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.

I'm going to guess that marsaday is on about £35,000. It's not easy to walk into another job on that starting salary. Childminders are expensive; every day re-training is a day with lost salary. It's a kind of trap.

My question would be who has left and managed to start on the salary on which they left.

It is quite spine-chilling Bobo. Most teachers just want to do a good job.

dementedma i am still doing it because it is hard to change jobs at a level which will still pay the mortgage. I have been teaching 10 years, so I earn 34k ish. It is hard to find a job which requires no experience of that particular job, and no specific qualification in it, which pays half as much.
I did supply for a bit, and I loved it. All the good bits with kids in the classroom and none of the crap to take home. But where I live all schools use agency for supply and they only pay £90 per day, which sounds great, until you consider that its only for 195 days assuming you get work every single teaching day of the school year, so annual salary of 17.5k, which won't pay the mortgage where I live. Also no sick pay, and can't pay into teacher's pension through agency work either.

God I was frighteningly correct!

Is it better in the private system? Could you switch to that?My mother spent over 35 years teaching in the state system and the last few years in a private boarding school. Despite her misgivings, she loved the latter. Said it was back to actually teaching,and not red tape.

The quantity of reporting that teachers on this thread describe is mind-boggling.

Marsaday, I agree it's worrying that teachers may have had creativity beaten out of them. But I don't think that senior management should solely take the blame. It's Govt initiatives, externally-set targets, SATs and Ofsted that are responsible. SLT channel this to the staff through fear of failing.

I agree with Hester - senior management don't invent the system requirements.

Apparently private is a bit better but I know from friends in those schools near here that that they prefer to appoint staff who were privately educated themselves and also oxbridge graduates if possible. I am neither.
Getting a new job is also challenging because i will be up against new teachers who are much cheaper - I don't just have to be the best on the day, I have to be 15k better.

I was part time, three days, so I earned £21.5k.
I now supply teach three full days a week (£110/day), and do two mornings in a primary school delivering an outreach programme.
This adds up to about £16k a year as obvs cannot work in holidays. I'm looking to do a bit of private tutoring around exam periods if there is demand locally (I'm not Maths/English).

I've cut back on a few things. My car is quite old and we'll probably holiday in the UK this year. We've got rid of Sky and I keep a close eye on the shopping budget.
However, my sanity has been restored. I am 100% happier. I can see it in myself. My shoulders are no longer hunched, my skin has cleared up, my house is tidy and I can sit and do homework with DD when we both get home at 4pm. Can't put a price on that.

...& you know what the other scary thing is?

I've moved to an international school overseas. It is better in every way.

But I have only the vaguest idea of how to make use of that freedom. I spent this afternoon (non-teaching) staring rather vacantly at a screen & footling about with an unnecessary spreadsheet.

I'm putting together my resources now (00.13 local time) for my year 11s, whom I will be teaching in less than 8 hours time, berating myself for not doing my planning this afternoon.

I'm so used to doing planning at weekends & at stupid o'clock, that half a term in, I'm still struggling to adjust to having an office & paid time to do it in.

It becomes the weather. You plan at 5am, sometimes because you've got up & sometimes because you've stayed up, & it is genuinely bewildering when someone says 'you do what? why? Stop doing that! That's stupid!'

Leccybill, what you say about the school getting rid of half the TAs really concerns me. One of the few improvements made in education since the 1980s has been the introduction of TAs. They can be worth their weight in gold. They often enable a lesson to actually continue, by managing disruptive behaviour and supporting those in need. I would despair and give up if they disappeared. (Two who left our school in July have not been replaced.)

