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

14 years of Tory control has had a massive impact on the entire public sector.

Deaf ears....

I would like to see more options available for children who actually want to learn. I'm pretty sick of the conversation always being about the losers and wasters and not about the poor kids who would love to sit in a quiet classroom and listen to a subject expert teach them. I am not including SEN in this btw, they should also have their own provision, just like they used to.

I teach in a school where almost no member of staff wants to stay next year.

Not all of them will manage to leave, but all are thinking about it.

Not a single person has mentioned salary. Those who have already left have gone to jobs that pay less per ‘hour within the published working hours’, but have been able to eg work longer hours because they do not work outside those hours.

Everyone cites working conditions, stress and the absolute inability to do the job ‘well enough for job satisfaction’.

Because people doing Open University want to do it/learn.

The same can’t be said for your everyday school pupil, unfortunately.

Yes it is. And the burden of supporting these people on placement in school will fall on people like me.

Poorly qualified people are not a solution. In fact they are a problem. I've got a number of trainees at the moment who are failing. Except I'm not allowed to fail them, so I have to prop them up constantly, which eats into the time I should spend on my students.

If a teacher experienced well behaved classes and generally willing pupils, they’d work for present wages, pension and holiday entitlement, surely?

I constantly read on here that teaching is a wonderful experience when children respond and learn. That must be right.

What a great career to pursue. Provided it’s not a constant battle against out of control children and aggressive parents, presumably.

There is a thread currently running on a Facebook page where people are very quick to blame schools for A level MFL provision disappearing. People just don't get it.

@SabbatWheel I'm not sure whether I'd like you to teach my child from how you treated the pp in your reply.

FWIW, I wanted to teach as a new graduate but they didn't seem to want me on any PGCE course I applied for as I didn't have any experience. Its the same thing all round, they won't give people a chance to gain any experience and then cry when there isn't anyone with experience. I've made a career elsewhere but I do look back with some regret.

I think it is about salaries because if people are paid more they Will be more willing to tolerate hard working conditions. That is why investment bankers do 70/80hr weeks for example - they are paid for it.

Absolutely workload and stress are massive factors in teacher retention. It should also be noted that since the government committed to reducing teacher workload by 5 hours per week, average teacher workload has actually increased.

There are many, many things that need to improve to improve the job of teachers.

But I am quite fed up of people suggesting the pay is fine when it's clearly not. Why should we accept that graph of teacher pay going down and down in relative terms when other people's pay is going up?

And saying that people aren't quitting because of the pay isn't looking at the workforce as a whole. Why are teachers predominantly female? Why are men in teaching more likely to seek rapid promotion? How many female teachers do you know who are not the main earner in the household? Is teaching being propped up by higher earning male partners, enabling those female teachers to say the salary isn't a problem?

If the salary were better, would we have more male teachers? Is there an untapped pool of talent being put off by the salary? Asking the people already in the job is going to give a biased answer.

As I said on another thread that's a lower starting salary than a social worker ,and a non graduate probation officer.

If you want the precariousness and appalling pressures and hours of jobs in banking or law, knock yourself out.

I’m not a teacher so I don’t really know how it all works… but two of my best friends are teachers. One of them hated her previous primary but has moved to a new school she loves. The old primary school sounded dreadful, making teachers lives a misery, no work/life balance at all. Sounds as though they are constantly advertising for new staff. My other friends school sounds really similar and she wants out as well.

I don’t understand why some schools work like this and don’t change when they can’t keep staff??

I'm in a low wage area (not in England) and there seems to be much less of a teacher shortage. I've had a quick look, & there are 11 teacher vacancies (primary & secondary) in our county, of which 5 are in one (new) school.

Makes sense - teacher pay may not be as good as it used to be, but it's still one of the better options if you want to stay in the area given that a lot of the other white collar jobs will be with 3rd sector organisations and offering maybe £28k or so p/a, and likely on a 2-3 year contract tops.

All of which suggests that putting up wages might not solve the problem entirely elsewhere, but would likely help.

I think you have hit the nail on the head there. So many teachers on this thread even believe they are paid enough.

