Teachers - notice period is this week to leave at Christmas

[Workyticket]

I'm on a Facebook group for teachers looking to get out

Notice has to be in by the end of this week I believe (I'm FE so different) and there are so many teachers putting theirs in.

I know that @Noblegiraffe is usually the one to start these threads and some people think she exaggerates

We're in the shit people - already in crisis and way more will be gone at Christmas

Email your MP, back teachers striking when they (inevitably) go out and be prepared to start forking out for stationery etc to send your kids into school with.

Same here. I'm FE so slightly different contact hours

I teach 9-12.45 then 1.15-4.30

If I lose my desk time to cover (like I have for 5 out of the last 7 weeks) I'm literally having to stay at work until 7pm or wfh once I've seen to ds etc

What is your role if you have had to advertise for a HT and DHT? Your tone and comment amount snatching the hand off of any ups teachers leaving is odd, we're often the best teachers in schools and as your most valuable and importan tool in delivering your core purpose of educating it's bizzare you're thrilled to save money at the expense of learning.

I wouldn't leave until summer purely so the children have a consistent teacher for the year. However I know at least 1 colleague intends to resign so god knows what will happen as we struggled to recruit this year.

Who is the 'we' you speak of? Would parents be happy for you to fill the school with NQTs?

Mea culpa. I hadn't realised there was a new contract, with 1265 hours. Why can't the buggers just put it all in a new Burgundy Book?

Still the principle remains that teachers' time is not a bottomless fund, so this is where the unions need to test this and support staff in limiting their work. And teachers need to help themselves by not working the weekends for a start, and as managers, not setting deadlines that imply work for their staff.

As an example, in my last UK school I was ic Assessment Recording and Reporting and always set deadlines for exam results that meant no-one was "forced" to work holidays or weekend. SLT spotted this on the calendar and changed it to an unreasonable date. I nodded and smiled, and changed it back. . Dozy buggers never looked, and as they did not teach, weren't affected. Which is why they were unreasonable in the first place.

The ideal is for branch union reps to sit down with SLT and nut this out, of course.

It has been 1265 hours for at least 20 years. I think it was the Education (School Day and School Year) (England) Regulations 1999

I left teaching in January to join the civil service.... best move I've ever made!

Yes, I get fewer holidays, but I'm getting about £400 more a month plus zero stress. I couldn't be happier.

@Workyticket you clearly know what you’re doing in your maths lesson and I agree it seems pointless that you have to do a lesson plan on top of that. What would happen if you just didn’t do the official lesson plan? Who does the plan get submitted to?

@Madreb good on you. And can I ask if (having cut out the nonsense tick box exercises) you enjoy your job or is there another element that gets you down?

if everyone refused to do the tick boxes like you surely it would make for s slightly happier workforce of teachers.

XjustagirlX

I love my job. I'm in a brilliant school. I think if everyone ignored it all they would have to recognise it can't be done. I do know they would use it as a way to put pressure on crap teachers. The workload is heavier when you start out I think, Inised to spend weekends planning/marking because I was learning how to teach - that is unavoidable and I sometimes think the support they have for newly qualified actually creates additional work rather than eases. I've been thinking about why I am so happy now in the job and the other reason is I am slightly under teaching allocation (it is the norm at my school) and that does make a significant impact. All teachers should have 20% PPA time - that would be game changing.

That’s great, it’s always good to hear of new enthusiastic members of the profession six weeks into the job. Come back and tell us how they are feeling in July.

Interesting to hear; I guess I'm lucky with my DD school that seems to replace teachers that leave very easily. She had a supply teacher due to long term sickness and the supply was then appointed as a class teacher. Her class teacher was a pupil at the school himself (and his mum is a TA) and currently teaches the opposite class to a teacher who taught him... Her previous class teacher was also a pupil at the school and her current class teacher's young nieces/nephews are also at the school.
We find it very authoritarian but I guess it works for teacher retention!

My school historically had no problems with replacing teachers who left. This has become increasingly difficult over the years, trying to find suitable replacements. We've advertised with no applicants, and with only totally awful applicants. We've generally managed to get someone in, although I remember seeing a thread on MN complaining about a teacher, realising it was someone I work with and thought 'yeah, it's bad, and we know, but there's literally no one else'.

I'm really, really worried about recruitment next year. PGCE numbers at our local provider are terrible and my area really relies on that fresh supply of ECTs each year.

Things are looking really grim.

Problem is with replacing with ECTs is becoming harder. The PGCE cohorts are becoming smaller, and from that course not everyone will pass, complete or even go into teaching. The ECT course is also 2 years instead of 1, which means both the new teacher and mentor will have a reduced timetable for twice as long, which will require further salaries to fill those extra gaps on the timetable. Schools also have to follow an approved course for the ECT, which incurs costs and has increased workload for both new teacher and mentor. ECTs already work longer hours because it takes them longer to plan, mark, write reports, prepare parents' evenings etc so this isn't helping retention. The increased workload on mentors means it's both costing the school in cover with the increased number of training seminars but also means fewer teachers are accepting the role.

ECTs are important in sustaining the natural flow of the workforce, but would you trust a private company that relied entirely on its grad programme? Worse still, would you trust a business model that relied on its grad scheme but they couldn't hire or didn't have the privison to hire, so they just hire anyone even if they are wholly unsuitable?

I've not taken on a trainee teacher for placement for the last 3 years because the last 3 I had were shockingly bad

Bad at maths, lazy, unprepared and in one case downright rude. They turn up late, haven't done reflections haven't prepped for their portion on the lesson etc.

