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?

Try not to make what you’re doing too obvious.

Thanks for sharing! I have commented. It is quite long though.....

Child Benefit - some parents (about 10/11% of parents) earn over a threshold which means they don't receive child benefit. They do pay a lot more tax than people on low incomes because we have a progressive tax system, in fact about 37,000 people pay about 1/3 of our tax revenue so yes, rich people are keeping the rest of us.

Sin Tax on Saving the State Money - I am opposed to singling out groups of people for tax because it is damaging to them personally and the economy as a whole. I believe the state should support everyone. My preference would be to raise the nil rate band on income tax and raise the % on the higher rates. My idea was that, if we must target people, we tax all rich parents and earmark it for education. An easy way to identify them would be to use the Child Benefit threshold, and if you earn too much to receive child benefit, you have to pay an additional education tax. Make it about £1,000 per child. That's a lot lower than the VAT on private school fees, which is so high for most parents, who carefully plan and save for the fees, that the VAT is a life changing amount of money, and terribly unfair considering they are not even using the state system. The VAT on school fees is a 'retire in poverty or die before you stop working or sell you home' kind of level of tax. Once they have already committed and have to hurt their child to move their school.

And yes, private school parents most definitely save the tax payer a lot of money. Estimates of the cost of a state school place vary between £7,000 and £11,000 per child, per year, depending on whether you factor in fixed costs. VAT on most school fees for a child in the SE at a secondary school will be about £2,500-£3,000 per year. Not taking up a school place does not cost the state any money, it saves the tax payer money. The government have lied on social media to gain false support for this damaging tax. Saying 7% of children don't matter. Saying state schools don't have astro turfs and private schools waste money on embossed paper. They have stooped very low to get this tax through, trying to turn people against each other, and I honestly believe they have broken the ministerial code as well as The Nolan Principles. Have a look at the government ministers on Facebook. It is shocking.

There is an issue with attitudes, and that Dad (nice chap actually, apart from the snide remark) does illustrate the issue very well, he said something at the side of the pitch that he would never have said to me at a parents evening. I'm sure you have heard SLT talking about unsupportive parents. I think we probably agree so I'm not sure why you are trying to argue.

so no, nothing was factually incorrect, and I don't see how you can find it divisive.