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?

You want to hold parents of children with complex SEN legally accountable for ensuring their children meet milestones?

And you think children with SEN don't need teaching?

That's horrible.

Your answers to question 1 would still be very informative and helpful.

Because the target grades are bollocks (FFT).
Pulling target grades out of the air by comparing children of similar demographic, gender (not sex), birth month and postcode.
Using KS2 sats results for English and maths and generating biology/chemistry/physics targets for separate sciences.
All my colleagues got a negative residual for last year's exam classes.
Unions push back on this but some schools still have performance targets.
It's all a load of old bollocks.

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?
@CautiousLurker this doesn’t work. It’s not a tweak. The fundamental approach to a topic is dictated by the class, and by the teacher’s personal style. And planning is the creative part of the job. Planning and actualky teaching are the two things teachers love most. Fiddling about and interfering with that part of the job will lead to less retention, not more.

Why I left?
Serially bullying SLT in successive schools
Workload
Lack of respect for the profession (though this is a minor issue compared to the others).

Not excusing bullying, but I get why SLT default that way, because of 5he pressure they are under from the bullies the next level up.

I suspect that lots of the replies (should Bridget P send out such a questionnaire , which I doubt she will!) say similar.

Does the government know? Do they care?

I feel like someone should start to care.

I agree @Shinyandnew1

Can understand that - but wouldn’t it give teachers a repository of pre-made resources that they can (ie do not have to) use to start their lesson planning with? Or to fall back on during illness etc, leaving them free to be creative with specialist/interest subjects? If they have to plan 100% of their lessons and produce materials, it can only lead to burn out eventually? Having something in the bank, so long as it wasn’t prescriptive, would surely be useful and reduce stress a little?

A private school I toured once when considering teaching does this - the years’ lessons are all in folders so if anyone is sick the sub can go to the file and pull out the planned lessons. The individual staff are not required to use them, but the lesson topic/objectives are defined so they can present/teach without using any of it if they wish. The department add alternative lesson plans and materials if they try something that is really successful so it’s accessible by other teachers, rather than expecting every member to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

@nonoblegiraffe thank you for an extremely well written, coherent and informative opening post. I work in education and am interested and engaged with current politics and I did not know all of the statistics etc you pulled together so clearly to present the issue in such a rounded way - if it wasn't on Mumsnet I would be sending the link to your post to lots of friends and family!

As to how we improve the profession to improve recruitment and retention? - God I wish I knew.....

I am one of the minority who still, after nearly 30 years, loves teaching. Apart from my daughter, I think it is probably the thing I love most in all the world, and what gives me life most meaning, interest, joy.

I work in middle management in a large urban secondary in an area of high deprivation. On paper it should be a tough gig. And it's not without it's challenges. But all good ones - I definitely feel I am valued, supported, rewarded for my efforts, and, within the limitations of our school budget enabled to do the best I can for the kids in my care. Who are mostly fantastic - there are always a few who make it tricky, but that's human nature - most are warm, wonderful human beings and a pleasure to be around.

It makes me sad that we don't have more money we could use to redress the current imbalances in society and their impact on our young people. (Sadder still that these imbalances exist in the first place). But I am allowed to use what money can be afforded as creatively as I can to offer opportunities that struggling families can't, as much as they wish to.

For example, even something small like a visit to the cinema - I organised some whole year group cinema trips last year, managed to make the budget stretch, made friends with the cinema and blagged reductions etc. (you'd be amazed how good you get at blagging freebies and discounts and favours for the kids, as a teacher). Loads of these kids had never had the simple pleasure and experience of a cinema trip before. One tiny example, but emblematic I think of how poverty restricts life so brutally.

So yes, if I could name one thing that would make teaching better, it would be for schools to have more money, not for wages necessarily (as an experienced middle leader I am really quite well renumerated!) but to spend on equipment, visitors, trips, stuff for the walls, books for the library...... Everything that lights up an education. So we can start to give these amazing young people some of the experiences and opportunities their families would love to give them, but simply can't afford to.....

You aren’t getting it. A template doesn’t mean you don’t have to plan. No template will suit every class. Likelihood is it won’t suit any class. And it’s not a ‘tweak’. It’s rewrite. Totally new. It is no more help than the spec - and actually a hinderance if part of your observation is whether you stick to the (inevitably useless for actually teaching your class) template, as it often does in academies that try this shit.

Edit: as HoD I always made my planning public so people could use any of it they wanted to. It may well have been better than nothing for absence. It wasn’t a massive help to anyone.

Teachers already do have appraisals and their progression is performance linked. They tend to look at pupil progress which relates to the actual children being taught and attainment for similar pupils (in terms of sen/pupil premium/sex/eal) etc rather than just all pupils any where. They also look at things like lesson plans, observe teaching and they will have professional development targets and they can measure those as they might not even be about pupils. It might be engagement with cpd or make the most of professional mentoring etc. I'm not saying it's good or bad but teachers performance is most definitely measured.

Just to reassure you that most people do not have this view of teachers. I'm absolutely convinced that this is one of the most difficult jobs out there and one of the most critical ones as well.

And you’re not getting my point - I am saying (as an ex teacher myself) that having some “templates’” were very useful, especially as a newbie to turn to, even if I chose to do something completely different with my classes. I’m not saying noone should plan, I’m not saying that revising and or rejecting in their entirety when you know they won’t work for your class/year group shouldn’t be allowed, I’m just saying they were a bloody useful resource to have on hand for when and if needed.

