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

Not like that here in the NW. 20-50 applicants per post. DP has found it really tough. He qualified 3 years ago, and has been through so many applications, interviews etc. He has just got a new job for sept, but perm jobs barely ever come round. Biggest regret of my life encouraging him to go and do his pgce. It almost financially killed him. Well, actually it did really as his credit is screwed, defaults, ccjs etc from the times when he had no income. It's been brutal.

I never returned to teaching after my dtwins were born and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I work 21 hours a week from home tutoring and don’t earn much less than I did teaching. Hatedevery year of the paperwork and needless pencil pushing.

A very experienced science colleague is going to be a personal trainer with some online tutoring on the side.
We're okay this year but we have a group of staff who intend to retire next year. It's a concern.

Our teachers are all quitting because there isnt a bank around that will lend them enough money to afford their own bedsit in surrey. After 3 or 4 years in the classroom and a salary of £30k, 4.5 times this isnt enough to buy a garage in or near Guildford and not enough income to afford a 1 bed flat for rent on their own - 1 beds are around 1400/1500 pcm here before council tax, bills, deposits, running the car to get to the countryside school for 730am.

No affordable housing = no teachers bar old ones who bought in the 80s and young ones who live with their parents until their parents say tgey have had enough.

All comes down to cost of housing here. Terminal.

I'm a retired teacher. I started teaching in the early seventies, and over the years, the job got harder, until today, teachers have to deal with undisciplined children and entitled parents on a daily basis.

In the past, if a child was disciplined at school, parents were supportive. Today, teachers are increasingly likely to be threatened by outraged parents who can't believe their little angel could possibly be in the wrong.

They are expected to deal with a whole range of paperwork and in many cases, act as unqualified social workers.

There is a current thread where posters are saying that it's the school's job to 'sort out' the problem of a child who doesn't have friends.

Parents often think it's the school's job to rectify all issues that children have. If there's a problem with the academic side of school, then fine, the school should be dealing with it, but if they're spending time on making sure that every child is entirely content, what time is left for the job they're being paid for?

Just leave teachers to teach.

I'm a teacher with 20 years of experience and I have to have a second job to afford to run my own life (not profligate- just a lone parent with two teens going to uni). There is little to no chance of promotion and the job has less respect and more bureaucracy than ever. I loathe it most of the time. The only people that really get it is fellow teachers and we are mainly so jaded that we're not nice to be around. I'd change jobs tomorrow if I could afford it.

Like a PP said I have loved the actual job of teaching pupils. What I'm worn out with are endless "new" initiatives that are actually old shite that's on its second or third revolution - it didn't work then and it won't work now, standards of behaviour deteriorating and having no sanctions for these, lack of support from parents etc etc.

Add to this the public perception that we're lazy workshy slackers who have just had 2 years off and work from 9 to 3 with "all those holidays" - glad I'm retiring next week 😆

*are fellow

@CoastalWave and @Quornflakegirl
Interested to hear how tutoring works wrll for you...do you do it online during the day or face to face after school?

I have been teaching in the day and tutoring maths and science gcse after school (terrible with all the advance info and multiple exam boards). Is there much tutoring about spring the day time? Sorry if I am hijacking the thread...

Agree there do seem to be lots of vacancies. Teaching just isn't attractive enough. Especially with the increase of cost of living.

Please excuse typos..works well for you...

during the daytime.

I quit teaching a few years ago after having DC and am currently a TA. The wages are obviously abysmal but it's such a better work-life balance for me and my kids.

I did love my job and the kids were brilliant, deprived inner city area but none of the stereotypical teenage 'chav' behaviour, my classes of course had their stressful challenging characters but majority was more or less ok. However the management was extremely weak and support from them was very poor, SEN dept non existent, everyone who was mates with the Head got promoted despite lack of experience, and there was no career progression available if you wanted to be part-time like I did. Same story in many of my nearby high schools and friends all leaving their places in droves too. If the govt offered decent incentives for returning staff (and I could find a part time job at a school with good SEND staff plus strong leadership) I'd go back. Until then I'll stick as a primary TA on minimum wage and focussing on helping the kids rather than stressing about inspections, pointless book scrutiny and chasing unnecessary homework and the other billion things there's no need and no time for!

