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?

My view is there are a lot of experienced teachers out there who might be persuaded back to schools if the conditions were better. This would mean no mentoring part time timetables needed.

Many moons ago the school I worked in had a class teacher in each class. It also had a nurture room that was teacher led (not TA led) there was also a qualified teacher who did reading interventions and the senco was 3 days a week and there was like a float teacher for ppa/sick cover. When I left that school senco was 1 day a week and the other roles had gone. Maybe people could be coaxed in like that.

It was disingenuous of Labour to say they wouldn’t increase tax . Education impacts all of us so if more funding is needed we should all be paying a little bit more . The tax system is already set up so that those with the broadest shoulders pay the most . There is no need for the politics of envy and a vendetta against the 7% in independent schools . In what world is it fair that 7% are solely responsible to sort out the problems effecting the 93% . If tax is being avoided by those with the broadest of the broad shoulders that needs to be addressed.

one of my 3 kids has spent 1 year in private - the rest are or were in the state system

Most of our SLT are ex PE teachers and they are brilliant leaders...! One size does not fit all

Rubbish. Just because the birth - rate - is going down doesn’t mean that people aren’t having babies. The planet is overpopulated as it is.

I have a year 8 class, in a mainstream school, with one child who does not have SEN. No LSA either as we don't have them anymore.

Don’t worry - males do alright in education. A couple of years at the chalk face and he’ll be promoted up to SLT. He’ll be a Head or a CEO on six figures by the time he’s mid-20s.

Many parents struggling to care for their children (brush teeth, provide sanitary products, bring them to school) have themselves severe learning difficulties.

Vulnerable adults becoming parents and with no support to step in when the parenting role is too much will lead to children not being fed and cared for.

I find there is no point arguing with people who are not teachers. No one understands the reality of the job, they just think we are all moaners who love the holidays. I’m from a working class background and my parents brought me up to have an excellent work ethic. It isn’t working hard that is the problem. It’s the mental load. Nothing is ever finished, nothing feels good enough, no one ever seems fully happy with the results you’ve worked your arse off for, you’re fighting problems way beyond your control. It is relentless.

We get it because we live it. To most other people we are snowflakes who love the holidays and have nothing to moan about. I think a large part of the crisis is the public perception of teachers and parental expectation. We are humans too.

Yes! Children's centres were the best thing New Labour did. It was so depressing to lose them because I know how much work had gone into establishing the one at school, building relationships with parents and getting a programme of activities together. The regular access to professionals was brilliant too. I worked in the nursery and I could get a speech therapist to see a child within 2 weeks for a basic assessment.

If children don't have basic attention and listening skills (the basics of SALT), learning is an uphill struggle for them. And since Covid I've seen so many children who lack those skills because they weren't able to go to toddler groups and learn to socialise.

It's not just about SALT, there was a whole range of services that children's centres brought. We need them more than ever now to break this cycle.

My view is there are a lot of experienced teachers out there who might be persuaded back to schools if the conditions were better.

I agree. There is no shortage of qualified teachers in England, there just a massive shortage of those prepared to teach in mainstream state schools.

If I was the new Ed Sec, I would write out a quick Google forms questionnaire asking them

1. why they left and

2.what it would take for them to return.

and post it on the ‘Exit the classroom and thrive’ Facebook group. There’s about 166,000 members on there now.

I think it would make for interesting reading and be far cheaper and more useful than any more ‘workload’ surveys.

This isn't the entire answer, but government need to put some mitigations in place to reduce spread of airborne infections in schools. Bridget Phillipson was quite vocal about this in opposition but now it's crickets.
Teachers are one of the professions affected by long covid. If they want to boost teacher retention and wellbeing it would be an excellent start to put HEPA filters in classrooms and stop this ridiculous pressure to send infectious children into school.
I don't know why the unions aren't majorly kicking off about this?
And apart from anything else, it would reduce supply costs as well as improve attendance and exam performance too, so would make sense from other angles also.

I could have written this. I’m a really confident, experienced teacher with years of great results behind me for children of all levels of ability, with and without SEND. If your child has SEND, you’d want me as their form tutor or GCSE teacher, I promise you 😂. But this last year, for the first time I feel defeated by the sheer volume of children with SEND. It’s like a switch has been thrown, the change is so marked and so rapid. The curriculum is utterly beyond them.

Add into the mix the children and parents who cannot self regulate at all, the poverty, the hunger, the grooming and exploitation, the vaping, the self harm, the constant hunting for dopamine from phones etc.

