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.

A depressing thread for those of us with dcs still in the system. My two older dcs are out the other side now but Ds is 13 and still has exams to sit which used to be O levels, then O grades, then Standard Grades and I think are now called NTs but quite honestly I haven't a clue how they work or what level he is at and neither has he. He is at a relatively good secondary in Scotland but even so ill-discipline in class is rife,uniform isn't rigidly enforced ( not the way it is in England) so the kids look like a bunch of tinks, Ds included, and despite being bright he is increasingly demotivated already. He's hoping to join the RAF so he's going to have to get some sort of grades in whatever the fad is at the time.

Thinking back on this....

When I started teaching in 1991 I was called in by the HT and handed an A4 exercise book. He told me this was for my planning and he showed me how to set it out. A double page for a week. So, to reitterate, a sheet of A3 for a week of planning.
He also told me that as I arrived by 8am and left when the caretaker told me to sod off that if I took any work home other than in report writing season i was doing something wrong.
I thrived in that job. I loved every minute of it and when we had one of the very first Ofsteds I was praised to high heaven and called an asset to the school.
I was considered to be a good teacher. I went on to become a HOD in another school and again was praised by Ofsted, not named in the report personally but as HOD of my department which was held as a shining example.

I then moved from Middle school teaching to primary and to start with I was a golden girl. I had people coming to observe me as a good example. My marking was used as an example of how to mark....

And gradually I became no longer good enough. Nothing changed. Except the expectations of results from children who had so much shit going on in their lives that the fact some of them came to school was bloody miraculous.
When i left my last school at the end of my career I was expected to produce an A3 sheet for each lesson I taught. If I didin't take work home despite only working mornings but spending all my afternoons in school as well then I was doing something wrong.

I watched as the younger teachers were held up as wonders of teaching but then watched as they sobbed if the internet was down or the IWB failed. Meanwhile I taught in a corridor with no IT and was berated for not incorporating IT and IWB resources into my teaching (There was no IWB in my corridor). I taught in a corridor and was lambasted when my group lost focus as the Foundation unit came down for lunch, passing us singing songs about marching...... I taught in a corridor opposite the toilets where the hand driers blasted out every five minutes. I taught in a corridor and had to stand guard over my chairs as they were seen as fair game by everyone and his wife and left me sorting out chairs every sodding morning after I'd dropped my sobbing child off at breakfast club and cried myself sick in the car park.

This thread has shocked me. My Mum was an infant school teacher, she retired in the 80's. She always said her job was stressful, but I don't think it was anything like this. She used to have most of the weekends and holidays free at least.
My 2 eldest have left school now (thankfully, going by this thread). My youngest is at a special school and all the staff are so lovely, helpful and supportive. I hate the thoughts they might be going through this.
I always correct people when they come up with the 'teachers only work 9-3' shite, because I know for a fact it's not true.
for all of you.

never How shit is that. Although I loved using the IWB and Internet in teaching I wonder how in God's name kids ever learnt anything before that.
However did we gain our qualifications? The only reason that these fucking plans can be so detailed is because of word processing programmes. All the endless copying and pasting and reworking it inside boxes. As Ego said upthread some schools have success criteria which children stick into their books. Only the brighter children understand the bloody things in the first place. At another school the children wrote learning evaluation statements e.g. 'I learnt to use the grid method in multiplication'
For some it might have been more accurate to say 'I learnt to bore a hole in my rubber with a pencil'
Just ranting now.

noeffingidea my mum was a secondary school teacher in the 1960-1970s and a primary school teacher between the late 70s and her retirement in the late 1990s.

So she was a teacher basically my whole childhood. She was a single parent for most of that time too. I honestly don't remember her ever bringing work home! I suppose she must have done sometimes, but it certainly didn't impinge upon family life. And the primary school she worked in was a good one that middle class families fought to get their kids into!

neverputasockinatoaster that's pretty much how I remember planning and teaching being being back when I started in the mid 80s. I too had teachers treking from other schols in London just to watch the Wonder That Was Me teaching. I enjoyed it, the children thrived and learned and we all felt good about what was happening.
Not now.
Well, yes now because I do my thing for a day or a week and then I leave. The children lean things, the teacher is happy and all my experience means that supply is a delight for me. My planning is back to useful notes and a LO, if I need to write anything down. Mostly it's just in my head.

