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

My year 11 DD's school has hired some teachers from abroad. She finds that often they don't know the curriculum, have themselves learnt things differently and in the case of physics, so slow that they might not get through the whole syllabus. Obviously this is only her experience and I am sure lots or teachers from abroad are up to the job.
We are therefore paying for tutors in quite a few of her subjects just to make sure she is up to speed for her exams in a couple of months. For a large portion of year 10 and 11 she didn't have a regular Spanish teacher either.
It is a big mess really.

But this approach is going to alienate SEN children and parents. I honestly don’t think there’s any solution

But as I said, it's the reason why people sign up to be lawyers.

If the salary is actually shit and they then drop out, that just reinforces the point.

People aren't going into teaching because they know the hours are going to be long and that the salary is going to be shit for those hours.

People aren’t complaining about a lack of bin men though are they so presumably their pay is pitched about right to attract enough applicants & retain the workforce.

When there are recruiting ads for teachers, they always show about 12 pupils engaging with the smiling teacher. The reality is more like crowd control. It’s chicken and egg. More people won’t come into teaching until class sizes are more suited to the attitude and behaviour of today’s children. But class sizes can’t be reduced without a lot more teachers.

Just a comment on criminal defence solicitors -

We took the government to court after it failed to increase criminal defence solicitors’ legal aid rates by the bare minimum 15%, as recommended by the independent review of criminal legal aid.
1,400 duty solicitors have left since 2017 because the work is not financially viable.
“We are already seeing that there simply aren’t enough solicitors to represent suspects at police stations and magistrates’ courts day and night across the country. This situation will only get worse with potentially dangerous consequences for society"
31.1.24

www.lawsociety.org.uk/contact-or-visit-us/press-office/press-releases/law-society-high-court-victory

I would also consider teaching but don’t have a degree (yet). Brilliant a levels and GCSEs, but it’s not enough

I think you are confusing academic ability with skill. Handling a class of young children and having the patience required, the ability to motivate them, help them learn and becoming confident is not something everyone has.

I don't know why people dunk on primary school teachers, they get in toddlers who are about as biddable as a herd of cats and teach them to read, write and add up. It's like magic. As a secondary teacher I have no idea how they do it.

I concur. It's a highly skilled job.

My DH had planned to be a teacher, after being a fantastic TA for many years (and having done a lot of teaching as an HLTA during covid). He had the interview for a funded PGCE place, but the behaviour in his school had just become so, so, so bad. He lost the desire. Or rather, needed a break from the classroom.

I can tell you what would get more & higher-quality candidates to train: more bursaries and higher starting salaries.

The SEN children need a separate class geared up to them ( as was usual years ago)
It’s just insane to expect mixed abilities to be in the same class, and even worse if poor behaviour is an issue ( which it seems to be).

That case in USA where a teaching assistant was knocked unconscious by a student with various issues and much bigger than her- He was clearly dangerous and unpredictable yet allowed to be in a mainstream school?

It’s not just U.K. that is suffering from violence and disruption in the classroom- No wonder no one wants to teach these days.

But DD’s teacher doesn’t have either! She taught DD that Austria was the smallest country in Europe!! We had a book look and I saw the question, DD had written “Vatican City” and it had an orange dot and the teacher had written “Austria”. I questioned this and she said “the mark sheet said Austria”.

I’d rather have a pre recorded lesson from a decent teacher than this.

I agree. Don’t think it sounds like an easy job at all!

But with technology and AI, there is no need to have a teacher for each class.

We need the best teachers in the country to produce lessons for the whole country that the kids can watch and learn from.

It is ridiculous that hundreds of teachers are preparing and giving exactly the same lesson all round the country. It is a waste of time and money.

No child should have to sit and revise because they don't have a teacher.

There are a lot of subjects you cannot teach from a video.

You can't learn PE from a video - you need to do it.

You can't learn art from a video - you need to do it and have the teacher going round the room looking at what everyone is doing and giving feedback.

You can't practise and perform a short drama from watching a video - you need to prepare it in a group and perform it to an audience.

You can't learn to play a musical instrument from a video - you need to actually get an instrument and make some noise. Most secondaries teach at least one instrument to a class - ocarinas or ukuleles or drums.

You can't practice your Spanish speaking from a video - you need to actually have time in class to work in pairs and do your speaking. With your teacher around who can help you if you get stuck.

And that's just to start with!!!

I teach students with reading ages of 5 in the same class as those with reading ages of 17. It's hardly surprising if some of those students can't access what we're doing, however hard I try to differentiate.

And no, they don't have support.

Governors too.

A local school is desperate...6 have resigned in the past year

I know the chair. The stress of the role is making him ill :(

Ban phones in schools. Use AI to do marking and do most of planning. Get ex army/police types in to be a discipline service within schools, in a programme that gets parents in to learn about discipline too.

Yes, in a ideal world. But if no-one wants to be a teacher then we need alternatives.

If there is no teacher then at least the children will still be able to have a lesson rather than do nothing.

And it won't be long before AI will be able to answer any questions as well as if not better than a teacher.

While I won't go into the reasons, DD was badly let down by her uni and didn't get the opportunity to complete the final teaching placement part of her degree.
So she graduated with a degree in education without qualified teacher status.

Fast forward a year and she works for a supply teaching agency as a secondary school classroom supervisor/unqualified teacher, teaching whichever classes the school decides (DD's degree and previous teaching experiences were in primary education). She is hugely in demand and is never without work. DD is very good at what she does but these schools are paying for UNQUALIFIED teachers to take their classes. EVERY DAY. The head teacher at the school where DD works most often has told her she will probably need her every day next term as she has a maternity leave that she can't cover.
So while I am thrilled for DD that she is doing so well now and is putting some traumatic experiences behind her, most others doing what she does do not have the background or experience she does. My sister said that in her area this doesn't happen, but DD says it is common here (north of England) for supply teachers to not even actually be teachers at all.

And yet the DfE have just cut funding for the program to help recruit governors

https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/specialist-sector/end-of-school-governor-funding-national-governance-association

Pay is fine. I’m five years in, second career, and on £45k working 4 days a week. Pro rata that into holidays and that’s equivalent of 55k per year.

@Octavia64

It is ridiculous that hundreds of teachers are preparing and giving exactly the same lesson all round the country. It is a waste of time and money.

I've said this many times. It's insane that literally thousands of teachers are reinventing the wheel by creating their own resources. There should be a central online depository of a full range of resources that teachers can just select from.

I saw it with my DS's school on their show my homework app. You could see the homework set by other teachers for other classes. I'd often look at what other classes were doing, and they'd be doing the same topic, but a completely different worksheet giving the same information and setting the same standard of questions, etc. It's bonkers to think of all the time wasted by those teachers when they could have shared a common worksheet that would have been suitable for both classes. It would also help standardise lessons and get a bit of consistency between teachers.

I really couldn't understand why subject department heads didn't agree the teaching/learning material for their subjects as to me it just makes sense to standardise. And yes, I fully appreciate different levels for different ages/ability groups, but what I'm talking about are the classes which aren't set by ability so in theory should contain the same profile of pupils.

Have you considered this ECT may get better and she is literally in her first year of teaching? Very, very few people out there are natural born teachers.
Many beginner teachers are shit, most of them get better with practise and experience. My first year of teaching was horrific. I am an excellent teacher now, years down the line.

Here's the thread I started discussing that

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4984227-could-teachers-be-replaced-with-robots?page=1