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

Is every other country going through this? Are there countries with good education standards and decent teacher recruitment and retention? I have 3 in school and the stress of what lies ahead in terms of their education is giving me an ulcer.....and making me want to move abroad for some relief from this worry.

Give it 10 years and you will see that I am right.

It makes no sense to have hundreds of teachers doing exactly the same lessons when you can have the best teachers in the whole country (or even the whole world).

We had an excellent biology teacher at school fro O level, but when it came to A levels, we got the not so good teacher unfortunately.

I would have loved to have had the lessons that the excellent teacher had and with technology you an have the best teachers in the country. Then AI will be able to answer any questions that the children have.

@noblegiraffe I usually agree with everything you say but I think it's disingenuous to suggest that online learning is an experiment that's failed. I don't see why learning can't be more flexi/ part time/ online for older children. You could (and should) still have face to face provision for those who need it, and this can be more tailored. Education needs to modernise and adapt.

Bang goes the local secondaries very successful swimming programmes and swim teams then. All for the sake of politics of envy. It won’t improve state schools - not one jot.

if by some miracle Labour don’t get in then the children will stay at our school and nothing will change. They’ve just given a potential notice in case the 20% comes in.

and they will have to join full schools - a place has to be found for them somewhere!

Because the standard of education I received was pretty shite. We learned in spite of crap teachers.

I also don't believe in selective schools in general.

Why do you think teaching is better at selective schools?

Those schools have good results because of their intake - and because of parental support. Teaching itself can be very lacklustre.

Some years ago, I was on a course at a highly rated selective state school. We were invited to view lessons to ‘learn from good practice’. Without exception, the lessons we saw were poor - the students were well behaved, copied down things neatly etc - but the teaching itself was poor / nonexistent.

Equally, several of the good local comprehensives and primaries would not employ teachers from several of the private schools because they were de-skilled: chalk and talk delivery of a narrow curriculum to a narrow range of compliant children of similar ability, mostly using textbooks without any adaptation.

Results are achieved through a combination of intake; teaching; parental support etc etc. Do not confuse ‘schools with good results due to their intake’ with ‘schools with good teaching’.

Not all schools have been re-inspected since results have ceased to be the single biggest determiner of Ofsted grades. It’s been interesting to see many selective schools, previously Outstanding, downgraded to Good or lower on the new framework that actually gives weight to curriculum and teaching.

Bang goes the local secondaries very successful swimming programmes and swim teams then

I think that's quite a rare thing for a state school to have so it's not a nationwide reason to stop the policy.

and they will have to join full schools - a place has to be found for them somewhere!

You haven't been on state school admission threads then? If there are no places at local schools then you have to look much further afield.

I’m all for innovation but this is a bit Meet George Jetson.

The bored kid at the back of the class isn’t going to be cajoled into answering by AI. In fact AI is more likely to be hijacked by the class Hermione Granger.

And that’s all without considering the soullessness of machine learning.

The problem with standardized lessons is that we don't have a standard curriculum.

There are countries that have standard lessons. So for example in China (mainland) there are three maths schemes.

Each maths scheme comes with lessons, PowerPoints and scripts. It means that you can be sure that in any given day in Shanghai, all year 7 students are doing exactly the same lesson.

However, there are some problems with this system even in China. Firstly, you need standard classes. I have been to China and seen this system in operation and it was clear some students could not keep up. I was told that many many students did extra cramming outside normal school hours because they did not understand from the standard lessons.

In order to use this system of standardized lessons, you need a standardized curriculum that everyone follows. As academies do not need to follow the national curriculum, the U.K. doesn't have that any more.

So, to use a simple example, school 1 teaches fractions before equations. School 2 teaches equations before fractions

You are writing the standard lessons. Do you include fractions in your equations? School 1 wants them - it will help the students remember fractions. School 2 does not. Their students have not yet learnt adding and subtracting fractions.

These sort of dependencies make it almost impossible to write standard lessons for the U.K.

Without a level of control of the curriculum that just is not there any more the standard lessons are useless.

This can’t be true. In the US high school students can finish their education online in some cases. And what about Open University and all the other online courses?

I'm not saying that online learning won't work for anyone - clearly there are motivated kids who do well in online schools and who did well with the provision in covid.

But the vast majority of kids need to be in lessons with a teacher in front of them (and in school with their peers for their mental health too). The online lesson kids are the minority, not the norm.