Junior doctors aren't putting up with years of pay stagnation.

Ignoring all the education stuff, why do people accept that you can’t expect to see a doctor or dentist anymore ??

Dentists, a law unto them selves, but Doctors, I pay a lot of money each money, and my husband a whole lot more, to support the NHS.

All the people in medicine I know, earn really good money, have lovely leased cars, and have lots of holidays. They aren’t doing too badly.

I am happy to keep paying, so that I can support other people who couldn’t afford insurance at all. BUT if they are removing the NHS I want my National insurance money stopped, so that we can pay for our private medical care.

But I do want universal care for people in this country.

I think part of the issue with sakary is that it refkects tge value socity pkaces on a job.

Banking is not, in terms of its benefit to society, as important as education or nursing or social work. However, it is perceived as higher status and may have greater economic benefit (as a sector) and thus it us paid better.

The low salary of teaching reflects the low value society puts on teachers - and this lack of respect for the profession plays out in children’s behaviour; parental behaviour; and political attitudes. The low salary progression equally says ‘warm body in classroom is fine, all teachers are equal’ - and given this prevailing attitude, it is no wonder experienced teachers are leaving in droves.

Given pretty much everything said by teachers it’s surely no wonder that more children are disengaged and acting up more than ever? Is it any surprise that parents have also become more critical and less supportive?
Factor in covid lockdowns, increased screen time, fewer special schools and supportive services it’s a perfect storm.
Not condoning any of it, but it’s clear to me that the increasingly poor conditions in schools have created more division amongst everyone involved. I see similar happening with the NHS.

I HE my child with SEN because the school environment didn’t suit him. I’m part of a fairly large local group of home educators, a large number of whom are ex teachers, who left their jobs to home ed their children.

Surely the most important thing at this stage is to vote in a government that values education (and healthcare), rather than this shit show that has decimated what we have. My dc’s old HT predicted all of this 10+ years ago when Gove was the education secretary. She retired not long after.

2011 I had to collect my son from class so waiting outside the classroom I observed the lovely teacher trying to control the a couple of children I knew who were leaping from table to table hooping and hollering. The room was in noisy uproar the teacher who I knew was trying to get them down form the tables as they leapt around the room.

I itched to go in there and haul them down but of course couldn't.

It only stopped when the bell went and 35 wound up ten year olds poured out.

I knew I couldn't be a teacher that day.

Someone I know, a headmistress in another country, received an email from a consultancy inviting teachers to apply for jobs in UK schools

None of her teachers would touch the opportunity with a barge pole. Some of them were quite rude about it.

Granted, the school in question is a prestigious one and perhaps the consultancy had better luck elsewhere, but it was telling, I thought.

I disagree with this. It was thrown together, last minute, unregulated and had no end date. It could be done properly.

Poor management is definitely a big factor- I work in a school with supportive and realistic SLT and there is no way I would move knowing from teacher friends the nightmare workplaces that are out there. We are however, about to get a new Head so things may change. We just hired two science teachers for next year - happily both are experienced as they were the only applicants for the job. They were both escaping schools that are being run MATs , we are still stand alone, and I think that makes a big difference. I’m 25 years into the job and still enjoy it BUT I am part time which makes it manageable.

Ignoring all the education stuff, why do people accept that you can’t expect to see a doctor or dentist anymore ??

I didn't mean they find it acceptable, but that they know the reality of the situation in the NHS means that services are no longer operating at reasonable levels.

So if you phone your GP at 8am and don't get through, or you've been on a waiting list for months for an urgent operation, or can't find an NHS dentist, people don't think it's an anomaly.

Bear in mind that the graph showing “wage growth” is presumably lumping together everyone else in the uk who isn’t a teacher. It’s also an average of all of that. So it will
include lawyers, bankers, influencers, footballers, business owners, etc etc.

There are a significant number of professions where wages are not increasing at the rate in your graph and to keep comparing teachers pay to everyone else in the uk is probably not the best comparison.

A comparison against other uk public sector workers would probably make more sense - as these wages are also controlled by the government. Does such a graph exist?