6500 extra teachers....

[noblegiraffe]

This was one of Labour's main headline pledges. They were a bit vague on the details - is this 6500 more than the amount of teachers that are currently needed, or 6500 more than the Tories managed to recruit, which was well below the amount currently needed? I don't know.

Anyway, where are we at?
Teachers were awarded a 5.5% pay rise as recommended - good.
Ofsted single word judgements scrapped immediately - good.
PPA can now be taken from home - meh, maybe good for primary
Performance related pay scrapped -good

The situation:
Teacher trainee recruitment targets were massively missed again for this September so schools will continue to have unfilled vacancies next September.

The projected fall in pupil numbers due to decreasing birth rates won't be as big as expected so more primary teachers will be needed (and this will impact school funding as fewer pupils meant there was going to be potentially spare cash in the system).

Potentially more pupils in the state system from private could be balanced out by returning private teachers to state schools. That will take some time to shake out.

PGCE mentors are now expected to do 20 hours of training this year to be a mentor, and lead mentors 30 hours, regardless of how experienced they are. This is putting people off being mentors so PGCE providers are struggling to find placements for what few trainees they have.

Workload for teachers is increasing due to lack of funding, and lack of teachers, so they have less time to devote to training teachers. The lack of experienced teachers available to train them is also a problem. At the same time, the demands of training new teachers on schools has increased (e.g. the NQT year is now two years of support and reduced timetable and schools also need to provide PGCE students with 4 extra weeks of intensive training and practice).

This is an extremely urgent issue, and a key government pledge, so why all the airtime about anything to do with education is being taken up with bloody VAT is beyond me.

The impact of the lack of teachers in the system is huge. Inability to recruit teachers means kids have supply and cover teachers which affects their learning, but also their behaviour across the school as they become disaffected in those subjects. Experienced teachers are not only having to plan lessons for the supply teachers and sometimes mark for them too, they are having to pick up the pieces and fill in the gaps when they teach the classes the next year. Heads of Department are spending huge amounts of time fielding legitimate complaints about the quality of teaching. Advertising for positions that cannot be filled is expensive.

What do Labour need to do to turn this around?

Nothing constructive to add, sorry. My daughter started a PGCE a couple of years ago and lasted two months. A combination of seeing what was going on in the classroom and experienced teachers bemoaning what was happening in the profession made her run a mile.
Not one of her peers considered teaching as a career.

My daughter considered teaching but thankfully got better grades than expected so didn't do it. In Scotland teaching has one of the lowest set of grades needed which speaks volumes about some of the NQTs we've had recently.

40,000 teachers in and 40,000 out is a disaster. All that experience lost. If you add up all those years of teaching walking out the door, it simply doesn't compare to the shiny new teachers coming in.

And the institutional memory lost...

The problem with 40,000 out but 40,000 in is that it doesn't take in to account specialisms.
When I left, the HT thought that I would be an easily replaceable because of the subject that I taught.
Firstly this shows a that they didn't have any understanding of the subject.
Secondly, that they were ignoring that the subject already has a shortage of teachers and applicants.
And thirdly that when I left no-one could teach my subject.
And then they had to shutdown the subject this caused issues for the year 11s, and the year 10s, and dropping the subject annoyed those that chose it in year 9 and where then forced to take a different subject.
One teacher leaving (in a option subject) had a detrimental effect on 200 pupils.

If a core subject teacher left it would effect even more pupils.

Ugh. Ignorant post.

Comments about not marking homework were about teachers using their professional judgement to focus on what actually has an impact on children's progress rather than things that pay lip service to parents. Teachers are professionals who have to prioritise their time based on the needs of their pupils.

Teachers in the mid 90’s needed a degree. Not 2 E’s at A-level

Private schools can pick and chose who they have and can expel whoever they want, whenever. We can’t do that in state. We are never going to be able to do that in state.

And is a generally post graduate level entry job. Since it is a degree and then a post-grad cert to qualify.

people without degrees would have retired at least a decade ago.

