to think we're heading for another teacher recruitment crisis?

[KeepCalmAndLOLKittens]

I don't deny that I'm speaking from purely personal experience here, but after a brief increase in the number of teachers joining the profession during the recession, I am seeing evidence of another shortage.

I thought I'd have difficulty getting back into FT work at the top of the upper pay scale, but not only was I offered a post with protected pay; shortly afterwards I was asked to fill another by a local school.

My current post is proving difficult to appoint. Only one candidate came to interview and had previously been unsuccessful. It has been readvertised with very little interest. This is a good school; a pleasant working environment in a large town, accessible from a major city.

Angered by the latest bullshit plans to bring retired engineers and mathematicians into the profession I'm considering leaving altogether. I just searched my local newspaper's job site and found that I could earn nearly as much working a HGV driver. Not to dismiss the responsibility and skill that driving a HGV demands, it does make me wonder why I kill myself to try to achieve targets I know to be impossible while managing behaviour of the more challenging kids and having to be constantly prepared for Ofsted scrutiny.

What is to be done to address this when teachers are vilified for their holidays, for enforcing dress code, for being seen to impose fines for term time holidays and for just not being superhuman enough? Where will the teachers come from?

I live in a rural leafy town- 5 teachers are leaving my local primary school- replacement isn't easy. Primary Heads are even more difficult to appoint.
Anyone who thinks the holidays are good is soon disillusioned when they see the work that needs to be fitted into them and they can only ever go on holiday at the most expensive times.

More and more teachers- of all ages- are wanting to do job shares and not full time.

I met a teacher last week, young and single, fed up with the workload, who was working out if she could afford to job share in the primary school.

As a parent, I do think there are going to be problems ahead. More and more schools are taking on young newly qualified teachers who are then going to get married, have babies and perhaps work part time and so there will be a lot of job share classes. I am not sure that this is good for the children, I'm lucky that neither of mine have always had a full time teacher and not one who has gone off on maternity leave.
I'd like to see more male teachers in schools, it's a shame that it still doesn't seem to appeal to that many men.

I have children coming up to school age and am hoping desperately that I can get a term time job.I thought about becoming a teacher - something I've thought about for a while.

All I can say is no bloody way. No way.

All of my teacher friends hate the paperwork, the demonizing in the media and even worse by Mr Gove. He wouldn't treat his employees like this if he was a CEO, would he? He acts as if every teacher wants to do badly and wants the children to be uneducated.

He fails to recognise that what he is doing is demoralising.

Never ever would I be a teacher.

There will be a crisis of course there will be.

And that is the Tories for you. Shit all over public sector workers as if they're scroungers forgetting full well that MPs are also paid by taxpayers.

I'm always a bit by posts that compare teaching with other jobs by looking at the hours and saying that other jobs require you to work similar hours and it's tough in commercial jobs. Similar hours but not similar things happening. Other jobs simply don't require you to manage 30+ people every second of the day, 30 people who in many cases cannot get on with anything without input for longer than a few seconds couple of minutes, and who have incredibly differing requirements (in my son's class there have to be 6 levels of differentiation for every activity all day long, which is of course not unusual). Also those 30 people have to be persuaded to want to do whatever is happening, rather than being paid to be there. Teaching is qualitatively different because of all that IMO. I've worked in all sorts of sectors and I have never been as crawling-home exhausted as I was as a teaching ASSISTANT who had shorter hours and far less responsibility than the teachers.

Doesn't surprise me if there is. I phoned up to enquire what I could do thinking a career switch might be a good idea. My degree is Art History.

Apparently that means I can draw. So the dumb ass on the phone said Art only. Art History of course teaches you how to hold a paint brush and paint ffs. Not the historical, sociological, and various other aspects that have fuck all to actually drawing.

If that's the standard of their recruitment, Frankly they deserve a lack of candidates.

Well I'm slt in one borough and my partner in other and both boroughs are struggling. It's been the topic of every external meeting this term that we can't fill vacancies, the boroughs nqt pools were empty before half term and emails have been warning of a crisis for while. About half the schools still have at least one class teacher vacancy and there's also been a leadership problem too. We have advertised a role four times, others such as senco roles have been advertised far more. With four weeks to go it's a worry and also is a bar to transition days occurring on time with no new teacher to meet. Even supply agencies are low here.

I dont think that the number of teachers who leave the profession within the first 5 years is surprising or really alarming. Many people join a profession then for whatever reason decide to leave. Professions which require years of training eg accountants will lose a significant percentage each year as trainees fail to make it through to the next stage.

It is probably more obvious in teaching as it is seen as a loss of vocation.

DH reports struggles in recruiting high calibre teachers for the science department.

I did a degree with the OU because I wanted to be a teacher. Then DH went into teaching and I decided not to as it put me off. I earn the same as him, have no pressure and spend my evenings on Mumsnet watching telly. But I'd make a cracking teacher and am the kind of person they should be attracting into the profession.

I sometimes spend whole days doing presentations. I come home hanging and would not be able to do any more work when I got home. This is presenting to adults who want to be there and I'm not required to differentiate or show any progress at the end. I always say that I don't know how DH does it.

Sure the holidays are great but they earn them and simultaneously everyone begrudges them having them and it's a stick to beat them with. A teacher recently left because he asked for time off to go to the World Cup. It was refused so he handed in his notice. There's no flexibility at all.

