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?

If I was a TA I think you'd not see me for dust. Their wages are so out of line with the expectations of their role. The term time work must be a big draw but there must be less tough ways to earn the same money.
I can't imagine how many thousands of teachers there are who feel they can't afford to leave

Plus:

Smaller classes
Smaller schools
More schools

I've already seen jobs for content creators where teachers are paid to create a curriculum for the MAT and then basic teachers cough ahme unqualified/cover supervision just deliver the power points.

You see more of the SLANT/ behaviourist approach where everyone has to look a certain way and follow the prescribed power point in every lesson. And homework becomes self quizzing or maths apps /quizzing apps so no marking.

You train in house so a constant stream of recent (cheap) graduates who are indoctrinated into the system.

If a teacher is off you do self quizzing in the hall with the other classes who have a teacher off.

Its already happening.

Dh would love to be a teacher (and would be awesome at it now he’s older) but he’s 44 and earning 60k a year so can’t afford the pay cut. It’s a shame because he would be great.

More special schools and even bringing back Borstal.

If you go to A&E there’s a huge sign stating that staff deserve to be treated with respect/essentially security can kick you out. As mentioned upthread a teacher called the N word and back into lessons a day later.

Some parents don’t give a shit. If the worst a school can do is call them up it’s like trying to catch running water.

There’s no other profession (maybe prison officers) whereby being abused is part of daily life.

We already are.

Actually it is partly about the money.

Teaching isn't paid well enough relative to the level of work, qualifications, responsibility, etc. and when compared to other professions. It isn't even paid well compared to itself from a decade or so ago. When I started in teaching, someone at my current level of experience and responsibility was paid the equivalent of £17,000 more than me. That's not reasonable.

You’d be surprised. When I put a job vacancy on indeed easily 60% are South Africa despite the ad clearly stating U.K. residents only ( medical sector)

Teaching is a complete and utter shit show at the moment.
I work in a small village primary school and it's bloody stressful. Many seem to think all the problems are in secondary school. Nope.

We have problems with a huge increase in recent years of children with SEN and mental health issues, and parenting is definitely worse than it used to be.

We have quite a few parents who will question and query every little thing and it is extremely time consuming. Every behaviour incident has to be fully written up by whoever deals with it so we don't end up being bitten on the arse by the parents. TAs and lunchtime supervisors are getting very annoyed as the only time they're able to do this is after they finish, from which they no longer get paid.

Some incidents involve the same few names of children who are clearly not well parented or should be in a different setting.
It is EXHAUSTING, and I don't even work full time.

It's not recruitment of new teachers we need. They don't last five minutes at the moment.
It's the retention of the excellent, experienced teachers and TAs we really need, which is also in the best interests of the children, too. Experienced staff are worth their weight in gold, but we're losing them left right and centre.

We'll probably be reduced to Artificially Intelligent "teachers" done via screens. Not sure how that works with discipline though..

That’s fair enough ☺️
I’m happy with what I get.

What I’m not happy with is the behaviour and and the stress that it causes.
And the constant new initiatives/demands.

I’m aware that I am possibly contradicting myself here 😂

This is going to be my final term.
THANK GOD.

Lots of schools seem to have taken to having TA's take full classes, not HLTA's either. Unless they change the working conditions drastically, teachers will continue to leave.

The trouble is trainees aren’t trained effectively. You need a solid grounding in how children learn, how to deliver lessons on your subject, also managing behaviour and dealing with all the other teacher duties. I didn’t get a single day on any of that in my teacher training. You are basically thrown in at the deep end which is terrifying and unprofessional.

Have a bank of high quality curricula and lesson plans to support a high quality national curriculum. They do it in other high scoring PISA countries. Why British teachers have to keep reinventing the wheel I’ll never know. That should be a no brainer if you want to reduce teacher workload.

Secondly, kids who can’t behave and access the lesson for whatever reason - behaviour, trauma, development issues etc should be taken out of lessons and given the appropriate nurture or building blocks etc. Give the teacher the opportunity to teach. Leave behaviour management to other people.

Have some decent sanction that can applied against vexatious, entitled, abusive, lazy, feckless and dickhead parents. There should result in some offence such as ‘hindering a child’s right education’ or ‘hindering professionals employed to deliver a right to education.’

Stop the Ofsted judgements. No public reports. Have two yearly inspections with the aim of support and improvement.

Allow far more free play, extra curricula, trips, arts and sports, music and joy. Children should be allowed to have fun at school every day.

Free good quality breakfast and lunch for every child.

It's almost as if it would solve many of our recruitment holes but you're right no one would ever suggest it so we'll keep on puzzling over why society is heading downhill fast.

We could do what most other countries do and take further pressure off the state system by encouraging more people to use private schools.

Of course we are about to be burdened with the most appalling government imaginable who are too dense to realise this and instead prefer to pander to voters who have no real appreciation of the economic fall out they’ll cause.

Until recently if you’d told me a government would be anti-education I’d have laughed at you but here we are.

Labour will have to do what they did in 1997. Recruitment, financial incentives, higher pay. This is what always happens at the end of Conservative governments when the wheels come of underfunded public services and the public notice.

No. We should be fighting for good education for all children. Not just wealthy people’s children.

It's not about pay rises. It's about reducing workload. You can do that in two main ways: cut class sizes or reduce contact time. Either way, that requires a lot of money and the ability to recruit more teachers and/or retain more teachers. To recruit/retain more teachers you need to make the job more attractive. How do you do that? Reduce workload. How? Cut class sizes or reduce contact time... Vicious circle.

It’s revealing that part of the discussion is how much harder it has become, yet newly qualified are being roasted for not being up to scratch. There needs to be some will to support and develop new teachers, not knock them down at every opportunity because you’ve forgotten how hard it is to start out being thrown in the deep end.

My daughter is a maths teacher qualified last year and hasn’t secured a permanent job. Admittedly the area we live in isn’t in desperate need of teachers compared to some areas, but it does seem some schools are so short of staff they don’t want a newly qualified teacher who needs two years of additional support. They would much prefer a cover supervisor who isn’t even a qualified teacher and just muddle through.
That’s what we are seeing in my area.

Recruitment bribes for trainees have failed over the last 15 years.
Need retention of experienced teachers and entice ex-teachers back.
What would be enough?

It’s revealing that part of the discussion is how much harder it has become, yet newly qualified are being roasted for not being up to scratch.

Are they? My impression of NQTs is that they are very competent and keen, but they see what it's like and, understandably, think 'Fuck this!' and either go and teach abroad, piss off to an independent school, or go and do something else.

My dd (year 9) is already on her 7th science teacher of the year. They keep recruiting from abroad (South Africa, India, Canada predominantly) - some teachers walked out of the job after 2 days, some lasted nearly a term, lots of cover from PE teachers parachuted in to cover the lesson.

Yep it’s madness

It will be compounded if as pp says private prefer not to switch to state teaching

I'm pretty sure that every teacher I know would take a workload cut over a pay-rise though.