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?

@Sherrystrull Maybe my wording was sloppy and I could have been clearer. I hear you, I teach 16-19 and I thought my job was hard until my children went through primary school. I'm surprised so many of you stay working in primary the workload is phenomenal.

And yet what you say is only part of being a teacher.
Yes parents and kids talk, but they also have preconceived ideas, either by the playground gossip or because their child reacts better to that teachers method of teaching.

Yes, some teachers are excellent and some are bad, but you won't know the full picture unless you judge them by all of the standards that they have to adhere to.

This is absolutely the case. I have trainees every year ego are doing it for the tax free bursary - they finish the course and then do something else.

Worse still, training providers are incentivised not to let anyone fail, even if they are patently unsuitable.

Thank you.

I cant imagine how hard teaching older children must be!

And clearly the entire country does not have enough money, so everyone should pay. People with needs would have been allocated living costs by government and therefore budgeting would be needed just like every working lives. Everyone should take fair share of responsibility to make the country better!

We have a very good social care system. There are ways, yes hard, but that’s responsibility as a parent.

This is where the largest MATs with their dry, soulless, idiot-proof schemes of work and "knowledge organisers" (shudder) move in. Sell these press-and-play, death by PowerPoint SoW to the govt in eyewatering, 2020 PPE type contracts. Roll out across all schools.

Skilled teachers all now redundant. Poorly paid skivvies, who desperately need term-time only jobs because of the crippling cost of childcare, supervise classrooms, and bleep on-call SLT to remove anyone who breathes out of turn. 20%+ of students spend days on end in isolation, watching the same PowerPoint slides through headphones on a device.

I honestly wish I were catastrophising, but our most awful MAT round here already operates like this in all schools that I've worked in (I did almost a year of supply, which was incredibly interesting, less stressful than I was anticipating, and very eye opening).

Of course some teacher suit some children better than others - that goes without saying. However, when 3/4 of the kids in a particular class say the teacher went AWOL for half the lesson kids from the years above are saying “oh yeah Mr X never marked our work either”, other parents are hastily arranging tutors when they hear their child has Mr X for a particular subject, and when you arrive at parents’ evening, Mr X can’t remember your child’s name, then parents will unsurprisingly draw their own conclusions - and I’d be amazed if they were different from those of Mr X’s professional colleagues. You talk about ‘playground gossip’ as though this is some idle chit chat - actually, parents really care about the quality of their children’s teachers. Of course they notice!

Edited to add that I, in no way, think parents should be part of assessing teachers - but I’m sure other teachers know who’s good and who’s not - or do they really not?

I teach in the horrible, source of all life's problems independent sector. I trained in the state sector, then applied for an independent school on a whim, got the job, and have been in the system for over a decade now. I'm not sure that I would return to the state sector if the proverbial hit the fan for various reasons.

• Behaviour - I remember during my training a young man telling me he was going to stab me in the face and shit in the hole. This was in front of the experienced teacher mentor. No consequences at all. Other frequent comments of a sexually degrading nature. Watching experienced teachers teach classes where kids were barely under control. And that was a decade ago when things were much better than they are now!

• Endless scrutiny and control - I'm observed once or twice a year, that's all. I also have freedom to plan my lessons as I want as long as certain objectives are met. I know people in state schools where every teacher in the dept has to use the same PPT and work through it at exactly the same pace. Tedious.

• General expectation to do social work. We have to do a fair bit of mental health support and I'm pretty knowledgeable about this now. But this expectation that schools will feed, clothe and generally be in charge of most aspects of young people's wellbeing is bizarre - we are not trained for it.

Class sizes - most of my classes are 24 pupils. More than this and the burden of marking becomes vast.

Staff development - I've been encouraged over the years to take a lead on various extra curricular things, and pursue various training courses, all to do with my own interests. I don't think there's scope for that in state schools.