But to do the degree it only required 2 Es at A level. Teaching was what the careers adviser recommended if you only had crap A levels. But it was the 1990s. No idea what's required now.

@Superhansrantowindsor ,

I think other advantages private school teachers have (speaking as an ex private school teacher) is fewer pupils and, crucially, far more non contact time.

I used to teach about 2/3 of my time with about 1/3 preparation and marking time (within a longer day, tbf) but I remember, during my PGCE in a state grammar, some teachers had 90%+ contact time. That must be unbelievably tough.

You can’t compare the two sectors when one has twice the money,

When I qualified 25 years ago you would not get on a PGCE with anything less than a 2:1 degree.

And these days you don't even need a PGCE, just a pulse in order to be put in front of a class.

People shouldn't assume that because there's an adult in the room with their child 'teaching', that they actually have any teaching qualifications at all.

Yes, losing an experienced teacher - someone who can mentor new teachers, deal with the difficult classes, has experience of things like writing UCAS references and predicting grades accurately by looking at the class in front of them - them being replaced by someone fresh from a PGCE who will need a reduced timetable and additional training for 2 years from that experienced teacher, but now they have left isn't a like-for-like swap.

We lost more than 60 years of experience last term, replaced by 5 years. It shows.

Sadly experience is never rated highly by anyone other than those in the know.
Experienced teachers bring so much to the profession and speaking from experience, working alongside an ECT compared with an experienced teacher brings a much higher workload and stress level. I'm teaching a teacher as well as a massive class.

The backbone of any school, in my opinion, are the UPR3 brigade. The newly qualified teachers can revolve in and out, SLT can revolve in and out, and both are valuable to bring in new ideas but you need the UPR brigade to keep that ship steady. Too bad our pay rises stopped years ago.

If only. I am confident that our school has no UPR3 teachers, out of 30 teachers. Plenty on the leadership scale, not in class teaching. I suspect even UPR at all is less than 5.

Thing is, in our case it does broadly work. But it's a sad state that the only way to get paid more than £10k more than when you first qualified is by leaving the classroom. I'm worth at least twice what I was when I was newly qualified, but don't earn nearly that.

My understanding is that this imbalance is far worse in primary than secondary. There's more opportunities for middle management in secondary, whereas primary you're either a teacher or you're leadership.

This is true of our primary. There’s certainly been an issue with ‘recruiting down’ when backfilling, to cut costs. All the leadership team except the HT have in class teaching commitments, which wasn’t the case even 2-3 years ago. It’s a maintained school and ratio of SLT, TAs etc. relative to # of classes and size of school is challenged by the LA, so less and less leadership.

Yesterday I was jumped on for daring to mention well-being. One way governors have been able to challenge the above issue is by looking at staff sickness and turnover (wellbeing) alongside spend on agency and seniority of staff (cost). Classes with permanent supply is not good for our reputation especially when you have falling rolls and parental choice in our area (income). It’s a false economy to recruit down, which is obvious to all teachers for many reasons.

Many schools are hugely overspent on agency covering vacant positions and long-term sick. We challenge the HT on wellbeing and people plans because a) that’s basic leadership and b) it’s how to frame a discussion on investing in appropriately experienced teachers with accountants if you want to make a point.

I’m fortunate that I am on UPS3 but I am worth it. I look back at how I did things 20 years ago and cringe. I do watch my back though because I know I am expensive. It shouldn’t be like that. I would also like to see the return of being able to keep your salary point when you move schools.

Four very experienced staff (me included) have retired from our school in the past 2 years. Every single one has been replaced by an NQT or a young inexperienced teacher already known to a member of SLT.

Staff meetings are becoming very dictatorial as only a couple of the experienced teachers will actually speak out but are then made to feel like dinosaurs.

A previously excellent school is going down the pan.

@RaraRachael i think that's a strategy taught on the Public Sector Management for Dummies course.

@RaraRachael would that be retired on a final salary pension?

Final salary pensions for teachers were ditched years ago.

It’s a defined benefit scheme; something which most employers ditched a long time ago.