Fears grow over shortage of qualified teachers

[noblegiraffe]

The Times is a bit behind the times in reporting on the teacher shortage crisis, however new figures show that after a brief respite for recruitment issues due to covid, the situation in schools for September is now looking dire.

"Job adverts for secondary school teachers are up 47 per cent on last year and 14 per cent on 2019, prior to the pandemic, according to SchoolDash, an education data company."

Oh, but we can just recruit fresh, enthusiastic trainees to replace the old, busted teachers who are quitting in droves, some on here would claim. Bad news there too:

"Government figures show fewer than 9,000 of the 20,945 new teachers it hoped to start training from September have been offered a training place.

In physics just 25 have been firmly recruited while a further 283 have a conditional offer to start training — just 12 per cent of the 2,600 target.

In design and technology, only 15 per cent of the required teachers have been recruited, while in maths and English the figure is a little over half."

While I can see the govt is gearing up to once again slate the profession, the question parents need to be asking is "who exactly is left to teach my child?"

And the answer isn't necessarily something you'll want to hear.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cc94af68-eff3-11ec-9bea-abc2bc5953e5?shareToken=9852fc3a725ac809e13b4f5ea234ec8d

It's not a competition, it's not important whether primary or secondary is more challenging- a lot is subjective anyway. I'm a primary teacher through and through and would hate to teach secondary- I have lots of friends who teach secondary and they would hate to teach primary. Workload wise depends on school even at the same level and subject really, surely it's better if we stick together rather than try and compete.

Indeed. I do feel it’s unfair when it’s implied that we have it easy in primary though. Both have a lot of challenges and I don’t think one is harder than the other.

I don't even know what to say after all the posts, coming from different people. I find it hard to believe so many kids, without special needs, in so many different schools, throw chairs, bite and spit at their teacher. I can't get my head around that! I never heard that while living there, ever. It wasn't an issue then, is this an effect of the pandemic or would you say it's unrelated? Is it a parents thing? Is it a society thing?...

The children often do have special needs. The SEN system has collapsed and the result is distressed children in school throwing chairs.

Large numbers of them do have special needs yet we are expected to deliver quality provision for them in mainstream with inadequate staffing, funding and resources. Even if the school, the EP and the parents want them to be in a special school! The system is broken.

Primary is neither harder nor easier than secondary, true, it's all down to a lot of circumstances put together, but I think wanting to do something is half the work done. Love what you do, no matter what that is.

We're still trying - in tear 8 - to get an ECHP for a boy who stabbed his TA through the hand with a pencil in year 6.

Indeed, @Oceanus .

I did used to love what I do. The lack of funding, pointless bureaucracy and the excessive workload mean I don’t love it how it’s become-sadly that’s just not enough any more.

I know what teaching used to be like and I know it doesn’t have to be like this.

Shinyandnew1
Would you say it's down to:

1. there not being enough schools for children with SEN.
2. the country's current policy to put all the kids (mainstream and SEN) together as it's better for them in the long run?
3. there's no money (period) so it's making do with whatever's available, regardless of policy.
4. Offsted are no longer fit for purpose.
5. Boris being distracted.

Don't you ever feel tempted to say, sod it, I'm done with this, I'm going to take my kids and the DH (or not) and I'm off to teach outside the UK!

@Oceanus you've no idea, sorry. Have you been in many UK primary schools? I get that you think you would have liked the job but behaviour in primary is a big challenge. I've taught ages 6 to 12 and been hit, kicked, spat at, sworn at, sworn at by parents. Parents certainly don't enforce behaviour on the whole. Furniture is thrown. I separate fights regularly. I actually love my job and am lucky as I'm in Scotland and its not quite as bad as England by the sound of it. But whoever also said property prices in Scotland are cheap clearly doesn't live in Edinburgh.

Slight cross post as I see you're now asking about the situation

Funnily enough, I've not caught students smoking for years - it used to be much more of a thing. Not so much snogging now but other types of inappropriate behaviour.