I’m out of here as you simply cannot make a positive and experienced-based comment without people jumping on you angrily and telling you you are stupid.

My comment is experienced based (35 years). I didn’t say you were stupid. I’m not angry (and don’t think my posts sound like I am).

@cardibach I am not a teacher and I promise that I'm asking this question out of curiosity and not for debate - why is this so? what you're saying contradicts my perception and I'm keen to understand why each class requires different lesson plan. I'd understand about different sets and abilities, but what if we had several options for the same lesson to suit different levels?

I'd really appreciate if you could explain this to dummy? again, this is for me to learn and not to challenge

but wouldn’t it give teachers a repository of pre-made resources that they can (ie do not have to) use to start their lesson planning with?

The previous Labour government did something along those lines for primary-the old QCA units of work-they were reasonably good I thought, some better than others.

They also wrote and freely distributed a whole phonics scheme with photocopiable resources and activities. I thought that was great.

Unfortunately the Tory government got rid of the QCA documents, changed the whole curriculum and decided that this phonics scheme was BAD.

They didn’t just rewrite it and create one they thought was GOOD and share it with schools freely though, did they? Oh no! They decided to let publishers write their own schemes and then choose their favourites which schools could choose from a list of. Were these free for schools for buy?

Were they bollocks.

Schools had to buy a new one (and a new reading scheme to go with it in most cases) at hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, or risk the wrath of Ofsted for not using a state-sanctioned scheme.

Free good stuff as a resource you can dip into, I have no problems with. I wouldn’t mind some good text books as well. But if you change the curriculum with every change of government, all you’re doing is throwing money in the bin.

I was a secondary teacher for over 20 years and I'd have loved pay based upon results. My results were consistently good at both GCSE and A level.

Because its very easy for unscrupulous HoD and SLT to stack the deck against you so that you always fail.

FYI, I had consistently good results, even when the SLT stacked the deck against me, but I have seen it used to break teachers,

Teaching is a difficult job not only do you have to manage the general behaviour of up to 26 or so kids all at once you have to get them to perform well in exams and the marking books is endless. Especially at A level students tend to do better in exams the more they practice exam questions but you have to Balance this with the time it will take you to mark their work with constructive comments for future improvements. To get outstanding results you have to put in endless hours of constructive marking. The government can't recruit enough teachers because it is a lot of work needed outside of the classroom and I worked on planning and prep through about half of my holidays so during term time I could focus on students and constructive marking.

I appreciate the genuine interest. It’s the only way we might get somewhere…
It’s hard to explain.

Different children (people) need different things to engage them. The start of the lesson needs to do that - for a range of different interest triggers. Then they have different base knowledge, so the starting point needs to be different. For this, you possibly could have a top/middle/less able template, but it might still need tinkering with for a class).

The ability to work independently varies enormously, so when you get to the individual task you need a range of support which will vary from class to class.

Different teachers have different styles. They don’t do well trying to ‘act’ someone else's style. Teaching is more an art than a science. This bit is pretty tough to explain - but maybe think about your friendship group. If they needed to explain to you an issue in their private lives, would they all do it the same way? That’s separate from your needs as a friend to understand.

I’ve taught English through the medium of tractors in a rural area with farmers’ children. Filter it all through something they are interested in. And then factor in my style, which is chatty/humour/anecdote with a base layer of don’t you fuck with me because neither of us will enjoy that.

Good defined by…?

@nearlylovemyusername and with apologies to @cardibach for jumping in here, I hope you don’t mind. Lesson planning is much more nuanced than that. You can’t just have three or four different lessons for three or four different abilities or sets. Firstly because that’s arguably immoral- you need to “teach to the top” and make it possible for all children to access the height and breadth of the curriculum and create scaffolding as support for those that need it.

Many children with SEND or EAL are potential high achievers who need lots of scaffolding. You might need extra focus on tier two words for children with EAL, you might need to adjust non literal language for children with ASD, add in movement break activities for children with ADHD, children with different versions of dyslexia or dyscalcula might need different fonts or colours of paper to enable their reading. You might need to reframe hinge questions for students with different needs. There will be different combinations of these children in every class. Therefore it’s really only possible to do this well on a class by class, lesson by lesson basis. I’ve 25 years experience in teaching, my job role involves adaptive teaching and I train teachers to do this. I’ve never seen centralised resources that work effectively.

Of course, that’s before you’ve even started considering adapting for anything that’s triggering for the mental health epidemic amongst young people, or will be too exciting for children who can’t self regulate, or the vast holes in children’s creative and cultural education, resulting in deathly lack of curiosity.

I still love teaching and I’m stubborn. I won’t let this system and situation beat me so I won’t be one of teachers who leave. I want to help new teachers to teach children with SEND as I never had any help. I do wonder if it will literally kill me though .

The thing is that you can teach the same thing to 5 different classes in 20 different ways.
Due the the different levels of G&T, SEND, FSM etc. children in the class, and that doesn't take into account the way some pupils just learn differently from other pupils.

The complete difference between my reply and this, with both being detailed, genuine replies, handily illustrates the issue.

I completely agree. It's the elephant in the room. People seem wedded to the comprehensive system because it feels more egalitarian when, in fact, I would argue that the majority of children are being failed.