I'm training to be a TA at the moment. I have lots of friends who are teachers but until I was actually in the class room I didn't realise quite how hard the teachers work and what pressure they are under.

I would love to go into teaching but could never afford the training

Perhaps recruitment policy needs changing. The second job offer I received came at the beginning of June, one working day after the statutory deadline for notice to leave in August for a September start, so I couldn't have started until January anyway. A seven month notice period is ludicrous. Not the achool's fault - they are responding to notice given within the deadline. Not the leaving teacher's fault - they are within their rights to give notice at that point.

If teaching was subject to a standard notice period of one month the scrabbling to recruit 'leftover' NQTs and the currently unemployed would be a thing of the past. Yes a mid-term change of staffing might cause mild disruption to leaning for a brief period, but that has to be preferable to an unfollows vacancy or a post filled by an unqualified person in September.

And if we really are not expendable for that period of time, why the vilification and deprofessionalisation of teachers?

*unfilled

Lots of teachers work as TAs- they don't get paid much but they go in, work hard, go home- and can even pop home at lunchtime to walk the dog.

Keepcalm , I believe the leave period is a "should" not a "must". Teachers are paid monthly, so I'm guessing they can't legally be held to longer periods. I wonder if it's ever been challenged.

Here in Australia, the notice period for the departing teacher is two weeks, which also our pay cycle. And yes, they can get replacements.

Just had a look at the Burgundy Book, and yes, the silly notice periods that advantage the school and restrict the teacher are rules.

echt, the HT has discretion to allow teachers to leave after the deadline but often simply can't due to their own recruitment issues.

There is only one full time permanent teacher left in my department. The other 17 are part time or short/long term supply ( we have no head of department). No one ever seems lasts full time more than a few months. Not surprising when the working hours are about 14 hours per day during term time, 5 hours a day during the holidays, ( including the unpaid holidays, such as summer), the holidays never match the holidays of local schools where we have children, the pressure is overwhelming, and we spend most o our working lives on paperwork which is purely political, utterly pointless and detracts from the educational experience of our students rather than enhancing it.

We do have one full time teacher, but only because his marriage broke down under the strain, so he has no family life left. Even he is looking for a career change.

We can't recruit anyone. No one wants the jobs. Teachers are all looking for other work, and those that find it seem so much happier, healthier and relaxed, even years or decades down the line. No nostalgia at all!

I've gone down to part time for the moment, while I look for another career. obviously the money is worse, but in the past I've gone months without hardly seeing my DC-April/May/June/ July, when I was working in school teaching revision every day of the holidays, and working until past midnight every day of term time. Then I finish for the summer two weeks before DC, and return in mid August.

if you never see your family, it defeats the object of going out to work to provide a decent family life.

Yes, there is a shortage in our area. However, a lot of supply teachers are very good, and can concentrate on teaching and simply change schools if they get too much Goveshit dumped on them.

I am considering becoming a supply teacher, so I can teach, but not work holidays, or get overwhelmed by paperwork.

Livin, pretty much, yes, though you also have to tailor your delivery to suit the needs of individuals.

I have had a nightmare trying to prepare my y11 class for both higher and foundation papers (quite different structures) and have the same issue with my current y10. Even emailing homework home then becomes a nuisance as it has to be done twice (on our stupid, clunky system).

echt, the leaving period is set down in the ancient red file of teacher pay and conditions. Or it was when I left my first job and got told by the LEA that it was illegal for me to leave at half term. Neither I or the HT knew it was a legal requirement that teachers resign at half term and leave at the end of term.
Of course, that was years ago and the rules may well have changed.

What is differentiation?

In a class of 30 for whatever subject you will have some very able students and some students who are not very able in that subject, the majority are in the middle, you have to plan your lesson so that all learners can achieve so you basically have to teach 3 (maybe more) lessons in one.

So say you are teaching French and your class consists of 30 pupils.
1 is a native French speaker from a French family who have moved to the UK.

1 is another immigrant/migrant/refugee, lets say they are from Syria, they can read/write and speak Arabic but have not yet managed to learn the roman alphabet that we write in. They have very little English.

They have also seen and been exposed to some situations that no child should experience and that is having an impact on their learning.

The rest of your class is between these two extremes but include a deaf student (supported by an interpreter), one with sever dyslexia and one with ADHD.

Your lesson plan has to reflect the way all these children will individually progress in one 40 min lesson. You also need to show how you take into account the special needs of your students.

Exactly what sashh says, I use to plan most of my lessons with around 5 levels of differentiation. It was expected and checked for in planning and lesson observations. Most teachers do.
I tended to have higher, middle and lower ability, then extension work for the very high fliers, supported work for those with a LD or another SEN or EAL etc that was individually tailored to those specific children.
For every lesson, differentiation by results not acceptable.

And breathe.

sashh is not wrong, and while I'm all in favour of planning, the idea that such minutely differentiated progress can or should be detectable in every lesson is a joke. Any respectable research shows that progress might/can/should take place over number of lessons. The 40 minute-progress bollocks is all to facilitate OFSTED's agenda: make the important measurable, instead of the measurable important.

No-one's looked at my planner since I landed in Australia, nor have I seen an inspector. But then classes are 25 and EAL are separately taught by specialists until reasonably up to speed.

Well I make no secret of the fact that while I am a good teacher, behaviour management