To wonder why so many teachers want to quit

[ChazsBrilliantAttitude]

Inspired by other threads but I didn't want to derail.

What is going on in education that is making teaching so stressful?

I work in the City and you don't see too many people quitting with stress even though the work can be stressful. Certainly, not the numbers you see in teaching.

As a teacher you are never good enough. Expectations are constantly raised, there is always more you should be doing and praise is not forthcoming. Even if a lesson is observed and graded 'outstanding' there is always the - but you could/should have done this...
Senior leadership came to observe one of my maths lessons a few weeks ago for half an hour (so missed half the lesson) and ripped me to shreds with what I had done wrong (I was nearly in tears). The grading for my lesson - 'good'! But good is not good-enough. Nothing ever is!

An earlier poster said that if all teachers left to do supply they would still plan, mark assess etc.
Some have done precisely that, and supply teachers who do all those things do NOBODY ANY FAVOURS.
I have met supply teachers who stay on ridiculous hours to do deep marking in primary, to fulfil a tick box from the school because they 'feel sorry ' for the teacher who is off. However is pointless to start a dialogue in a book with a child you will never see again.
And how can you meaningfully plan for a class you don't know?
Far better to spend the day actively teaching them from plans left by their regular teacher who knows them and can differentiate the work, and leave work that requires no written marking. Direct immediate verbal feedback is better anyway.
SLT impose written feedback as tick box to 'prove it has been done', NOT because it benefits the children. Even the King of feedback tyranny, Dylan Wiliam recently admitted that most written feedback is counterproductive.
SLT also blackmail staff by claiming every initiative is for that big bogeyman 'Ofsted'. Rubbish - read what Ofsted actually require - far less onerous that schools claim.
Would be good if teachers resigned en mass to do daily supply back at their former schools that WOULD send a powerful message to gvt and SLTS.
But only if they insist on working from proper plans provided for them, and leaving at 3.30 with no marking to do. If they are guilt-tripped into doing the same old shit, nothing will ever improve for anyone.
maybe then SLT will be so desperate to keep those remaining they will be forced to reduced the admin and marking demands, and give enough non contact time for their staff to plan.

Even if a lesson is observed and graded 'outstanding' there is always the - but you could/should have done this...
So true. I had an inspector tell me that my lesson on Goldilocks for 3 -4 year olds was good because I had used props etc and brought Maths and music and other elements of the early years curriculum into it. BUT it would have been outstanding if I had then read the story to the children. They had already been sitting on the carpet for 15 - 20 minutes. It was in my planning to read the next day but that wasn't good enough. This was from an inspector who had never taught Nursery and came from an area far different from our socially deprived, low ability entry level, with many children who did not speak English. I was glad to go. The record keeping is horrendous.

I have been a teacher for 15 years. I can not believe the terrible things this government has done to secondary education.

1. Every school will become an academy. No choice. Tjis is about a political agenda of destroying local accountability for education and turning it into a business that the Friends of the Tories who run academy chains can profit from. Nothing to do with bebefits for teaching or children.
2. Changes to GCSE examinations. They are terrible changes that will result in children hating learning and being switched off. Pass rates will fall (only the top 48% will be allowed to gain a 5 (the new C grade) So if your student scores 70% in GCSE English but 48% of children score 71% or above, your child will be judged as not achieving the grade 5. It is about limiting numbers not about raising standards. It is elitist. Only the top 48% can be in the club. If it was about reaching a standard, then anyone who reached the standard would get the grade but it is about restricting social mobility. If you are not in the top 48%, you will not be able to go to university because you will not have got the Grade5.

In addition the examinations are awful. The material children will study is boring and they will have to just memorise stuff and regurgitate it instead of learning useful skills. It also relies on the learning capital they have - ie it favours children from the middle and upper classes who grow up in educated families, where books are aread, there are high levels of general knowledge and education is valued, not the children who are never taken to museums, have no idea about history or world events, never see a book at home.

