So if teachers are leaving in droves

[BlastedPimples]

and recruitment is very low, what is going to happen? It can't continue like this surely and education levels will suffer enormously.

Massive classes for the teachers that remain?

Huge recruitment drive to entice more people into the profession?

Entice teachers out of retirement?

Recruitment from abroad?

At my DDs school there was no off the shelf material at all. That's the point of my post.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, new teachers can't get jobs! Pay is much better, which may be why teachers are less inclined to leave.
(education is devolved, teachers need to do a conversion course before they can move across the border and vice versa)

Lots of Trusts do share resources now. In my school we centrally plan all lessons so all teachers in the department can access them. Still people are leaving. I don’t think planning is the biggest issue because at least with that task you see the outcome of your hard work. Plus you get to use your subject knowledge you trained all of those years for. It’s the tasks and relentless behaviour issues that have no clear outcomes that burn people out.

I started teaching late 90s and I remember teachers getting blamed for EVERYTHING in the media. At the time I thought that children will grow up with a different view of the profession. And here we are, some parents who belittle and refuse to work with schools. More and more tasks given to school when underfunded other services can’t cope. I do think things are changing but we won’t see the benefit for another 15/20 years.

I assume from your description of your dd’s experience that you’re in Scotland? Scotland has almost the opposite problem to England in that there is no detailed description in the curriculum or resources available to support teachers, especially those newly qualified who are coming through. There is also a massive recruitment issue but again the opposite - far too many teachers (esp. primary) have qualified and no jobs available.

Interestingly both teachers in England and Scotland complain about the exact same thing - huge increases in challenging and violent behaviour and increasing levels of children with additional needs but no staff or resources to support them. Which suggests it is a societal issue and not just down to the specifics of the education system (although increasing SEN funding would be an excellent start).

Why don't the Government employ a set of Teachers, who are the Creme de la creme in their field, and task them with writing all lesson content, for all pupils, for the whole of their primary education? These could be all cross checked to make sure they are perfect. Then upload them to a central library, that all teachers can access and download. That way we would know that we are teaching the right thing in the right way, and that every school is teaching the same verified content, AND teachers would not have to write any content, just familiarise themselves with the lesson before teaching, thus meaning they can actually have a life!

I work personally welcome this. We had it to some degree with the QCA SoW years ago, but they could have been a lot better. It has to be free though.

Fingers crossed for the next government. The current one would probably do it, but give the contract to one of their mates who would then charge every school a huge monthly subscription to use it!

The issue will only get worse if Labour go through with their plan to add VAT onto private school fees - those kids will take the places in the 'better' schools leaving kids with less invested parents/socially and economically disadvantaged homes to wade through the poorer ones. It might be a policy that makes the hardened left feel victorious, but the reality will be that it will be the kids that need the support/can't afford grammar school 11+ tuition that will lose out.

The main issue is that teaching isn't as revered as say, Medicine or any other profession and hasn't been for some time. The pay, relatively speaking is not on a par with other careers to begin with (I'm not talking about becoming an executive head) and arguably teachers are as if not more important. You won't enable more doctors if there is no one to teach maths or physics properly. When I went off to Uni in the late 80's/90's no one at my comp girls school with decent grades went off to do teacher training and during the time that my DC were applying to uni in the past couple of years, none of their peers did either. If we treated teachers like the best private schools such as Westminster, we would be able to home grow teachers from the School they attended. But we don't.

The Level of abuse that Teachers have to put up with is just criminal. One of my friends is a HT at a primary in a very deprived area of the capital and it doesn't matter what rules/behavioral expectations she puts in place there is always some parent kicking off because their child is so special they cannot be expected to follow them. And then when she rightly won't give way, she has to deal with complaints because she won't. None of this helps the kids stay safe, learn or fosters the importance of attending school. I wouldn't swap with her for all the tea in china but I admire her greatly. I also worry about the effect of this behaviour from parents will have on her health. It doesn't matter which flavour of government you prefer, unless the education secretary puts a pin on a map and actually visits a school without warning, they won't see what a real school is like.

Yes we are in Scotland.

The starting salary is good. However there is little progression which is part of the reason teachers leave. I'm in primary. I've been teaching over 20 years, I'm on the Upper pay scale and have some responsibility so get the lowest TLR. I earn 45,000 a year. The only way to earn more is of I go on to become a Deputy Head (slightly more) or Head (quote a bit more) which would not be worth the stress, IMO.

You shouldn't get more money just because you've been in a job for years though. Every job role has a salary cap, including teaching, and if yours is 45k then it's 45k.

But if they want to keep people in the profession past their early 20s they need to have a decent salary. There are limited opportunities in primary especially for upwards progression. The previous Labour government recognised this with their recruitment and retention allowance.

They do and 50k with progression through responsibility is a good salary for a profession such as teaching.

The problem there is that the salary cap for experienced classroom teachers has been massively eroded over the last 14 years, more than other pay points. So the government has boosted pay for new entrants but experienced have not had the same % increase leading to much flatter pay scales and teachers at the top who have seen nothing but real terms pay cuts for over a decade.

You shouldn’t get paid less for having been in the job for years, but that is what has happened by quite a significant amount.

I think main problems are:

Behaviour post covid, and social skills, awful.
When a teacher reaches highest pay point (just teaching, not leadership), their pay won't change. I've watched many 40-45 women leave teaching as they need to be able to earn more.

