I think teachers work incredibly hard and it is, on the whole, a thankless task.
The government has eroded pay and conditions and professional standing of teachers. They see it as a 'learn as you do it' job and are happy for graduates to start teaching, with full responsibility for exam classes with no experience whatsoever or learning about education.
It is stressful and poorly paid for young teachers.
My DH is an Assistant Head and he has been at work from 7am until between 8pm and 9 pm every night this week without a break and then come home and marked. He will finish tonight at 5 and do no work at ho e. That's a 70 hour week without the 6 or so hours he will spend this weekend preparing and marking. He works a large proportion of school holidays- lesson prep, meetings and other things, for example he is expected to be on site to take charge of the whole building 8-4pm two weeks of the 6 weeks, managing caretakers, technicians, summer schools, cleaners, builders.
That is between £8-9 a hour after tax. You can imaging what it works out as for an NQT who will be on half his salary and work the same hours.
The best teachers do it for the passion they have for wanting the best things in life for children and because they love teaching.. The worst do it because it is a job, or because the government have given them £25000 to do a PGCE and they leave as soon as they don't have to pay the money back.The government will let anyone on a PGCE and some of them are appallng in terms of basic skills, knowledge and literay and numeracy. Recently DH wa asked by one of them ' What's Hawaii?' 23 year old PGCE student.
They also train large numbers of the wrong subjects. Northumbria Universty trains lots of PE teachers but there are very few jobs for them because less students are sudying PE in schools because they do more History, Geograpgy and MFL now - subjects like PE and Tech and Art are being squashed. So the government have goven Northumbria even more places to teach PE teachers next year. Duh! If you advertise for a Maths teacher you might get 3 applications, if you advertise for a PE teacher you get 50+ who don't have jobs several years after training and they are often not overly intelligent.
The government are stupid. Their thinking appears to be:
Can't get teachers
Give graduates a lump sum and pay their fees for PGCE. That'll get them in.
But the job is so hard and poorly paid they leave after a year or a a couple of years. Many don't ever even teach. They do the trainng and do another job instead.
The government don't seem to understand that unless you make teaching less stressful and better paid, it wll attract poor graduates or money grabbers . They take the money and run or they are just not good enough to do a fantastic job. The best are few and far between.
I am also an Assistant Head- on maternity leave with 12 week old DS and I can't believe how stress free and enjoyable my life is. We are thinking to have second DC asap and me jus to tae 6 years out. Career ruined after 15 yrs building it up but heyho, a life instead!