Yes very true @Squareflair i wasn’t trying to make it a contest either, but rather suggest that teaching primary is far from the idyllic day of play and smiles that some may think.

Hats off to any primary teachers; I didn’t love teaching secondary but I would have definitely not been able to teach primary 👏👏

agreed @clary! I’m in awe of the volume of work of a primary teacher. Secondary English is no picnic don’t get me wrong but at least I can recoup some marking time through minimal planning for my high ability classes. Couldn’t imagine resourcing for so many different subjects in the depth required to keep the little ones engaged.

In a way I've thought that secondary was easier as you're only teaching one subject and it's to a prescribed syllabus. In primary we have to teach everything and differentiate it to the needs of our class. We could have a P7 where some are working at secondary level and some at P1 level so we have to make up appropriate work.
I was once on a secondment in secondary doing support teaching and a chemistry teacher sent down some work asking us to "do something with it" as it was too hard for some of his pupils. I felt like saying, "Make it simpler then" but it had never occurred to him!

here are the ITT levels for June

www.gov.uk/government/publications/monthly-statistics-on-initial-teacher-training-itt-recruitment?fbclid=IwAR2edl9eMnktnDJPMxRfwtIgmZPMIOvG0aPjsafij942wZY5BDkGlOoIyow

Hopefully @noblegiraffe will be able to put them in greater context.

Well, he would have failed his PM if that was his attitude. I teach secondary and have a class of 28 GCSE students. Their attainment already ranges from a U to a 9. I've got to differentiate for all of them, and am questioned on the results.

yes differentiation happens across primary and secondary

I think that at the end of the day, it's not about the (perceived) complexity of what you're teaching per se but about how much you love what you're teaching! With time and experience it all gets easier for the teacher (or it should )in terms of the actual teaching. I'm not talking about the admin obviously, I mean the actual part of getting the knowledge across to your students in a classroom, not writing comments on each student nobody that matters is likely to ever read.
Some people like more advanced topics and they like expanding on that, others like starting from scratch, which I think is more about what primary school is about. You start with the basics and you can really watch them grown and improve by leap and bounds. On a personal (and very subjective) level, I think that would be much more rewarding.
I would prefer to teach the foundations of mathematical concepts to a child than to teach an 18 y.o. how to solve a triple integral. I don't think one's necessarily more complex than the other, on the contrary, getting a message across to somebody who has no previous knowledge has the potential to be a lot more difficult than to build on previous knowledge.

@Maireas What's a PM? Maybe secondary teachers elsewhere in the UK differentiate their work, but any that I've worked with in Scotland don't/claim they can't. We have supported classes with pupils with additional needs and quite a few teachers are known to refuse to have these classes.

Performance management. Adapting teaching to suit the needs of students is part of the teaching standards here. We have to do it. I might ask for support from someone in the SEN department but I can't fob my work off on them.

Wow really? That's shocking. I want to say of course secondary teachers differentiate but clearly not everywhere. I certainly did. I had a GCSE class where the ability ranged from a 1 to an 8 - couldn't really expect the same level of understanding from them.

I've been teaching secondary English for 15 years and I have never, ever got away without differentiating! 🤣 even within a "top set" the kids need differentiation and there are often kids that may be able to engage in something at a higher level (e.g. language analysis of Shakespeare) yet need more support in producing something like a non-fiction persuasive speech. A teacher who pays attention to the kids in their class's picks up on these nuances within their ability.

This is why the job is so hard if you try to do it properly!! Doesn't matter what age the kids are, what stage you are in; it's all tough, underpaid, under appreciated, under funded and bloody hard work. LeVe you depleted and unable to 'give' to your own family at the end of the day...and the end of the week.

It's why I am having a career break to recharge and be with my own kids.

I’m in a good school and we had no applicants for an English job last year. No applicants so far this academic year either. It’s not good.