Fair enough.

I rarely meet grammar products who say their schooling was shit, though. I’ve met a few who didn’t like their peers.

Edit to add: And I’ve met some ghastly grammar parents: all “oh, it’s medical school or Oxbridge for Noah, we’re certain”.

I'm not sure if you're joking or not.
The "best teacher" for a child is one who is able to connect with them and bring out the best in them. How on earth can a video or online lesson do that?

Of course it can be true.

OU and online courses are undertaken by people who have chosen to undertake them. In US schools, students can be held back or accelerated.

Meanwhile in my y11 class tomorrow, I have Bob who has a target GCSE grade of 3 and Bobette with a target grade of 7.

Bob needs me to sit with him and go through the model again, step by step, so he can have a go.

Bobette needs me to to show her how to take the model and use it to write a more sophisticated answer.

I also need to catch Fred up on last week - he was excluded but didn't do the work I set.

And Louise is having a melt down because her BFF was mean to her.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if face to face schooling was reserved for those who would most benefit from it - the youngest children; those with SEN; those from disadvantaged backgrounds; those without the devices and internet access for several children in a family to learn at once.

Those from secure homes; of middle ability or above; with good internet access could learn at home online.

Ah, no, that happened in lockdown, didn’t it? Children in KS1; those with SEN; vulnerable children; those without devices - all were prioritised for face to face schooling. I seem to remember there was a mass outcry and suddenly all our pushiest parents were ‘keyworkers’ or their children had ‘undiagnosed SEN’ or ‘no device’, just to get their child into face to face education?

Yes, able, compliant, well-motivated and parent-supported children can learn online at home (some of the time) - and that will keep face to face classes small and well supported, which will benefit the disadvantaged and SEN…..

I didn't and don't like most of my peers. But we tend to agree that it was a shit school experience.

As a PP said, our parents gave us the advantage. The teachers were dialling it in.

NO, no more, never. Discipline yes, but no physical punishment. This is NOT the way to do it.

I am a 50 year old ect1, I leave my school at Easter. The workload is ridiculous, no work/life balance. All holidays, weekends and evenings I could and would spend working, making resources or thinking about children in my class.

I am going to supply for a bit, build up my confidence that the toxic slt/head have helped shatter, maybe after that, I will continue my ect.

As previous posters have said much of the primary (Michael Gove) curriculum is dull and pointless. Children are being crammed with grammar terminology. We are switching them off and expecting too much. No wonder we have an epidemic of mental health issues. I hate having to reach lots of the stuff I have to teach.

This is the grammar children are expected to know, understand and be able to use and explain by the end of year 6.

So just because lots of state schools don’t have swim teams then it doesn’t matter if some lose the facilities? It’s just a race to the bottom.

How about a policy that, instead of penalising parents who choose how to spend their money, the government forces private schools to do more to keep their charity and VAT free status? They have to open up their facilities more to local schools etc. Then everyone benefits. Let’s see how many state schools have benefited from the extra money in a years time.

and one of our parents is on the local school’s admission team. There isn’t a free place within 30 miles. They know that they will have to ask (force) schools to take over quota. 10 of the children have an ECHP so will need to be catered for appropriately.

Absolutely nobody does as well in online classes as they would with decent face-to-face teachers. And private schools will not go down that route except for the minority of students who cannot cope on school.

As a country we have to decide whether we value education or not. If we don’t, that’s fine by me - I’ve no kids and work I’m a private school so the kids I teach will only shine even brighter in the “remote” future many plan.

This would be interesting. I suspect we'd have a lot of "key workers" again.

I am unconvinced by the maths on the Labour VAT policy (especially as it seems to be earmarked to pay for basically all of their policies) but 'local school won't be able to use the swimming pool' is way down the list of reasons not to implement it.

Um, I can’t see anything wrong with that at all. All seems valuable and intelligible to a ks2er.

Isn’t it your job to make it interesting? (I think it’s interesting in its own right anyway.)

@JemimaTiggywinkles quite a claim, can you back it? My experience during remote teaching was that for innovate teachers and engaged children the process was actually quite exciting and efficient. Very little time wasted 'waiting for quiet' or disrupted with behaviour. Much more reliant on independent learning, encouraged resilience. I loved being able to use digital tools for learning that I'm unable to use in my phone less classroom. Of course it wasn't a positive experience for many and that's why there will always need to be some face to face provision.