England is running out of teachers

[noblegiraffe]

Or, to be clear, people who are willing to teach in schools. It has plenty of ex teachers who have vowed never to set foot in a school again.

While everyone seems to understand that you can't expect to see a doctor or dentist anymore, the message about not being able to expect your child to have a teacher anymore doesn't seem to have filtered through in the same way.

The number of cover lessons that kids are having is going through the roof. Some people think that if a kid has an adult in front of them then they are learning something, where kids know if they have a 'supply' timetabled that afternoon they are in for a doss lesson. Some people think that if a kid has a teacher for their subject that the teacher actually knows the subject being taught, which is increasingly not the case. Some people think that if lessons are being planned for those teachers and the teacher just has to 'deliver' them then that will be good enough, which is often not the case.

Exam classes at least used to be protected and given the 'good teachers', which is increasingly no longer the case, with Y11s reporting that they have a variety of supply teachers, even in core subjects.

There was a thread recently where an A-level student hadn't had a teacher for a year, wondering why the school hadn't done anything about it. We cannot magic up teachers! A-level students at my school are increasingly in the position of not having a teacher and having to teach themselves, and schools are now encouraged to put 'no teacher' on UCAS applications as relevant information for universities.

Recent threads about suggesting teachers need to be paid more to boost recruitment, or given a day off a fortnight to boost recruitment have attracted replies about teachers thinking they are special, or lazy, paid well enough already and having enough time off already.

But the education system is in crisis and something needs to drastically change as it's only getting worse.

The DfE's solution is to hire from abroad, at a time when the rest of government is seeking to reduce immigration.
https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/dfe-mulls-boost-international-recruitment

Most trainees are on PGCE courses with QTS. The schools are always responsible for the QTS bit, but still refer to "PGCE" trainees.

I teach at a FE college and even if I work full time and get to the top band for my role I will still qualify for universal credit (I realise this is due to my circumstances and not everyone will). They wonder why they have a recruitment crisis. No one is going to leave a well paid job in industry or a trade to deal with behaviour issues and ofsted for half the money.

You asked what a PGCE does, I explained what people get out of one. Not sure why you seem to be taking issue.

It can be very different in primary and secondary. My primary school in London is closing due to falling rolls so we are all job hunting. At my previous job I was on UPS3 and a TLR. I was ok to leave SLT and give up the TLR. What I didn't expect was to see no ads offering UPS to class teachers. I ended up going down to UPS1 when I started in September. Now I am looking again and considering going to back to SLT because I can't afford such low wages.

Have a look at the TES jobs for primary and see how many you can find offering UPS for experience. There won't be many. This could also be why people are leaving the profession.

They may be non political, but who commissioned the report? Anyway it seems it's not the same report as the one that was thrown round a couple of months ago, so seems like someone is commissioning very similar reports. I haven't read this one, but in the previous report it likened teaching to law/medicine/accountancy and left out a lot of careers that don't (end up) paying well inspite of needing a degree. The entry requirements for people entering a lot of the careers in the report were much higher than they are for teaching and how you end up with lots of money in other careers is not just based on time served, so didn't really get how it was comparable or in fact who defined and agreed the metrics.

Oh and when 4 teaching staff left at the same time we were all replaced with ECTs. The TAs were not replaced. Budgets are just ridiculous at the moment.

@wonderingwhatlifemeans what are ECT?

No school openly advertises to parents that they can't get anyone to teach computing,

Why would I want to try to teach kids who don't want to be there for less money than I earn now outside teaching?

Early Career Teachers. Basically, fresh out of college.

I appreciate that your answer wasn’t to me.

But all you’re saying is that if people are offered enough money they’ll do anything. Sure. But it’s not a realistic position for any sort of normal pay argument.

And nothing your graphs show can evidence why teachers are leaving. So far as comments on this and other threads go it would seem to be the stress of controlling poor and disruptive behaviour plus dealing with bad management.

(Please don’t use <sigh>. You’re clearly very smart and I enjoy your threads about this important subject. But a <sigh> is generally the leper’s bell of a self-satisfied and arrogant poster, which I know you’re not.)

They must be a very well behaved , balanced bunch of children, then all prepared to learn.

the most common thing we hear from children is “ I don’t want to”… not because they’re scared or frightened or any other ‘excuse’, because they are literally not made to see anything through, and therefore think learning is optional. Or “It’s boring” . Well, yes ,some things are, not everything can be all bells and whistles, and you have to be a little bit bored occasionally. And tired - children who are literally sitting at their tables falling asleep because they were visiting Mum and Dad’s friends or on their PlayStation , or phone ,till silly o’clock.
It’s not occasionally , it’s every day… and then there’s those who are late into school and haven’t had anything to eat because they were “rushed”. The list is endless so time is taken to sort these ‘problems’ before learning can even start.