DH left primary teaching 7 years ago and our life is immeasurably better for it.

I wouldn't encourage anyone to be a teacher.

Of the 30 or so fellow PGCE acquaintances DH still has contact with, only 3 are still teaching and only one of those in a mainstream state primary. The rest have left for other careers.

I would leave tomorrow, but as someone once said to me..teaching is a well, easy to fall into but impossible to get out of.... I am grumpy a lot of the time and just hate my job 😕 the eternal question is how to get out, what can I do at 50 yrs old?

Teacher pay isn't great, I bet the posts with loads of applicants are in areas with lower housing costs.

I went back to work as a TA, to see if I would want to retrain up as a teacher next year. After ten years out of the classroom, I couldn't believe how much the role had gone down hill. I'm doing a different degree now. You have to fill out two forms and a Google Doc, just to blink in the classroom these days.

I left teaching at Easter, after 10 years. Now work as an education manager for a charity. I don’t love it like I used to love teaching but I sleep at night now and generally feel more human again. 5 other teachers leaving my school in July - in a small one form intake school. Ofsted, funding, the absolute shit show that was Covid, the general attitude towards “lazy teachers” were all things that killed it for me.
There is a huge crisis looming and no one seems to care.

I wouldn’t be so confident in disagreeing with the fact that those with more experience are going to be more skilled. I have been teaching for 10 years and I am already seeing things come back into fashion that went out at the start of my career. Those older teachers will have seen it all several times before. I think life experience vs recent training doesn’t have a clear winner, but as a new teacher I would want to learn from those with the experience.

I'm in Scotland and our school is really struggling to recruit teachers. Both of my children have commented about the seemingly endless number of supply teachers they have had.

Teachers leaving mid-year seems much more common place now too.

All parents out there reading this can make a big difference here. Teachers would not be leaving in such droves if they felt they had parental support. But we don't. If we give detentions, if we give honest (poor!) grades, if we don't reply to emails instantly, if we don't magically improve their child's marks by 2 grades, if we give too much/little homework, we just get constant aggro from parents.

We have to make about a hundred million decisions a minute, and we have to be able to justify every single one of those beyond reproach and it's just exhausting and demoralising (and sometimes we get these split second decisions wrong, because we're human!) And that's before you even get onto the teaching or marking.

We all need to lower our expectations of teachers. And I don't accepting poor, lazy, incompetent teaching, I mean accepting that even great teachers are just people. Exhausted, stressed, unwell people, who are quite probably looking for a new job right now.

We’re losing loads of good teachers at the end of this term and recruitment has been a real issue. I’m 41, middle management, 15 years experience and another 26 years to go before our absolutely enormous mortgage is paid off, so no early retirement for me… housing costs round us are astronomical.

Very few vacancies in South Wales and those that do get advertised are fixed term for one year.

Lower house prices and nowhere near as much bureaucracy are big contributing factors.

Means that there is very little movement in schools, not necessarily a good thing!

At my school we have more staff leaving this year than I’ve ever known before.

Struggling to recruit for both teaching and support roles - some jobs have had no applicants when pre Covid there would be 20+

Management is shit, pay is shit, respect is zero, and the wear and tear on your mental health is enormous.

It's underpaid to an insulting level, and the admin required out of hours is unsustainable.

Everyone I know is trying to leave teaching.

those that do get advertised are fixed term for one year.

Lots of schools round my way advertise fixed term for one year, not because we won't need them the next year but because we know we may end up hiring someone crap and it's easier to hobble on for a year then not renew their contract than to try to manage out a permanent staff member. Then hope we can get someone better the next year.

The £65,000 my dd will incur whilst doing her teaching degree makes me so angry.

e@glebaisaword ..I've heard similar, weak or horrid slt, leaving staff on the front line with no support or back up.
Many DC have undiagnosed Sen pushed on from primary and yes a school who backs up teachers with a good Sen team and a good pastoral team works wonders. Especially when backed up with strong SLT and good teachers/parent commication links.