I have just been offered a choice of 25 guaranteed interviews for teaching positions next week.

[Nimbostratus100]

Because I am likely to resign my teaching job this June, and "word has got out". I am inundated with offers. I have just received an email from one recruiter listing 25 jobs they can guarantee me an interview for next week.

I don't have much faith in the honesty of agencies in general, but a quick google confirms the ones I have checked are genuine vacancies, and genuinely interviewing next week.

Out of the 25, if I were job hunting ( which I am not, if I stay in teaching I will stay where I am) then 20 would interest me. The other 5 or either jobs I am not qualified for, or jobs with a tricky journey.

I have other emails from other agencies, and some from schools directly.

This is the worst it has ever been. I have been subject to such aggressive recruitment before, but in previous years, only say half a dozen jobs at a time, never more than 10, at the most.

You’re clearly not aware of this posters extensive work history.

I have a cv up on LinkedIn and Indeed which clearly says I’m looking for a career change. I get calls and emails every single day from teaching agencies! I could walk out of here telling my boss to fuck off, burn down the building as I left and probably still walk into a teaching job the next day 😂

I don't doubt that at all, but I do doubt tonnes of agencies contacting someone as they've somehow heard via word of mouth randomly.

A friend registered with agencies recently and had three phone calls from different ones within forty minutes all offering interviews, all desperate for staff.
She'd had half a dozen before she'd left the house to come out with me over half term.

I get the odd one who finds my profile on linked in - has worked out the structure of our work email addresses at the NHS trust I work in and spams me with recruitment for another career where the vacancy rate can be completely barmy with unfilled posts.

Really pisses me off - message me on linked in fine - but don't bug me at work.

I am planning to retrain to be maths and chemistry teacher. I have phd in chemistry but would prefer to teach maths. Is there any change to get into training courses with bursary? I can't pay £10000 for years course.

You cannot train as a maths and chemistry teacher. With your credentials you'd be eligible for a £27k tax free bursary to do a PGCE as a chemistry teacher (although you'd probably have to teach a bit of physics and biology. Then, you could probably easily segue into maths teaching.

Why do you want to teach maths over chemistry? Depending on your maths background you might be able to get onto a maths PGCE with a £27k bursary too. They may, however, want you to do a subject knowledge enhancement course.

@noblegiraffe Maths was my strongest subject in a levels and I feel I would most enjoy teaching maths. I could teach chemistry as well but I could choose it would be maths.

I'd suggest phoning up your local PGCE provider and seeing what they say.

Schools are in disarray

DH is leaving his teaching job, due to burn out

It seems everything got worse in the last few years, lots of kids still behind developmentally and socially since the pandemic

Parents don't give a fuck, just treat school like childcare

Kids and parents don't respect teachers, kids kicking doors down in the middle of lessons, TikTok organised riots within schools, it's bonkers. And this is in a "naice" area

Good luck with recovery and a hopefully new career OP 

I retired almost 5 years ago and still get both phone calls and emails from a few local schools where I have worked previously, telling me they have a vacancy and asking if I would be interested in applying. I also more frequently get emails from agencies telling me they have the perfect vacancy for me. AQA email me almost every year asking if I want to examine A level scrips in my subject area. I have told agencies I have retired and to take me off their mailing list but the emails still arrive. Not as many as in my first year retired thankfully. Recruitment must be at an all time low.

I have random agencies emailing me. Some I've never worked for. I don't know how or where they got my email from.

Then you should seriously query it as someone is sharing your personal info or has sold it. Admittedly most people agree to this without realising when they sign up for other stuff.

@Starplekk I always email back advising them I am now retired and to please remove me from their mailing list.

Without a doubt. You should see the utter shite coming through teaching university courses too. I wouldn’t want some of them teaching my dog. Granted, some are fabulous but the majority aren’t .

I am in the same position.
My CV is on indeed and another website. It says really clearly that I do not want a teaching position but I am inundated with calls, messages and emails from teaching agencies and a couple of times from schools directly.

One even offered me a £5000 signing bonus.
I am a primary teacher with SEND experience.

It's weird that senior leaders don't seem to have cottoned on fully though. I have seen so many examples of really good, experienced (and so expensive) teachers being managed out by SLT who think that they can replace them with cheap ECTs. They get a nasty shock when they can't recruit the cheap ECTs or they only stay a short time.

Recruitment for maths has always been an issue, 20+ years ago my sister got a golden 'handshake' to do her maths PGCE. She has a master in maths, teaching isn't exactly a lucrative career for someone like her, but she does it because it she is passionate for it.

Are you in a Kent town by any chance? Riots here :)

It's pants. DH is a teacher and can well believe it.

As an aside, DD is in year 8 at a selective grammar school..she has only had cover maths teachers since she started.

It's a lovely school, high educational standards, but no discipline issues, small classes. Cannot recruit maths teachers. I despair.

I'd never recommend Teach First to anybody. It's absolutely brutal - they take graduates who have largely attended lovely, often private, schools throughout childhood, then gone straight into a good university, got their degrees with no difficulty - and then they get dumped into the classroom with the most challenging kids, have to attend evening and weekend trainings, do all the usual CPD, have the pressure to 'prove' themselves to SLT by taking on all the shitty extra hours stuff, are tied in for two years or they are financially penalised, all to be told by the same SLT when they're shaking and crying in stationery cupboards 'Well, we thought you were better than that, because you're Teach First'.

It's the modern day version of sending the public school lads over the top in charge of battalions - and those who survive all the stress, the emotional impact of encountering terrible levels of deprivation, abuse and lack of opportunity, unsupported SEND and pure disengagement from life, mostly get the fuck out into private/selective schools - if they stay in teaching - the moment their two years is up.

Makes Teach First an absolute fucking shitload of money, though.

OP - assume you are talking about the state schools? Is the situation / scenario better or any different in independent schools?

I wonder how regional this is.

I just had a look out of interest at our local schools. No vacancies at all for the infant school, 1 vacancy for maternity cover for the junior school and only adverts for a cleaner and an IT and infrastructure manager at the nearest secondary.

• have been off since last June, and no maths teacher has been found to cover for me in that time

Poor kids*

Have you been off on full pay??

I'd feel so guilty towards the children, the school and my colleagues I wouldn't be able to do it personally

@febrezeme, really? You seem to be assuming the OP is swinging the lead. There are many possible explanations for long sick leave, e.g. having treatment for cancer, waiting for an operation.

So glad I retired when I did. What a s* show. I taught a specialist subject in a ground floor room with four doors. (It was in a naice area too - a little seaside town on the south coast). When I arrived there one group had been divided in 2 and group A (the best behaved, more compliant) were told they'd be doing the GCSE. Group B were (the spawn of the devil- previous teacher's words to the students!!) told they wouldn't be doing the exam. (incidentally 2 of the pupils were governors children!). Guess which class I got..... trying to keep them in the classroom was like trying to keep water in a colander. Here I was, a HOD with over 30yrs experience unable to cope. I stuck at it for 3 yrs, then gave notice. My job for which I trained and at which I worked, very successfully for years was not advertised (I was too expensive) but someone who I had appointed as a NQT not 2 years prior, and whose sole qualification for the post was that they had worked for 2 weeks W/E at a fast food outlet. And I'm not even joking.

God knows what the exam results were that year