Gradually older teachers went from being valued for their experience, to being referred to as expensive dinosaurs.

Often, nothing had changed in their school other than the retirement of a long-standing head. The bright new broom (who spoke in tongues and acronyms) had delusions of business management, and equated the creation of a smaller salary budget with successful leadership.

Older staff were appalled to discover that the quality of their work was suddenly a cause for concern, and pressure was applied to the teacher until their health was broken, and they left the school. Or allegations could be manufactured, minute incidents blown-up and made to fit into some part of a disciplinary process. Or the targeted teacher is worked into the ground until they break down, then are obliged to have their sickness record scrutinised.

This mistreatment of committed professionals is happening up and down the country. If you wish to read more on workplace bullying, TES CONNECT website has a forum entitled Workplace Dilemmas. You weep to read some of the accounts in this thread:

Ever been bullied or made to feel so ill you ended up off with stress or resigned? Please read.

I have no idea why my keys are sticking so badly...

I'm haven't had any issues with being old or expensive (mid 40s UPS) as I've always been lucky enough to work for Heads who valued my experience and expertise. But the workload is simply not compatible with having a family and responsibilities outside of your working life.

My current school has at least 5 really fantastic young teachers (mid to late 20s) who have been teaching 2-4 years. They ALL say that they cannot imagine continuing the job of a full time class teacher if they had a baby, or a young family. It's no longer a viable career. Some teachers in some schools manage it, but I think they are becoming a dying breed.

This has just come up on my news feed - sums a lot of it up!

Older staff were appalled to discover that the quality of their work was suddenly a cause for concern, and pressure was applied to the teacher until their health was broken, and they left the school. Or allegations could be manufactured, minute incidents blown-up and made to fit into some part of a disciplinary process. Or the targeted teacher is worked into the ground until they break down, then are obliged to have their sickness record scrutinised
Yes.

I'm another statistic. I left teaching after 13 years in the classroom. I got fed up of not seeing my daughter, of music being pushed to the sidelines, being told how to teach music by an English or a Maths teacher, being expected to provide written evidence for everything, being told whole class singing wasn't appropriate as there wasn't enough differentiation as the whole class were doing the same task. (It didn't matter that these year 7s were singing in two part harmony, sometimes three and that they were all eagerly participating and learning how to be a choir - it didn't tick the boxes.)
I got good results and on the whole was respected by SLT, but extra-curricular started to struggle, pupils had compulsory boosters after-school instead of coming to make music, as they have targets to meet.)

Everything has become about data and progressing on a linear line, and that data based on one day in KS2 in two subjects as become the most important thing. I'm now a peri and I have the freedom to teach how I want and in the way that best suits the pupils in front of me. However it isn't my fault if they don't practise and my targets are not related to progress based on English and Maths! I do miss being in the classroom, but I enjoy having a life more.

Older staff were appalled to discover that the quality of their work was suddenly a cause for concern, and pressure was applied to the teacher until their health was broken, and they left the school. Or allegations could be manufactured, minute incidents blown-up and made to fit into some part of a disciplinary process. Or the targeted teacher is worked into the ground until they break down, then are obliged to have their sickness record scrutinised
Yes.

Yes to your yes. What makes me really sad is that I've only been in teaching for 5 years and yet i have seen this happen so many times. So i imagine it is very very widespread. One case at my school was particularly awful - several of us sobbed through the leaving lunch as it was so heartbreaking to know that one of our colleagues had been treated so cruelly. I never looked at SLT quite the same after that.

I quit as a Maths HoD in July this year due to :

• micromanagement by idiot PE teacher SLT who expected me as HoD to pick on & bully my staff : I refused
• cynical, lazy cop-out deadwood SLT not even attempting to fulfil their roles of Pastoral & SEN my staff being denied pay progression for ridiculous reasons & this being blamed on 'cutbacks' and 'the Governors' : bull*
• continually being compared with English in terms of results, when the current DH obtained her promotion by cheating the previous year's English coursework
• the school's SIP identifying Maths as an area needing 'County Support' in the form of an advisor who was actually an RE specialist FFS
• finding myself speaking to my DH as if he was a Year 9 in detention for defiance because he told me to calm down
• wishing my own DC would be quiet because I just didn't have the energy for them

My darling MIL passed away in May & I was too preoccupied with Year 11 to properly support DH & DC. FIL had to go into residential care after a stroke & I realised life was too short for wasting on all the above crap

I will never wish another day of my life away again, counting down to the next holiday. I regret the years I spent, and wish I hadn't become a teacher. I turned down AHT progression 3 times because I'd have lasted 5 minutes with the level of hypocrisy involved.

