Teachers what 3 things....

[Grumpyantics]

Would you change about your job if you could (except pay)....

Not having to sugar coat it to the parents when telling them what their child’s behaviour is really like.

Not having to buy soap and glue sticks etc out of my own wages.

Public realising how difficult it is managing behaviour nowadays.

1. Give back good LA control with a central teacher development service for CPD and proper support for schools.

1. Reform Ofsted so it's less political and more collaborative, whilst still ensuring schools are doing a good job.

1. Find a way to have parents hold their children to account for their poor choices and behaviour rather than make excuses for them.

Can I have 4? If so, train teachers for a minimum if two years so they get a better grounding in psychology, understanding children and the pedagogical skills they need so they have more resilience and feel able to stay in the profession.

1. I would like not to have to work 0.6 and work on both my days "off" in order to keep the job to around 40 hours a week. It should be possible to do a full time.job well without working 50 or 60 hours a week and routinely working evenings and weekends.
2. I'd like a lot more SEN support and more variation in the curriculum. I don't want to teach A-level students who aren't really capable of A-levels. It's rotten for them.
3. I would like either to have sufficient time to mark a set of A-level papers without having to work a full weekend every few weeks or for it to be understood that you can't have A-level classes of 20+ and give them all detailed, regular feedback. It's big classes or big marking - choose which!

1 Proper leadership training for SLT or SLT who are leaders and not necessarily teachers.

2 more non-contact time.

3 smaller class sizes.

If I had to choose one, my first every time

1. I'd like subject CPD to be offered without having to organise and pay for it myself. I took students to some lectures today on my day "off", unpaid. I wanted to hear the lectures. Surely it isn't the norm in other developed countries for teachers to get no subject CPD at all?

A TA for the class, 1:1 for each SEN and another TA for interventions.
More funding and support for SEN children and children struggling.
More PPA time - 10% is not enough.

A lot of mine is SEN as I'm an ex teacher and now working in LA SEND. There just isn't enough support or funding from central government. I really feel for parents struggling with SEN children, children with mental health issues and school refusers

@Grumpyantics who indeed. We have an academy lead who sends us motivational emails, and the name of the academy is referenced in hushed reverent tones. They make us do horrendous generic cpd. They hold all the finance centrally and getting them to pay for anything is the most soul destroying thing so now I just buy stuff myself. I think that was their ploy all along.

We just had ofsted a few months ago. Next week the academy is coming to do a mocksted. This is to prep us for the thing that just happened…it’s like they sit in their offices far away and think up ever more creative ways to stress us out!!

Funding, so we can have enough staff to support all the children in class plus run interventions, and pay for specialist teachers, drama therapists etc. And buy decent resources for practical activities.

EYFS extended into Year 1, play based learning in Year 2 alongside some more formal learning, gradually increasing formality in KS2 whilst still leaving room in the curriculum for play and exploration.

Behaviour policies that treat children like equal human beings rather than robots.

@bluechameleon agree with behaviour policies as that's my pet hate

Parity across the school in terms of frees. I am full time and have a tlr, a number of colleagues work 0.4 and get nearly as many frees as i do ( plus half the meetings and half the duties).
Funding, i teach a vocational course which includes the compulsory demonstration of the kids showing they can use common item Y 3x each, we have one of said item so finding the time to record the whole group doing it 3x each is onerous.
More professional freedom, I have only been teaching for half of my lengthy work life but the insistence on you must have x hours of meetings i still find ludicrous, especially when i am spending hours weekly out of school marking and planning

And thats not to to say I disagree with many of colleagues
priorities listed above

Back to basics.
concentrate on reading
writing
tables and basics maths at primary.
forget all the rest. Make sure they all start school with a great base foundation to then learn the rest. To many start high school without basis ..

@Workyticket unfortunately not all teachers are like you and I.

I trusted staff on my team to not slack and my line manager is actually who made me aware of the teachers that were simply going through the motions because they could.

It's not even just about monitoring though.

I had 4 ECTs on my team who obviously had mentors, but it was a really good way to give positive feedback and pick up on small things they could work on.

The aim at my current school isn't to make sure people are planning properly; it's to ensure that teachers are implementing school wide routines and behaviour policy consistently. That's why the behaviour in this school is impeccable despite being inner city.

Number 1 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

I trusted staff on my team to not slack and my line manager is actually who made me aware of the teachers that were simply going through the motions because they could.

Your use of the word ‘slack’ is very telling in my opinion @Carbon12
There are lazy workers in every profession, but most teachers are not slackers. It doesn’t reflect well on you I don’t think for you to be referring to your team in that way. If you find that things are not consistently done or implemented unless you are playing big brother maybe you and your line manager need to assess how sensible and productive your expectations are - and how having unreasonable and unsustainable expectations will impact your staff and the children in the long run. If teachers are on the whole ‘slacking’ within a school then it may well be that what you’re asking is not sustainable practice or that teachers are not seeing any positive impact from implementing your measures.

Hmmm you're right, slacking was perhaps the wrong word, but nevertheless, it was only 2/3 teachers out of 13.

I think I was naive when I started my role. These teachers were my colleagues before I got my TLR and they've been wirking for years. I thought they're so experienced, they know what they're doing, I don't need to really do learning walks with them. I was wrong. They weren't willing to adapt to new teaching methods, adopt new school wide routines and couple other things.

I focused the rest of my attention to the ECTs and NQTs in our dpt (who were fantastic btw).

I don't wanna out myself by giving too many details but my expectations were minimum. I scrapped ticking and flicking in books, only asked for every other test to be marked and even shared all of my resources so minimal planning was required.

Anyways the SLT were poor there, extreme lack of support for someone who was new in the role, so I left. I do miss the kids though.

My boss and her frankly pointless stupid rules which do not benefit the students.