids it's huge not having to pay that childcare) a year and you get a great pension.

Instead they are having to give financial incentives to train, pay for clichéd adverts to show everyone how 'rewarding' it is, think of increasingly creative ways to get people through the door (Teach First, squaddies, this knew scheme by that lady from the FT) and lots of people who already do it are leaving!

How much longer can the government pretend that everything is peachy?

PGCEwoes that's a shame! I had a similar experience in my trainee year, so I insisted I switch schools to a more supportive school and have been fine since.

Some school environments don't fit everyone.

Teaching is bloody hard, money for bursaries doesn't change that, money for more teachers and smaller class sizes and better equipment and less contact time would make it more attractive to new and current teachers.