When I left, I received 44 cards from my colleagues, students & their parents and broke my heart, because I really cared about them, and they knew it. I'm still bitter now.

The current system needs ripping up and starting again. One Headteacher & one Deputy per school, everyone else working 44 hours a fortnight for the kids, one Union, one exam board, one simplified national curriculum and one transparent HMI. Resources are not spent on the kids to their benefit, so some consistent industry-wide auditing practice would be a good start. Stop spending it on fiefdoms & employ as many TAs, SIAs & EAL specialists.

('You may say I'm a dreamer ... But I'm not the only one' cheers John)
AJP

I have been very moved by these accounts of teachers harassed and bullied out of the classroom. I'm sure they ring very true to older teachers like me who have discovered that their experience is now regarded as a liability rather than an asset.

The current system needs ripping up and starting again. One Headteacher & one Deputy per school, everyone else working 44 hours a fortnight for the kids, one Union, one exam board, one simplified national curriculum and one transparent HMI.

AJP I agree with everything you say. I would pour my life into achieving this. It is basically the opposite of the current Government's agenda.

I think we need to be more active as a professional body in achieving something better- but where do we start?

Great post, AmandaJanePisces. It does need ripping up and starting again. I often daydream about what it would be like to start up a country's education system totally from scratch, imagining how you'd design it. It sure as hell wouldn't look anything like what we've got now!

Excellent post, AJP. When they rip up the current system and start again, can we have a system based on truth, not lies, please.

I had a plan for a new education system, in 1981. I still think it would be better, and cheaper, than the system we have today.

I'm angry for the kids, their parents, all school staff up to HoD level but not above, taxpayers, employers & other stakeholders in education.

The p*ss has been ripped out of all of them for far too long.

I'm out but I'm still fragile because I cared so much, like you all.

I'm a SENCO, part of SLT. If I could find a way out of the job I would leave like a shot.

In my management time last week I spent hours detailing exactly what children with SEND did with their support hours each week. I listed why they needed it, who did it and what each activity cost. I then added it all to a pack of documents (many coming from the LA) to send back to the LA to tell them about the work being done. No children's work showing level of development or progress must be sent. All that is wanted is numbers. I didn't go into working with children with SEND to churn out numbers, I wanted to improve education for them. I can't do that now as my skills in the classroom are sidelined for my knowledge on making up information reports. And the cost of it all......!

When I do teach, I teach lessons approved by the academy trust or head of phase. I teach texts chosen by someone else or using scripts from the approved maths schemes. The timetable must be adhered to strictly- it is scrutinised and your activity at any given time checked against it.

All work marked using approved colour scheme, learning intentions written in approved Blooms taxonomy "shared language".

Oh.....my pay rise? I paid more in outgoing this month than I was paid extra- due to back pay apparently.

My heart bleeds Queen not

You took the dollar, if you don't like what you're not delivering & the SEN kids are losing out, step down and stop perpetuating the problem

If there's anything positive to take from this thread, it's: thank fuck it's not just me.

AJP of course I could step down or stop doing the paperwork- then all the class teachers could do their own provision mapping for children who, in several cases, receive almost 20 hrs a week in additional support. I'm sure my colleagues would adore doing the extra work each term that would create. I really dislike the whole paperwork obsessed culture we work in and I hope that my job causes as little extra needless paperwork for teachers as possible.

I don't like the way the accountability structure has led to this us and them situation with SLT - we used to work together.

I was talking about primary with supply teacher marking, MrsUltra not secondary. I only did a few regular schools and knew the teachers- I hated them to be left with unmarked work. I was able to cut it down a bit e.g. self mark in Maths.