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

You are right but I don’t hear any parents panicking. I don’t understand why. I think I’m a few years there will be a three day week or more online learning. I work in a primary school (support not teacher) we pay out a fortune on agency as currently cant recruit year 6 teachers, then we have a few on long term sick. It is a stressful job and I imagine there is a lot more shortages in secondary. Recruiting from overseas won’t help, my dd has one teacher they can’t learn because they don’t understand what the teacher is saying. It’s only going to get worse. I don’t think the wages are the issue, it’s the behaviour of the children , pressure of results and ofstead and constant paperwork and planning.

I taught MFL in secondary for 6 years and stopped when my eldest came along in 2013. Post-small children and Covid I found my way into primary supply. From there I now work 2 days a week in a primary school, a school which I love. However, the workload is impossible. Most weeks I work 2 long days in school and then the equivalent of another full day in dribs and drabs over the rest of the week, mainly on paperwork. It’s unsustainable. No other job would expect you to do this without some form of pay for this and without so much as a loo/drinks break on the in-school days.
I don’t know what the answer is 😢

Macaroni46

Fronted adverbials - agree re some of the pointless grammar terminology. I think the intention is it improves writing by giving children rules/structure but its overkill.

The fractions bit, most children manage fine with. It goes hand in hand with division, telling time eg with a clock divided into 12, and its quite easy to illustrate with cutting a cake or pie.

What is so hard about counting 2/3 or 4/5? If you look at the sorts of worksheets for this stuff they will often feature (eg) a wheel with 5 segments and the child colours 4 or whatever. All they need to be able to do is count to 4. I don't think its conceptually beyond most 8 year olds.

If this happened in the street it would be assault. Why do we expect teachers to put up with this? It's unacceptable.

How would you know?

Not at all. There was no AI in the 1970s to answer questions and it wasn't possible to stop and re-wind the lecture if you missed something.

AI will be able to teach better than any teacher can.

Duolingo is a great teacher and it is only just starting to use AI, so with AI it will be even better.

AI will be able to teach better than any teacher can.

How will it get kids to do the work?

Deluded.

One of the reasons we have prioritised a prep school over a state primary is because there doesn’t seem to be the same issue in this sector, 16 children in the class, academically selective and no overt bad behaviour (they get managed out). They don’t seem to have recruitment issues. That said, we have our fair share of demanding parents but my impression is that the teachers are very happy. (Low turnover etc) I realise this is a personal anecdote but I hear similar of the other local preps.
I wonder when the 20% VAT on fees is rolled out by the Labour Party, if it will help the state sector to recruit additional teachers with higher salaries and better working conditions? What else is needed to make teaching in the state system a more attractive proposition, 🤔? I’d happily pay higher taxes for a better funded state system. As a country, we can’t prosper without a well educated workforce, not just for those that can afford to pay for it.

Yes, this is a major issue. No offence to young teachers who have gone straight from university into a PGCE or straight into a school - some of them are brilliant - but imo the government should be looking to attract older career-switchers who have practical experience of their subjects and also more life experience. I think both the students and the teachers get more out of that set up.

I think the current curriculum introduces so much in terms of grammar in Ks1 that children never get the opportunity to just write. To share ideas, develop creativity and explore their imagination as the focus quickly moves to making sure they include adverbs, conjunctions etc. I would rather the content moved back a couple of years to allow children to just apply their phonemic knowledge and just write!

I used to be a teacher. Never again. At least not in the UK.

I cared. I really really cared, and it never did me any favors.

I was verbally abused daily by students and their parents. They have the upper hand over us and they know it. I even had a student pull my pony tail once and SLT told me off for allowing it to happen!

Every bit of bad behavior was blamed on me and not the students themselves.

Solution: expel the troublemakers, ban difficult parents from school grounds, and let the good kids learn in peace

Oh, and before anyone starts, I have autism and ADHD myself. It is NOT an excuse for shitty behavior, and it's offensive to say it is!

AI will be able to teach better than any teacher can

And how would that work? Go on.

I confess I had to look that up. If there are bits that could be dropped then fine, but I learned (state primary) the grammar basics by 10, including stuff that would probably be frowned on now, like direct and indirect objects, voice, countable and uncountable nouns etc.

I’m probably over-sentimental about it, but I’ve always felt that some learning about language structure helped me to love English and love reading. I was taught no grammar at all at (comprehensive) secondary.

God knows. My primary friends speak of such assaults as routine. It's terrifying.

Are you a teacher @SkyBloo ?

Thank you so much for the tips on how to teach the content (yes I am being sarcastic) and actually, no, a lot of children can't access this stuff.

Also finding 4/5 etc of an amount eg of 20, so fairly abstract, not of a shape.

Which part of my message are you referring to?

I wonder when the 20% VAT on fees is rolled out by the Labour Party, if it will help the state sector to recruit additional teachers with higher salaries and better working conditions?

They've said they're going to use it to fund 6,500 new teachers, among other things like breakfast clubs. This would be about a quarter of an extra teacher per school, so we are all looking forward to the massive reduction in workload this will bring.

I'm not sure where they're going to find them.

Oh my!

Is that mainly from special needs children?

(Not that that makes it alright, but if the assault is from non-SEN children that is worrying...)

Dc go to a small (tiny) village school. 3 classes in total. Dc1 has a teacher 3 days a week, all the time. The other 2 days are taken by the pe teacher.

Dc2 - hasn't had a teacher since early Jan. Off sick. No supply teacher. Class taken by TA snd aforementioned pe teacher. It's shocking really, that 2/3 of the kids aren't bring taught properly.

You said "I wouldn't want my child being taught by a 21 year old with crap A-Level grades."

How would you know?

I started teaching at 22. People assumed I was about 25. No parents have ever known what my A level grades were, or what my degree was, or where.

Probably because it's university, ie aimed at adult education and adult who choose to do it rather than children that must legally go to school. HUGE difference.

My friend who is a TA now has it in her contract that she has to teach classes. Her pay hasn't gone up much in the 20 years she's been a TA despite her responsibilites going up ridiculously in that time.

Bet parents don't think their kids get taught by TA's with no teacher present.

Breakfast clubs...?!
Surely that's the last of everyone's school worries!

Labour planning on taking money and misdirecting it, yet again.

When is someone going to wake up to the real crisis on schools, and that is teachers and funding.

The assaults that I see at work (secondary, Scotland) come from children with no SEN.

I left my teaching job due to lack of parental support. I’ll give you one example: One 14 year old (Year 9) threw a computer keyboard across the room and stormed out of my lesson. I gave him detention and phoned up the parents to inform them. The mother told me she’s a lawyer and asked me what I did to make him throw his keyboard! She wanted me to run through the moments leading up to this incident and wanted every little detail, I know most of you will think that’s fine but putting up with crazy parents like this is why I left.