Foreign teachers are being offered an extra £10,000 to come and work in Britain in bid to fill classroom vacancies

[SerendipityJane]

Apparently we aren't getting enough immigrants.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12131699/Foreign-teachers-offered-extra-10-000-come-work-Britain.html

oh, and it seems we need to import fishermen too

https://www.ft.com/content/5a438a26-4046-4df6-b4e1-b49af82cfbe0

If it was that good the profession would not be haemorrhaging staff would it? Retention is the problem.

But they're not staying in the jobs. That's the whole point of this thread! I feel like you've managed to bring your own argument round in a whopping full circle. Too many teachers are leaving - that's the whole problem.

it is illogical to say that teachers don't get paid for their holidays.

How do you figure it’s illogical?

If the conditions are bad - get another job where they are better.

That’s what’s happening. That’s why there is a huge recruitment and retention crisis.

Dear dear - maybe you should read the thread rather than see teacher and be programmed to rant?? Thanks for the full circle however.

https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/candidateportal/teachers/teachers-1/3

Looks like teachers in Scotland work the full year unlike support staff who are pro rata, here it states teachers get 40 days plus 10 bank holidays.

And here...
https://michaelt1979.wordpress.com/2020/06/12/are-teachers-paid-for-the-holidays/

Holidays is rather a distraction here.

People don’t want to train to be teachers and they don’t want to remain being teachers-finding a solution to that is key here.

I do think too much focus in on trying to recruit than retain experienced teachers. New recruits are more likely to leave whereas those who trained 15-20 years ago are more likely to stay in. At least seeing the trend where I work. I would not pay £10,000 now to train as a teacher. When I did it I was paid a salary as an unqualified teacher whilst I trained which was actually good at the time. I have taken on students and to be honest whilst I admire them for standing up for themselves a bit more - I’m dubious about some of the university PGCE training that’s been done. I was literally thrown in and worked 12 hour days when I was training ( I don’t do that now and have a good work/life balance) but I’m sometimes amazed at how little the universities have prepped students for what teaching will be like come September with a class of 30 kids. A couple of placements are not enough - I think more school based time should be implemented from September to July from the PGCE route anyway. I suspect cos they now have to pay the universities are keen to pass them.

Maybe - why deny a truth - it's part of the package, as is the pension. I don't care that teachers have more holidays, but trying to deny it is pointless. I often think the gov should reduce pensions and pay more - gov employees should have more control over their finances, they should be able to decide how much they want to pay into their pensions and how much they want to pay into their mortgage.

I think the big thing that no one has mentioned is the increase in opportunities to wfh. Teaching used to be seen rightly or wrongly as a child-friendly occupation - now people can more easily work from home, working in a school no longer is your only option, employers have become more flexible, we offer one of our team the summer off (unpaid) if she wants it - she works when it suits her.

I can see the number of women who used to feel teaching was a great option are no longer as keen to be either teachers or teaching assistants - the change will happen - it will be painful who knows what will come from it - online teaching wouldn't a surprise, it would certainly allow teachers to stop being stand in social workers.

Something has to give - industry/business are often quick to make the change and respond to changes in recruitment and retention - it seems the same can't be said for schools but there is no doubt the shortage of warm bodies will hasten the pace of change and maybe that's a good thing.

With detailed knowledge of Keeping Children Safe in Education (DfE) and the many stipulations to eradicate risk under safer recruitment, this ‘scheme’ is going to be a minefield.

"the change will happen - it will be painful who knows what will come from it - online teaching wouldn't a surprise"

Online teaching was awful. A very poor substitute for being in a classroom. That is definitely not the way to go.

I don’t know about that - my dcs have got used to recorded content - they prefer it. And I can see it catching on if it were done properly with proper prep and production

How is that going to keep them IN teaching?

Yeah, online learning was the great failed experiment of the lockdowns. Just because your DC liked it, doesn’t mean it is suitable for mass-scale education.

People generally don’t realise what massive efforts schools make to get kids to do the work.

"the change will happen - it will be painful who knows what will come from it - online teaching wouldn't a surprise"

I think in the next 50 years we will see a move towards kids in classrooms with content for each child loaded onto individual laptops and the adults in the room being "facilitators" who keep order and help children who get stuck to move on. So there won't be a need for teachers as such just content creators and facilitators 😬
We're sort of moving that way now 😵‍💫

Unfortunately you may be right

It's very grim

I think in the next 50 years we will see a move towards kids in classrooms with content for each child loaded onto individual laptops and the adults in the room being "facilitators" who keep order and help children who get stuck to move on. So there won't be a need for teachers as such just content creators and facilitators 😬
We're sort of moving that way now 😵‍💫

We have never had the money for that sort of technology in my school-we have 15 fading laptops to share across the whole school and no money to maintain them. Battery power is shite and Wi-Fi doesn’t work on all of them. The idea of a functioning laptop for every child in the school, and enough plug points to plug them in is a pipe dream, let alone being able to afford subscriptions to to any sort of personalised content! It would be cheaper and easier to maintain just one teacher.

I can an even cheaper option being one TA being paid a low wage to ‘teach’ 30 children as is happening a lot now, but why would they want to? If qualified teachers on £36k+ are leaving in droves, why would anyone else want to do it?

So nobody there to spot the signs of abuse, neglect, possibility of SEN and many other things that teachers also do because they know the children.

I also agree with the point about crap IT provision in schools.

The difficulty here being the facilitating and behaviour management, which is exactly where the teaching degree comes in.

It really isn't an easy job. Facilitating the individual learning and pace for each student alone is a nightmare; some students take an hour to figue out something that others get in 5mins. Can you imagine helping out 25 or more individuals, all in a different context due to completely different paces? There is a skill to that. It's the reason schools generally stream classes, and also the reason for set points in a lesson to move to the next stage, which is at teacher discretion in some places at least, so as to gauge the next steps to take with the whole class.

As for behaviour management, this assumes children passively sit there and are ready to learn. That doesn't happen. Children would get up, push the on/off buttons of their neighbours' tablets, make animal noises (a new favourite in my Y11(!) class), throw pens, figure out a way to circumvent the restrictions to play online games and get up to any number of distraction measures to avoid work. A reason why most schools ban phones, have tight computer controls and now increasingly punitive behaviour management policies. Many children cannot be excluded under safeguarding concerns (as they would be worse off at home than in school, how sad is that).

And since children must not be allowed to fail by merit of their own unwillingness to work, who would be held responsible for progress?

No, the system needs an overhaul, but we're a very long way away from the scenario you envision.

Yup. The thread fell into the groundhog day groove quicker than many.

Plus: parents don't value teachers but it's their own fault because schools (generally MATs.... not run by teachers and very much not teachers idea!) are petty about uniform.

@ThrallsWife I think you've misunderstood my post a bit. I'm a teacher too, for children who have generally failed in several settings before they reach me.

I wasn't outlining that scenario as a good idea, far from it but I feel like the powers that be are pushing us down this route.

Look at oak academy, look at the current trend for adaptive teaching and "teaching to the top" rather than differentiating.

And let's face it, the govt don't actually give a shiny shit if individual children fail 🤦🏻‍♀️

Every single brilliant foreign teacher we have had walked out of a ‘reasonable’ state school basically saying I’m not taking this shit. When you can’t pay your rent and food - no one is interested