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

Try telling that to the idiots on the strike thread that think people are going to stay in teaching without a cost of living pay rise.

Not sure they realise just how young the teaching workforce is and how low down a good pension is on their list of priorities.

This is not entirely true. There's also a measure called "completed family size", which is the number of children a woman has had by the age of 45. For women born in the 1930s this was 2.45, for women born in the 1970s (the most recent cohort to have reached the age of 45) it was 1.91. So its not just that there are fewer women of an age to have children, those women are having fewer children.

Yes there's definitely an element of change in fertility rate in the longer term, but when it comes to planning school class sizes for the next decade, the main driver is the size of the fertile cohort.

Also the reason why climate change can't reasonably be addressed by women having fewer babies: even once women's lifetime fertility drops below 2, the population keeps increasing for a long time - but that really is off-topic though I'm sure Noble's nerdy heart will forgive me .

Don't forget that as schools have gaps, other teachers lives become more difficult. (Especially if you are missing a couple of maths teachers for instance)
This will then make it even more likely for other teachers to leave that department.

That's the point I think we're at nationally. The workload simply generated by there not being enough teachers is a major issue.

I am a teacher - 19 years in. I would never ever recommend it as a job to anyone. Especially if you are as intelligent, creative and diligent as most teachers I know. Focus your energy on a job where you get a break in your day and are not abused.

I am so sorry that you are so unhappy. I read a lot of posts like this and I honestly don't know how you get out of bed every day after falling so hard out of love with the profession. I really hope you find something that makes you happier

Serena 1977
I'm sure you are going to be a fantastic teacher and you already have many skills.
However I'm a much better teacher 20 years in than I was that very first year and schools need experience.

I have 2 friends who are teachers and they are so stressed and overworked, really poorly paid imo too

Have noticed lots of struggling teachers on this thread- check out the Facebook group 'life after teaching: leave the classroom and thrive', it's a very supportive place and they are working to affect change to help teachers and therefore prevent recruitment crises. They've also saved lives of suicidal education workers, I'm a big fan.

Exactly. I think they imagine we’re all 60 years old with gold plated pensions. We’ll, they’ll find out once the source of willing ECTs dries up (which it almost has).

One Year 11 group this year had done the entire of GCSE without a specialist Physics teacher. They have been passed all around the Science department so that they weren’t constantly being taught by cover. This is going to happen more and more!

I’m another teacher about to leave at the end of this term. Officially I work 4 days per week and my class are covered by the HLTA on my day off and during my PPA. I usually work at least 50 hours per week though because I still have to plan, mark and make resources for the whole week and I still do all of the data, reports, meeting parents etc. It’s totally unsustainable.
I’m extremely lucky that DH’s job have offered us a different location abroad, so I’ll be teaching at an international school next year. I’ll be able to carry on doing the job I love without the unmanageable conditions.

Read this in the TES magazine and thought of this thread.

So why don’t people want to be teachers? Jack Worth of the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) makes a compelling argument around pay in a recent Tes piece - teacher pay is simply not competitive with other professions. Hence, some may be tempted elsewhere.

But it’s about the conditions of the job, too. We need to ask ourselves: what we are offering in a teaching career? What is the dream we are selling to a young graduate, a teacher five years into their journey, a teacher 10-15 years in? What are the conditions that make this a great job? What ambitions and hopes are we fulfilling through teaching?

For too many, the reality is mocksteads, punitive accountability, eroding autonomy, public shaming, high workload, high stress, unfair responsibility for aspects outside of a school’s control, filling the gaps in public service, and being constantly told that what you are doing is failing the next generation of kids by multiple people who haven’t been in a school in years.

Just to add to the other posters saying this might have been the case but the situation is rapidly changing: one such school near me is closing.

If it can’t attract the staff, the parents won’t pay. They walk.

To where everyone is walking, is a really interesting discussion.

Given that schools are already struggling massively for staff, this latest graph is extremely concerning.

Looks like the government's bright idea of cutting training bursaries because they thought recruitment would be boosted by the pandemic was an incredibly stupid one.

The graph seems to show that there was a brief bounce in 2020 (perhaps people trying their hand at teaching after losing jobs in lockdown).

And now they’ve all realised what a silly idea that is and they can make better money elsewhere!

Looks like the government's bright idea of cutting training bursaries because they thought recruitment would be boosted by the pandemic was an incredibly stupid one.

Surely not? Who could've imagined such a thing?

That is beyond worrying. A generation of children will be teaching themselves soon.

To all the parents with kids in elementary school. Do you feel there's a shortage for elementary school teachers or is mostly for STEM?

Its georgraphy in a friend's grammar school with a lack of teachers.
Lots if primary schools are making cuts and reducing TAs or only really employing "cheap" teachers.

I wonder if they will try and bring in people from abroad!

Wow, employing "cheap" teachers! Yikes! Never thought I'd read that. I've always looked at teaching primary school kids as a bit of a passion rather than a money thing. I'm shocked to see it's come to that over there.

Yup if its a choice between employing 3 recently qualified teachers (say in their early 20s) and an established older (more expensive)member of staff schools are going for the younger ones. Its happening all over. At one point our local primary teachers were nearly all under 30 (leadership were older).

I can see that being true for those teachers who work with older kids. I can see older kids being tougher to deal with, specially after all these disruptive lockdowns (plus hormones, plus you know, they're teenagers)! So, I can understand teachers who teach in secondary schools just want to get out! However, I'm shocked to see even those in primary schools are jumping ship and getting out of teaching! I assume some will be retiring but if a whole school only has mostly younger folks teaching, clearly some will be have left before their time?
It's a bit sad when a country's gone down the drain so much even people who teach primary school just want to get out and move on. It doesn't bode well imho.

Its both people jumping ship for lots of reasons, and schools employing the younger/less experienced and therefore cheaper teachers, hence our local school choosing to employ younger teachers (also with all the new academies younger teachers are more likely to follow the regime.)