To already be fed up with teachers/eduaction workers posting about their long holiday!

[Freshlysqueezed]

Facebook is swarming with people saying how much they deserve it and other people patting them on the back. It seems like the world and his wife are in education or SAHM's with 6 glorious weeks ahead of them. Apart from a one week holiday I have a juggling timetable of various childcare arrangements to run to and fro from.

Lots to say here. I worked as a TA in an SEN unit on lowest scale pay with job hazards such as a broken nose and being stabbed in the arm. I lived it but please don't begrudge me my 6 wks hol. I fuckin needed it! However i have also done shift work in warehouses. The teachers at my school had a very very cushy life compared to that. They had tea and coffee on the go all day. An hour. Yes an hour lunch although it was prob half hour after paper work. A TA on hand incase of loo breaks,yes they worked some evenings and the odd weekend but thats kids free marking. Way easier than the crowd control required in class. My friend is a teacher and will be going in to work this summer for a week to get ready for next year. Then 5 glorious weeks off. I still don't begrudge em though because you know what? In most other jobs, the work life home life balance sucks. It sucks.

My STBXH would tell you, Jade (at least, it's what he's told me!) that our marriage broke down because the job made it completely impossible for me to have any sort of family life (or, more importantly, pay any attention to him) in term time.

He's a complete arsehole & no loss, but on that at least, he was right.

It took me several months to even notice he was having an affair.

It's not the actual classroom teaching - which is great! - it's the hours of pointless paperwork & the toxic culture of fear you work in.

None of which is remotely visible from outside.

I've spent this last half term, since my resignation went in, thinking 'bwahahahah, they can't touch me now!' . & I knew I was in a relatively privileged position as a teacher in a core subject with the recruitment meltdown already hitting.

toxic culture of fear

Absolutely. I'm so thankful to have left that behind. And my ex had an awful lot of negative features but I think he'd also say that teaching contributed to the breakdown of our marriage.

I paid 9k to train to be a teacher.
If you want to be one, you can. You'll get all the long holidays too. There are lots of jobs available especially since so many are currently leaving the profession.

Chipsahoy - I thought there was only a shortage in a few places in the country, and in some subjects?

No shortage in primary in my area. Still 90+ applicants per job.

Does it cost 9k these days? They were paying people to train when I qualified.

Good god! Other professions not being bashed really. Try being a doctor, nurse tradesman, estate agent, lawyer. Dear me!

Enjoy your holidays, oh sorry you will be working ????

larant - I've just resigned from a vair naice school.

It has proved impossible to recruit a full department in core subjects for the last three years at least.

KS4 gets the specialist staff thrown at it. KS3 is a jungle of non-specialists, split classes & supply.

It's only getting worse.

We have advertised three times ( primary, Good school, recent OFSTED) and had NO applicants at all.

Shortage subjects for which you can receive a training bursary, in order of need (and therefore amount of money)
Physics, maths, chemistry, computing, languages, biology, primary maths, geography, D&T, music, English, history, RE, primary.

It looks like we're not yet short of drama teachers.

Good job too noble. we need them to pressgang into filling the gaps in English .

I don't detect any bleating. . I think that was irony. I was just picking out a very good point made on this post on the T'INTERNET. Still love you all even though some of you are a bit daft.

I'm a drama teacher. Due to the spectacular success and popularity of my wonderful dept, we've gone from needing one full timer plus one part timer (English/drama teacher) to needing 2 full timers plus one part timer. Unfortunately the English/Drama NQT who was due to start with us in September has decided (on the second to last day of the summer term, having accepted the job months ago) that she no longer wants to be a teacher. Therefore KS3 drama will also be taught by a history teacher, a science teacher and a business studies teacher, at least in the short term. They were thrilled at the news

Our school, so many teachers are leaving that we're struggling to appoint staff in time. We always seem to have a supply or 2 in because someone has a long term illness, or because by the time we have advertised a job, interviewed, appointed someone and they have given their notice for their current job, our teacher has already left! And every time we hold interviews, we seem to need to appoint an extra person for a different job than the one advertised.

This term, we have 4 teachers leaving (out of around 16, so 25% of the teaching staff!), plus various support staff. And that's not to mention the ones who left at Christmas. Only one has gone to another school job, the others have gone into different career paths or taken early retirement.

We're going to have science teachers teaching KS3 maths next year. In addition due to budget cuts we've had to lose a maths teacher, so next year we will have fewer sets and bigger class sizes, to go with the much harder maths curriculum.

Our results are heading for a disaster, but SLT won't acknowledge that there might be a problem, and if results drop, it will be because of our poor performance

Yep, we'll be opening in September with a supply teacher taking a GCSE maths class....

Woop di Doop

Oh god Evil I'm trying to imagine how I'd feel if I suddenly saw drama on my timetable! So far out of my comfort zone...

Wideopen it was an announcement and SSAT published this

www.ssatuk.co.uk/a-period-of-calm-and-stability-and-another-change-in-the-rules/

Ah.

It's almost like they just make this shit up as they go along, isn't it Netty?

IamJeff
"Good god! Other professions not being bashed really. Try being a doctor, nurse tradesman, estate agent, lawyer. Dear me!"

If you read through you will see that no teacher has said that, only that it doesn't happen as regularly.

Good god! Other professions not being bashed really. Try being a doctor, nurse tradesman, estate agent, lawyer. Dear me!

IamJeff Perhaps you could point us to the threads on MN that appear, oh, three or four times every year, bash those professions and run for hundreds of posts.

noblegiraffe I really worry about the teaching of maths. I joined the profession five years ago and I was one of 8 at interview for 2 jobs. Now if we put a vacancy out we do not get any applicants- we are a 'good' school in an outer London suburb. PE, music teachers teaching maths, the problems will really show in Several years time with the new GCSE. we are trying to do our best but it will become very hard for those mathematicians left picking up the pieces...

Ha ha indeed they do.

It's a shame that there is a shortage of teachers and that many people are leaving the profession, but unfortunately that's the same in many professions. Often people leave due to disillusionment, exhaustion, boredom, problems balancing their job with a family or because they fancy doing something else (to name just a few reasons). These reasons apply to most careers.

I do think that with teaching there is sometimes a higher drop out in comparison to other professional careers, particularly at the junior end, because SOME people didn't really think properly about whether they REALLY wanted to have a life-long career in teaching and just fell into it because they couldn't think of anything else to do (and probably had the attitude of "how hard can it be"). I remember having quite a few conversations with history students or politics students who would be quite blasé and say "oh I'll try a few things and if they don't work out I'll just teach". Before I inevitably get my head bitten off, this is not a reflection on all the many teachers (the majority) who set out wanting to do it and have committed themselves to it. I have seen it from the start of uni though: the people that turned up committed to becoming doctors, lawyers etc generally stuck with it. Those that weren't REALLY committed tended to drop out during medical/law school, or at the very very start of their career. The same is true for those teachers who set out wanting to become teachers, or made a 'thought through' decision to become a teacher. Unfortunately, there are many people who get to the end of uni and panic because they are not sure what to do. As the entrance requirements are not as high as for many professions (not meant in a twat-ish way), there are fewer exams and teacher training is for a shorter period I think many of them thought this was an 'easy' option. Obviously when they find out that it is not necessarily as easy as they thought, they then drop out because there was never that real drive and passion that you need to maintain a stressful career.

Of course the majority will drop out for the same reasons people drop out of any career, but I do think it's one reason for additional numbers leaving this particular profession.