I earn about the same as I would in a state school, and no longer have a Teacher's Pension.

a centrally planned economy can quickly mandate and allocate teachers which would be better than a free market economy,

Was speaking to one of DDs lovely teachers in her indy school about impact of VAT etc. She said she would never go back to state sector even if it meant more money/TPS etc. She still has friends who teach in state and they are all on their knees with stress/signed off work

@Earwiggoearwiggoearwiggo exactly the same here.

I would also say that pastoral expectations are far higher in independent schools (I'm emailing and phoning parents pretty much every night) but i have no issue with working hard at a job I actually enjoy, especially because the hours I spend are genuinely and directly beneficial to pupils and their learning.

Some teachers are better than others, sure. Same in every job. Trying to decipher which based on what kids or parents say…no, that doesn”t work. Kids often complain about very effective teachers because they don’t enjoy the pressure/strict style. Parents often dislike a teacher because they held a child to account.

Not surprised at all. Almost no-one from my PGCE course is still teaching. I was the only one who went into the independent sector. I suspect it saved my teaching career as well as my mental health.

As a parent I thank you but I hope your school protect your time ie DDs school stipulate to parents not to email after 7pm and don't expect a response before the next working day if emailing after 6pm. Personally I never email after 5pm as i don't want any teacher to feel obliged to work after that time answering my email.

Great. Working in an independent finally burnt me out despite decades in state. Some of them are toxic.

Then you would be amazed.
What you have is hearsay and gossip.
What you don't know is that Mr X has to spend time out of the class as has other duties that often impinge on his teaching time.
Mr X was late the other day because he was he was dealing with a child that had significant SEND and was trying to self harm.
Mr X was at a meeting that over ran because he is the school link to the college, Sixth form school, local primaries etc..
Mr X is actually the one that writes all of the Sow for the subject and is key to the subject area because Mr Y is slack at the job and spends all his time cosying up to the management, parents and kids who think that he is great.
Mr X is the teacher that has marked the work and is responsible for putting collating all of the marks and feeding them back to the SLT even though that isn't his job.
Mr X is the teacher that actually turns up for the detentions and covers the ones that his colleagues set.

And Mr X although he is so disliked as a teacher is the one that puts together all the information and runs the catch up sessions that your exam taking child will need to get a decent grade.
And there are loads more things that this teacher could be doing that doesn't fit into your descriptions.
So no your playground gossip doesn't cover half of what some of these "bad" teachers actually do.

Thanks for this post. It's made me reflect on my own experiences.

I think this is one of the areas that has increased workload in my state school class these last few years.

I ring probably 1 or 2 parents a day and have about one once a week face to face meeting with parents regarding SEND.

It takes so much time and energy, especially when conversations are hard.

I've not worked full time in a state school for almost 15 years. But when I did, I can't remember phoning a single parent over the course of 3 years. It just wasn't a thing that classroom teachers did (in that school at least).

Yeah, that argument only works if you are pretty dismissive of the ability of the parents to decipher what their kids are saying, and on the assumption that the kids don’t want to learn. If my child complains that a teacher disciplined them because they forgot their homework, I’m calling that good teaching. If they complain that the teacher didn’t clamp down on kids being disruptive, I’m calling that bad teaching.

My kids - and most others that I know - are complaining about teachers who don’t teach - don't answer questions, don’t mark work, are low-energy and boring in the classroom - not those who are strict. To be fair though, these are high achieving, ambitious kids. But that’s not really the point - the point is, if it’s obvious to me, then other teachers in school know. And given not all teachers are as discreet as they might be, I know they do!

I used to ring a parent a week to share a positive update or anecdote. That was the extent of my calls!

Most of my calls are now regarding bad behaviour or a child hurt due to another's bad behaviour :-(

We still send emails to parents late at night, we just schedule-send them so that the parent doesn't receive it till 8am the next day.

Yes because this year it's four judgements not one headline. You could argue that it's even higher stakes.

I think you didn’t read my post - Mr X hasn’t marked the work, and doesn’t know the names of the children in his class at parents’ evening. This is a real live example - and no SEND support etc from Mr X

How early in the year was parents evening? Mr X, if a foundation subject teacher, might have 700+ names to learn. Doesn’t happen overnight, especially if you 9n,y see them once a week…