1. Every child has to make 2 sub levels of progress a year in almost every subject and 35% have to make 3 or more or your school can not be outstanding.
2. Every child will have to take English, English Lit, Maths, Science, Hist/Geog and an MFL to GCSE level or your school can not be outstanding.
3. Teachers have had barely a 1% pay increase for the last 6 years.
4. Marking has become a terrible burden- as outlined above.
5. School budgets have been cut - Post-16 funding has been heavily cut. Our school has lost £145,000 just this year and £500,000 over the last 3 years. You only save that by losing staff.You can't save it on pencils or stamps.
6. We can not attract teachers. The government offers immoral bursaries to people to train as Physics teachers, Maths teachers (35,000 tax free just to train) if they have a 2.1 degree. They can not attract them to train. Those who do leave after a year because a starting salary of 21,000 with all of the pressure described above is unattractive. Generally the quality of people on ITT courses has deteriorated because they can no longer attract high quality candidates in any numbers.
7. Behaviour of students is poor and gettting worse as new exams come on stream and children are not engaged.

There is a huge crisis coming in secondary education and this smug government is looking forward to it. It will allow their fat cat friends who run academy chains to profit financially, it will allow the government to put children back into their boxes in terms of social class, it will allow them to drastically reduce the numbers going to university which will in turn reduce spending in that sector.

I wasn't aware of the workload challenge survey (maybe because I'm in indie?). I still think the minister of ed needs to speak face to face to teachers as from a survey they're just aren't 'getting it,' are they?

I do think Gove has done immense damage to education which will take a long while to sort out but that's not happening. Maybe Nicky Morgan's survey was trying to address the damage caused by Gove but she's he's probably seen the results and realised the problem is bigger than she can deal with?

I don't agree that the academisation is to provide profits for cronies, but I do think that politicians of all flavours play the system and parade their 'state school' children, whereas in fact they cherry pick the grammars and faith schools for their own DC.
Nick Clegg, a professed atheist, sent his DC to a faith school (using the 'wifey excuse')
Seamus Milne, New Labour spin doctor, reported today sent his own kids to Tiffin Grammar instead of his local comp ( the notoriously dire Richmond Park Academy).
They are insulated form real schools.
I teach in all kinds as a supply teacher, and see the worst behaviour. But in faith schools the behaviour infringements are very minor, and easily managed so the kids in faith schools are very easy to teach - so the politicians DC do not have to suffer the disruption in other schools that reduce the time the teacher actually can teach a class.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/workload-challenge-for-schools-government-response

They did publish a response, but the actions are really meal mouthed

The Department will introduce a minimum lead-in time of one year for significant changes it makes to accountability, qualifications or the curriculum. So, for example, the Department would publish subject content and Ofqual would publish its requirements for any new qualifications at least a year in advance of first teaching (with accredited specifications and any sample assessment materials to follow later).

The problem is that last bit in brackets. That effectively means that you know what the topics are a year in advance but may have to wait until after you have started teaching it to learn the depth required for any topic, the specific terminology, acceptable simplifications and how it will be assessed. So you plan, write lessons, start teaching and then, mid year, start again when you are given the information that really makes a difference.

The rest is just as bad... and I was so glad I had already resigned when this was published. I am in FE... I filled out the survey, in full. It was nice to see that my response, and all others from, was removed in anticipation of a separate response......... did anyone ever find it?

What most other people have said basically!
It's just become impossible to teach.
Our SLT are like soul-less robots and if you don't rigidly agree with all their crap strategies then you get swiftly ousted. It's impossible.

Well this thread has been an eye opener. I am a qualified librarian, but of course libraries have more or less been destroyed and I was thinking of taking the tried-and-tested route into teaching. I knew of some of the problems and it wasn't my first choice, but with my first choice gone I'm wondering what the hell else I can do.

What the hell is happening in this country. It isn't just teaching and schools that're about to collapse like a house of cards, it's the whole bloody place. People chucked on the scrapheap left right and centre, increasingly from birth but at any age if you're just unlucky, with no opportunities for training, retraining and jobs, while the few who are 'lucky' enough to have insecure employment are stressed to hell. Crazy. Many thanks Tories and all who voted for them.

Sincere thanks for the thread, sounds like I'd be better off settling for crappy retail jobs.

the workload is so ridiculous that people walk out without another job - to preserve their own sanity and marriage
And that is what I did.

My parents have been retired from teaching for over 20 years now. A primary school headmaster and a special needs teacher.

Some of this bollocks was already starting when they were still there and it is so sad to read regularly just how much worse it has become since then. Particularly under Gove, who was an utter arsehole.