I sat through a 30 minute observation on one that was so bad their university lecturer apologised to me mid lesson. Then she wrote pass on his observation paperwork.

I've not got the headspace to take one these days 😒

After some comments from parents on another thread, I honestly don't know why I'm bothering. For the last few weeks, when people have asked me about my day, my answer has actually been 'I didn't hand in my notice today'.

I agree. I've taken on an ECT to get through threshold but I've said I won't do it again and I stopped taking on PGCE students for the same reason as you.

Ditto to not mentoring anymore because of shocking quality candidates who somehow pass and ditto to 20% PPA being the game changer. For context for those that don't know that would mean 1 hour a day at work where you're not teaching. 1 hour - not some crazy outrageous request considering the massive amount of work needed for preparing, marking, reporting etc for our classes and the huge amount of admin and safeguarding work required as a form tutor.

I'm looking at job sites, looking at much lower paid jobs that technically have more hours per week but in reality will be the same amount of time I already spend in work and with no work to take home with me and with an actual lunchbreak and being able to pee more than once a day and without queuing for ten minutes of your lunch to access the one toilet for women available in my block of 3 floors.

I picture handing in my notice and seeing their faces and realise so much from that picture. They genuinely believe they can just keep on taking the piss more and more and more without any consideration for workload or wellbeing or the job we're actually there to do (teaching young people) and that we're trapped and will never quit no matter what.

A colleague in my department walked out just after Easter last year and they still haven't managed to replace her, you'd think that would sharpen their focus but nope, I imagine they'd still be shocked and stunned if/when I hand my notice in and they realise they're two members of staff short.

Maybe that says more about your dept than them

No, not really. The quality of trainees has gone down since the government said that basically you had to accept anyone onto the course.

I'm UPS by the way for the lady who said they'd bite my hand off. The colleague who walked out after Easter was only 3 years into career so 'cheaper' than me - they haven't managed to replace her and they wouldn't manage to replace me. Supply would cost them a fortune more, as it is for my former colleagues role, and put yet more pressure on remaining staff, as my colleagues departure has done. Yet they still don't stop and think maybe we shouldn't pile a load of non evidence based bs extra procedures on them when they're already at breaking point or maybe we should give workload and wellbeing some token nod at least.

There is an arrogance and assumption that we can't and won't leave and I think we buy into that too when it's a myth. We don't earn much and when you break down how many actual hours we do for our wage we get paid peanuts. Yes we get holidays but what percentage of them do we actually enjoy rather than spend dreading going back to work or trying to catch up on the impossible backlog of work accumulated from the previous term and the crazy expectations of what will be in place before the next term? And in my case how much do I spend on takeaway and booze because I'm too knackered to decide what to cook let alone cook it and too tired to engage in any other way of destressing and relaxing than alcohol?

I'm in the middle of applying for a job with a 10k pay cut. I loved my school and my pupils and my job but the last few years have been really hard going workload and stress wise and there has been no acknowledgement of that and even more extra work dumped on us despite us clearly struggling enough with the extra needs and deficits of pupils and our own exhaustion and worn nerves and wellbeing from covid. It's just more and more work with no thanks or acknowledgement and no pay rise last year (pretty used to that though) and it increasingly feels like classroom teachers are just treated with utter disdain and disregard in my school whilst excessive quantities of assistant heads and deputy heads and heads of x, y and z are recruited with minimal timetables to sit around thinking of extra work we could do.

Bit of a rant I know.

Also agree that 'the private sector is tougher' is utter nonsense. Private sector as in what? It's everything from checkout girl to corporate banker ffs - of course corporate bankers have stressful jobs - they also earn a fucking fortune to compensate for it. If a teacher is on 30k and working 50hrs plus a week with endless deadlines and responsibility and pressure she doesn't need to be a corporate banker in the private sector to replace her job. She could be on the bottom rung of the manager route for Aldi and earn that and be able to do crazy shit like go to doctor's appointments or her cousins funeral or book a day off to attend an important event for her child.

Compare like for like.

There are nearly 100,000 teachers on the FB site mentioned, lots of them are ECTs. So many experienced teachers are being bullied out as they are expensive, payments for experience are therefore being phased out as schools replace with cheaper ECTs who are then expected to take on additional responsibilities without additional pay or time. I have never seen as many roles advertised in my small county as I have over the last 12 months. Lots are continually re advertised and many are support roles. Sometime I see the same job advertised, but with small tweaks in description to try and attract a candidate. Science, Maths and English teachers are the hardest to recruit followed by ICT, MFL and Bus.

I handed in my notice and it feels like a breath of fresh air. I miss being myself and I just don't have time to be a person with the hours I was working. I am behind with paperwork in almost everything despite being in work 7:30 - 19:00, working through my lunch break and doing a couple of hours at home in the evenings. The systems are incomprehensibly inefficient and I spend hours doing mindless tasks like double entering data because we use 2 systems and sticking worksheets into the children's book so that the books satisfy the neatness criteria in book looks (I teach year 1 and they can't stick things straight yet). I cannot wait to get out.

That gluing in worksheets is not something I have to do as a secondary teacher but totally epitomises the pointlessness of some things that mean nothing but you have to do them because you'll be judged for them even though they have zero meaning.

www.aldirecruitment.co.uk/area-manager-programme/graduate-area-manager-programme

Aldi graduate programme - starting salary of 44k and a company car. Earning more than I earn having qualified 20 years ago. You need a 2:1 in any degree.

Sure, the private sector is much tougher.