If you don’t work in or have never worked in a school, you have no idea of how difficult it is for all the staff.
(I used to work in the NHS before becoming a teaching assistant, so I have some insight into how that works and the problems there.)

It's the NFER. They are a research body. I'll find out who commissioned it but it won't have been the unions.

It's classic MN this - almost a DARVO tactic when people uses a robust survey by reputable research authorities who fully explain their methodology and it gets pulled to shreds by - presumably- laypeople. Same happened on Covid threads.

Not surprised, shit kids , shit colleagues,and this was thirty years ago, l thought teaching would be like when I was growing up in the seventies, mmmm it wasn't, I was a mature student, the stud ents coming through with me were on the whole thick as shit,the kids were feral. I got out fast as. I know some teachers now and they're even thicker than the cohort I was studying with. Not surprised people don't want to go into teaching, the most successful one I know is a pe teacher in a feral school, she's more akin to a prison warder than teacher, she is fairly well paid though, mainly cos she stuck it out and is now a head of year. She's been punched kicked and generally assaulted more times than I can recount. When she talks about her job it's in terms of the violence and general anti social behaviour rather than anything else 🤷

I have 6 Cs. I didn’t work at school as I wasn’t ready. Got to 18, my girlfriend was pregnant and I had to start working.

I have a First in BSc Biomedical Science, and an MSc in Clinical Virology with Distinction.

Not sure the Cs count for very much really. Perhaps you need to reevaluate your view on GVSE grades.

You get that from QTS, the only thing a PGCE gives you is the ‘PGCE’ and the essays you have to do for it.

@MrsHamlet
"In every ks3 and 4 class I teach there is at least one student who should be in an alternative provision of some kind - either a special school or a more suitable provision for their needs."

Should they though? Secondary schools are obsessed with getting rid of SEN learners into AP or specialist provision. OK, maybe that's not a universal truth, but there is this weird thinking around SEN provision in secondaries which definitely does not equate to inclusive practice.

I would love to see an overhaul of the secondary school system in which learners with SEN such as dyslexia, autism, ADHD, anxiety etc are still welcome in mainstream and are given opportunities to thrive, much like they are in primary schools.

Schools should be communities representative of the learners within them, and provision to match the needs of those learners. SEN hubs and resource bases should be compulsory provision in all secondaries, enabling learners with moderate SEN to stay connected with their primary school friends and attend their local catchment secondary, not needing to travel miles to a specialist setting, further isolating them from the community in which they live.

It would be a very rare thing for a primary school pupil with say adhd and dyslexia to be shunted off to special school, or registered with alternative provision for a total of 3h per week or encouraged to de-register in order to coercively electively home-educate off-rolling, anyone?. This is rife in secondary schools though and anyone who says it isn't is l y i n g.
I wonder why this is?

NFER are independent and receive funding form the Nuffield Foundation.

More info here is you genuinely want it:

https://www.nfer.ac.uk/news-events/our-experts/ - who they are

https://www.nfer.ac.uk/policies/?page=1 - their recent work including for parliament

https://www.nfer.ac.uk/press-releases/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-crisis-shows-no-signs-of-abating-new-report-reveals/ - recent releases

You have a First in a Science degree and an MSC in Science, which clearly "trump" your GCSE grade Cs.

Shortage subjects are now recruiting trainees without relevant A levels or degrees.

Fair point - sorry I misinterpreted your post.

In primary school, supply teacher lessons are planned by the teacher so the content should be the same.

Are you all aware TAs can be requested to cover classes unsupervised? Pay around £10/11 p/h so budget-strapped schools are utilising this.

@EveSix you seem to be assuming I mean students with mild to moderate needs. I don't.

I mean students whose needs are so profound that we simply cannot hope to meet them. We are failing them and there is very little that we can do about it.

But children in my experience and opinion are not always going to be keen, well behaved, ready to learn-and yes some will have significant issues to overcome -they are not mature, they are child-ish! Its always always been this way! Being able to manage this (insofar as is possible) is part of the role of a teacher.

@Isitovernow123 thank you.

Experience teacher and SENCO......it's all about the extreme intensity of teaching when combined with paperwork and evenings of ousted related admin. I think we need to be realistic that only half the job is in front of the children and plan accordingly.