Managing a primary school all those years ago almost broke my Dad's health. Once he had retired he was so much better, and a totally different person.

My parents loved their contact with the children and trying to make a difference to their lives, but towards the latter half of their careers that was no longer what teaching was about.

They were good teachers and they do have some fond memories, but they needed to get out when they did for many of the reasons others here have already given.

Sadly, things show little sign of improving anytime soon.

I take my hat off to all you teachers today, and to anyone else who has given it a try and had to stop.

There is this impression out there with the general public that teaching is an easy option, highly paid, stress free and with long holidays. It is a false impression.

My DD2 is mystified by maths. Good enough at many other subjects, but huge problems with maths. She will never achieve government targets in maths (got a D, and that was hard work). This lack of ability is neither her fault nor that of her teachers, yet it will stand against their performance. That is clearly the tip of an iceberg, but it is unfair on all parties involved.

I left hoping to preserve my sanity and my marriage. I couldn't achieve the second but I managed the first and have been lucky enough to rebuild a new career.

In my experience, the only way to stay sane in teaching is to work in an independent school. Not that all independent schools are wonderful, but they are simply not constrained by all the crap that state schools are forced to do. I worked in a lovely private girls' school for a number of years and it's like a completely different job. For me, it's now a choice between private or doing something other than teaching. I have no intention of teaching in a state secondary ever again, if I can avoid it.

In fact the year I left - ill - three of us left ill with a total of nearly 70 years ' service between us.

And things are far worse now than they were then.

This week I have been teaching a group of lovely Y11s who have been predicted between U and D for maths. They try so hard, and they have had every possible intervention, but they simply cannot retain the skill between lessons - after half-term they will need to be 're-taught' everything we did this week. One of them does not know where to put a comma to denote the thousands in eg 213570 (the first question on the foundation maths GCSE paper.)
It is a complete waste of everyone's time, and, worse, very demoralising and confidence-sapping for them.
They should be allowed to do something they are good at in that time.

MrsUltra Don't worry- the new sup-challenging, super-boring, only for the top 48% in the country GCSE will sort all that out. This government has no compassion for children- only the elite.

I'm teaching a lovely Y10 class. They would have got their Cs on the old GCSE because they are hard-working even though not great at maths. They will unfortunately be sitting the new GCSE where the papers have deliberately been made harder and written in a more confusing way. They are not going to be well prepared despite my best efforts because the information isn't out there. The sample assessment materials showing what the exam will look like were finally approved in July for a course officially starting in September although most schools started teaching last year. Ofqual said this 'wasn't a problem' even though it left teachers no time to prepare. We have no textbooks because they had to be rushed out and are all terrible and we can't afford them anyway.

And when my lovely Y10s get their 4 which is the equivalent of an old C grade, they will now be told that this is a 'fail'.

What has actually failed them is the education system, the government, and most of all, Gove.

Well said NobleGiraffe. And now they won't be able to do level 3 courses or go to unversity. Mr Cameron's social engineering. Only people like him, the top %, the elite will have that chance.

How long before a different curriculum is introduced that better prepares 'some students' for work. And 'some schools' specialise in that curriculum because of the percentages they have of those students- the not in the top48% students. We could call those schools .......secondary modern schools.

As a parent of a child with SN struggling in mainstream this is terrifying reading.

Glad to hear you have rebuilt your career ilovesooty

Could that new curriculum be like the 14-16 and 16-19 Diploma that was introduced back in, I think, 2006 or 7. You know, the one that involved consortiums planning extensively together, kids being ferried between FE colleges and neighbouring schools to do a FT course that combined vocational and academic work. The course where you can't actually find any results from because it was so disastrous that it's been airbrushed from educational and political history. Biggest scandal of educational policy that's never been challenged!

I left teaching 4 years ago after a colleague engineered my demise. I was middle management and he was scared and stressed that I might make judgements on his performance that could put him through capability. I don't think the would have happened because he was a good teacher but his stress, anxiety and fear was pushed onto me. I was already at breaking point because of my own workload (teaching) so I snapped like a twig. My children effectively lost their mother for a year whilst I recovered.
One of thee effects of overworked, stressed, anxious teachers is that self-protection has to take priority over collegiate support, hence a rise in workplace bullying.