I’m truly so sorry for the parents sitting in front of me saying “Johnny’s EHCP/SEND Passport says he should have a TA/a laptop/ sit at the front (along with the other 15) / someone to explain any potential change to him in person in advance (I can’t be in 2 places at once and I’m teaching)/ be in a smaller group/ only have to read about topics that relate to his specialist interest” but we just don’t have the people or the money.

We need more support staff not just teachers
kids are struggling and support staff don’t have the time to help them all plus teach phonics/ intervention groups/ stop kids from trashing the room

Most school I know are getting rid of support staff-we have fewer LSAs now than we’ve had in years, yet many more pupils with additional needs!

I have a child with SEN and while I want my child's needs to come first how is that preparing them for adulthood? If a child is in mainstream education I anticipate they will likely enter the workforce and have their own home? Should we not be preparing these children for that along with adapting to their needs?

Maybe a national parenting standard should be brought in? With a tick list of all the essential and basic responsibilities of a good-enough parenting. Including absent fathers being held responsible.

Mainstream schools should only have to accommodate teachable, school-ready children. If they’re not, then parents are to be held accountable in law for making sure that they are suitably home educated and meeting milestones. If they don’t, then social services - fully funded and staffed - get involved. Social services. The proper agency to deal with social problems - not schools.

If a child is in mainstream education I anticipate they will likely enter the workforce and have their own home?

We are seeing increasing numbers of pupils in mainstream who absolutely wouldn’t have been placed there even 5 years ago. Parents/school and specialists all recommend special but there are no spaces. Pupils who are non-verbal, in nappies, highly dysregulated, very physics, not engaging at all. I anticipate that many of those pupils will not enter the workforce or have their own homes.

I’m not a teacher but surely because it is measuring the performance of the children not the teacher.
If you are only allowed a pay rise if your class get all 5 and above but you teach set 8 you are never going to reach the target.
Some kids are thick and the skill of the teacher can’t change this.

Am reading this with interest as I am a teacher in a PRU. We cannot get lsa's for love nor money (the money is appalling) due to the work that goes with it. We have trouble retaining staff and pupil behaviour has escalated significantly.

I only manage because like @noblegiraffe I only work part time (even though that feels too much sometimes)

We are overrun with referrals and can fill every place 10 times over.

SEND as a whole needs to be overhauled. I live in an area that spends a fortune on private places. It's unsustainable and unfair to those who do not get the help and whose parents can't bang a drum to get them seen. I could tell stories that are heartbreaking (and probably illegal)

Then I stand by my first contribution to this thread, that we need fully funded specialised tiered education.

How? What kind of stick? What kind of carrot? Lots of kids aren't remotely interested in the carrot or bothered by the stick.

Incidentally, I teach in a (girls' grammar) school with really, really good behaviour. The workload is still untenable.

How? How do you judge the teacher's performance except by the performance of the students? What are you measuring?

They actually do this in many countries - Mexico for instance where if you work for the ‘state’ for a specified period, ie as a doctor/nurse in a state hospital, or as a teacher in state schools, your student loan debt is written off.

I’ve written to suggest similar schemes to my MP in the past regarding this. As we’ll be writing off a lot of graduate loan debt in 20-40 years anyway given the way most people are watching the capital amount of their student loan grown after they’ve started work, we might as well consider this as a way to get value from it. They’d be free of student loan repayments after 2-5 years of service at which point they could leave and go into other professions. It’s not quite an uplift in salary, but it would reduce outgoings for many over their lifetimes.

I appreciate this doesn’t address working conditions etc, but I love the idea of a centralised repository of teaching materials and lesson plans that teachers could draw upon and tweak to their own delivery style if they wished - this might leave them less stressed and with more free time within the working day to address some of those things?

Because you can't expect schools in poor areas to producte the same results as those in affluent areas with professional parents.

Our local paper recently published a league table of primary school rankings. I could have told you the top and bottom 5 schools without even looking.

I’m one of them. There is absolutely zero chance I go back whatever changes. I have so much lasting stress and distress I couldn’t go back into a school. I was bloody good, too. Head of English in both a state secondary and an independent. Pastoral experience. Did loads of co-curricular, completely inclusive stuff. Not going back. No way. It’s so bad that even changing it wouldn’t change my view. And there isn’t the money to get back to a place where it was doable. Or the will. And society wouldn’t accept it anyway.