Also, unless Labour pull something out of the bag, private schools are going to gain popularity as people will scrimp and save to make sure their kids are learning and not having a day of behavior problems.

@Democracymanifest
Are you joking?
Ex teacher here, DH still a teacher. I switched careers a few years ago as I was sick of earning less than minimum wage for the insane hours I worked.
Of course you should get paid more because you have been in a job for years, most jobs get a pay rise every year. My current company have matched inflation every year. My husbands salary has barely risen the past 5 years, so has actually decreased in real terms.
Fucking idiots who don't get the insane work load of teaching, the piss poor behavior of kids with no support from SLT or parents, absolutely awful parenting that seems to be standard nowadays and phones in schools are some of the many reasons I left.
Which is a real shame as I was really good and ultimately they need good teachers WITH EXPERIENCE who can manage behavior and actually teach.
I hear every week of another teacher I know wanting to leave.

@Mumwiththingstodo The only magic trick is higher tax. Labour is attempting to pull something out of the bag - albeit in a ham-fisted way. Introducing VAT on school fees will whack up the costs so much that only the high rollers will be able to stay the course. This will mean those highly coveted great school places will come under even more pressure from a shrinking catchment. They’ve also not thought of the wider ramifications for productivity. I for one am happy to go part time/reduce my hours and retire much earlier if I don’t have fees to worry about. Of course, that will mean a reduced tax take for the exchequer. Less to spend on state education, the NHS etc if enough high earners do it. Unintended consequences!

its not just teachers from SA but nurses, doctors, radiologists, physio, dentists, IT experts you name it - the country is going belly up

I'm seeing more pressure to get students through no matter what. Some are totally unsuited, only training because they get a bursary. Back in the day they wouldn't have got onto the course in the first place.

What unfunded teacher pension scheme are you talking about?

As far as I know, there is only one unfunded scheme left in the UK and that’s the Armed Forces Pension Scheme.

Unfortunately, whilst I agree with a lot about your resources collections, all teachers are different and find it exceptionally difficult to teach from another’s resources.

Add to that the need to adapt for each class (mixed ability makes it so much harder). Just look at the current government versions - I look at them and think what a load of crap.

That said, it comes down to the engagement of the teacher and their relationship with the students. That’s the key part and one of the reasons why so many newly qualified teachers who have just left uni fail. No experience of life.

Absolutely! There is nothing more depressing than having to teach from someone else's PPT. It's a piss poor way of teaching to my mind, if you haven't planned the lesson with your cohort in mind then it's sub par, always. There isn't a 'one size fits all' way of teaching, and teachers all have their own personalities and ways of doing it. Yes, it's useful to have a basis to start from, but frankly after the first year of teaching something you should have this. Lessons then get tweaked and changed as you realise what worked, what didn't and how you could perhaps do something differently. I love planning stuff, getting excited about how the students will react and see this.

As you say, @PenguinLord we need time. Planning is what I spent the majority of my holidays doing.

Nope @Isitovernow123 . Sadly teachers, armed forces, firefighters, NHS are all unfunded ie they rely on taxpayers and HMT to bankroll at a rate that’s disproportionate to any contribution or investment. The money isn’t ring fenced. https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/pensions-retirement/starting-a-pension/public-sector-pensions.

It has always been seen as a trade off - crap pay for good pension - but if the aim is to attract a platoon of new recruits, it may be more expedient to offer them higher salaries whilst sacrificing access to a very generous and unsustainable pension scheme. I wish the state could afford both but I don’t think workers can wear much higher taxes. Not least as high taxes and housing costs must be limiting consumer spending in other parts of the economy.

They need to just let teachers be teachers.

Scrap Ofsted.

Teachers should have no responsibility over welfare. Their only responsibility should be on teaching their subject, not parenting.

Get rid of school ratings.

No pathway to challenge if expelled.

No phones in school.

Make all parents sign a behaviour contract, setting out the penalties for bad behaviour. Zero tolerance on any breach.

Remove the "right" to an education. If a student can't behave, they don't get educated.

Those would go a long way towards making the career more attractive.

Are you serious?

Most of us here taught through the pandemic and therefore have a much clearer idea than you do on what it is like to attempt to engage students with 'online learning'.

It was utter shit. Kids logged onto TEAMS, muted their microphones/turned off the video. And then lay in bed scrolling through their phone and Snapchatting each others whilst the teacher tried to teach the lesson. You got no response at all when asking questions/trying to establish whether they understood. They were terrified of posting an answer - knowing that the bitchy ones would be texting each other comments on 'teacher's pet'.

There were kids who didn't log on for 6 months. There were kids who did absolutely no work at all. It was like trying to teach into a vacuum.

It's absolutely clear that you know nothing about teaching if you believe that teenagers will 'teach themselves' using online or AI resources.

There is a level of naivety about your posts that is scary.

There’s an amazing podcast by Serial called ‘Nice White Parents’, you should give it a listen. Apparently studies (in the 70s and more recently) concluded that these types of parents were ardent fundraisers and networkers and what occurred was they secured funding for talented and gifted classes, thus the alleged social benefit not bestowed on socioeconomically poorer pupils, who were streamed with those of similar ability, meaning the school was neither socially nor academically cohesive.