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

I'm taking that you weren't involved in delivering remote lessons during covid then.

What makes you think you can choose your child's teacher? You can't.

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.

Sorry, @noblegiraffe , I meant to acknowledge this point. Do I think that more - and better - people might enter the teaching workforce if pay and pay progression was better? Yes. Do I think they would stay? Not unless conditions were also improved.

There's a massive shortage of science teachers where I live. So many supply teachers who aren't qualified in science, teach. It's awful. I've worked in a secondary school and can say I'd never want to work in another. The class sizes are too big, there's unruly behaviour from many kids, and we can't do anything about it. Telling off badly behaved kids doesn't do anything. They need removing from the class room, so they no longer intimidate the teacher and pupils. There are also too many kids with sen, they need a support assistant but often don't have one. They distract the class by clowning around. There needs to be a separate sen department at every school. When children look like they're going to fight at my child's school, the teachers pull the fire alarm every time. Because they can't interject as they don't want to be physically harmed.

The government have told teacher training providers that lack of experience isn't an acceptable reason to reject anyone from teacher training anymore.

Which is ok, I had zero experience with teaching kids or working in schools before training and I worked out fine. But apparently it has led to larger numbers dropping out in the first weeks of school experience when they see what they're actually up against.

And kids are increasingly unwilling to go to school yet no one seems to be connecting it with the shitshow they might face if they turn up.

You could say the same for teachers. They don’t want to go to school either. There’s an awful lot of badly behaved kids who can’t or won’t take part in lessons, it all has to be on their own terms and the parents back them. ‘A Johnny shouldn’t have to sit through maths, or Gail doesn’t want to learn geography as it’s pointless’

Teach your kids to learn and the classes will be full of teachers.

(Oh, and of course not unless funding to schools increased to cover these increased salaries in full, and was sufficient to encourage schools to retain rather than release experienced expensive staff)

I’m not a teacher but a HCP- in a role which is often in the news as being hard to recruit and retain-not in my 30 career experience so far!
I also don’t recognize this description of teaching from my two childrens secondary school- yes there are the odd cover lessons but the staff group seems stable and results across the board very good. For certain subjects they are turning teachers away!
I’ve no doubt there are teachers who are burnt out or sick of the challenges of the role- but there have always been.
I’m interested OP- what is your reason for starting this thread?

As for covid and lockdown, a friend of mine is an experienced teacher in a large London comprehensive. Her account of many teachers’ attitude during Covid is scorching. She says the laziness was quite something.

It won’t work because education is more than the acquisition of subject knowledge. For the most part, students like to be with other students. I taught in a school where all students had a laptop, and all teachers were supplied with one and had excellent IT support. It’s still not good enough; people want ot be with people.

oh well if she say so it proves it - all teachers are lazy!

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

Not necessarily. Workload and expectations are still a massive problem, even in schools where behaviour is good. In high-achieving schools with well-behaved, ambitious students with demanding parents, pressure on teachers can be huge.

@Sherrystrull I can as I can vote with my feet. If I do not like something or someone who is with my child for 6 hours a day I can move them.
I am my children's main teacher and worked hard with them to pass 11+ so again, I chose to go with a school where I knew teaching would be of a high standard.

Why does Word think ot is a word on iPad?

Its chicken and egg isnt it? My Godson has been repeated racially abused at his primary school. The school won't or can't do anything about it. So they've got 1 kid who can't behave, and another who now doesn't want to be there. I don't quite understand why schools have such little power to properly remove or discipline disruptive kids. For who's benefit are these children in the classroom?

It’s a personal account. I don’t claim it to be evidence, any more than a teacher coming on a thread saying “teachers are committed and hard working” is evidence of that being generally true.

“The fact classes can be and are covered successfully by LSAs would suggest that this is the model education needs to move towards.”

Where’s your evidence for this? It’s simply not true and would be a slippery slope for education to further travel down.

LSAs are a hugely important part of any school community and make a massive difference but if you ask them to cover classes, you are taking away the additional support for the children in the class. LSAs are not trained to do this and are also not getting paid a fair wage for this.

It’s done as a short term solution because it’s a cheap model (and school budgets are down to the bare bones) and you can’t always get cover. It doesn’t mean it’s successful or effective.

Same as it always is. To bring to parents' attention what is going on in schools because schools and teachers generally try to hide these things from parents.

No school openly advertises to parents that they can't get anyone to teach computing, or that the maths department is down three teachers or that D&T is being taught by anyone with space on their timetable. I imagine that there are parents at my school who are perfectly happy with their child's A-level teaching....because their child didn't take the subjects that don't have a teacher.

We have cut back hugely on TAs in my school, despite having the highest proportion (and number) of SEN in the area. We now have 7 in a school of 1800 students. Huge churn as well.

So, even if TAs taught lessons we simply don't have enough.

Got to love the Year 1 history curriculum 🙄. Totally inappropriate for that age group. Our scheme is too talky and endless cutting and sticking … poor children expected to sit through it . Just babies bless them. They are learning nothing .

Yeah good luck with that. Have you read the thread?

At what cost to the children? Being in a Zoom meeting, home alone, does not compare to being in a classroom.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/23/how-covid-lockdowns-hit-mental-health-of-teenage-boys-hardest

No, what failed in covid was trying to suddenly move an in-person school set-up to online without the technology or training in place. My daughter attends a bespoke online school and it is fabulous.

The thing is, the amount of distance learning provided wasn't down to individual teachers, it was down to school policy. Teachers were presumably doing what they were supposed to do during lockdowns, based on their school policy, otherwise they would have been in trouble with their employer. If schools were closed and teachers had been instructed to post online activities for kids to do, with no live lessons, then that's what they will have done. Is that lazy?

Public sector salaries have been stagnant for ages in general.