DH is Deputy Head. He is at work by 7am every day, never home bfore 6/6.30pm and often after that, works until 10/10.30 pm plus at least 8 hours at weekends, never has a lunchbreak or a coffee break, regularly comes home not having been to the loo since he left the house in the morning and works at least half of every school holiday.
He teaches less than he did but the pressure is much more- it is just different pressure. The amount of time he spends on staffing issues is huge- and some are unbelieveable. Awkward parents, badly behaved children. School Improvement Plans. New policies. Making sure the school meets new government requirements. The achievement if every child seems to be the latest thing- every child has to be monitored. Staff training.
He teaches 8/25 lessons, all Y11 and Y13 and a subject with lots of marking and writing. He prepares all of his lessons and is rigorous about his marking and assessments- because he asks staff to be
He mentors Y11 students, runs two sports clubs, two revision sessions and does unpaid dinner duties - he even pays for the sandwich he eats walking around the lunch hall.

Please don't infer SLT do nothing.

His whole school responsibilities include:
Behaviour management
Safeguarding
Care guidance and support
Staff training
Attendance
Punctuality
Tutorial programme
PSHCE
Careers
Post-16
Y11 Raising Achievement
Line Management of Core subjects
Parental Engagement (!)
Students educated out of school at alternative provision

He works at least 70 hours a week.

To be fair, only 6 TAs left, the rest had their contracted shortened by hours and the others who were cut were office-based staff and technicians.
The only remaining HLTA is used for constant cover.

I totally agree that schools march upon the infantry of their TAs - worth their weight in gold, and sadly paid a pittance to deal with (=chase after) disengaged (to put it politely) children all day.

He is at work by 7am every day, never home bfore 6/6.30pm and often after that, works until 10/10.30 pm plus at least 8 hours at weekends, never has a lunchbreak or a coffee break, regularly comes home not having been to the loo since he left the house in the morning and works at least half of every school holiday
That's teaching for you. Its not just leadership. That's the normal life of a teacher.

Lulu if your DH is genuinely meant to do justice to that range of roles, I would be interested to know what the responsibilities of his fellow SLT colleagues are.

Having served as an HoD for 14 years, and a Staff Governor for 6 years, I know that the funding allocations and time expectations for the areas you have listed are far in excess of any one individual's job description.

Even if he succesfully delegates, his HT and/or colleagues staff are taking advantage of an undoubtedly dedicated man. With absolute respect, no individual can or should assume that range of key roles and expect to stay sane in today's socio-economic and litigious climate.

Colleagues and staff

I'm not a teacher, but would like to offer my support to those who are. I'm young enough to remember full sets of practice SATs every half term from age 7. So I can only imagine what teachers have had to deal with.

I wanted to agree with a few pp about 'average'. As many are above average are below average. It's so unfair on teachers.

Thank you to all the teachers on this thread, I couldn't do it x

Umm Lulu what else does anyone on your husbands SLT do? They can't all have lists that long of responsibilities.

Having worked in schools, industry, and for the government, schools often generate huge amounts of paperwork that takes a huge amount of effort just to tick a box. A lot of the time it doesn't actually do anything and will be given a cursory glance by whomever is responsible for ticking the box before being tucked away and never looked at.

I refuse to do things now, something that came my way was the "marketing plan", I wrote one to a high standard with SMART objectives, target market and demographics, strategies to reach them, and implemented it over the course of 2 years.

My lovely plan was looked at ONCE by the chair of govenors and the head. When they asked me to write an updated one this year, I gave them the executive summary of what I planned to do. One page, and left it at that, no one noticed.

Maybe Lulu's post is opening some of your eyes because, with a DH on his second Deputy Headship, I would say that is a fairly standard list of responsibilities for a pastoral Deputy.

My DH is academic Deputy and has an equally long list of responsibilities related to the academic performance of the school, management of the departments, curriculum and examinations. There is no crossover.

Those of you saying 'one person couldn't possibly be doing all that properly'.... well, yes, that's how they feel too.

Yy to over-worked, stressed-out SLT. Dh is a deputy head and is at the end of his tether. And I doubt that any of the other SLT members at his school are working less hard than him. They are bound by the government directives and expectations of parents and Ofsted just as much as the rest of the staff are. It's tempting to blame them but they are victims of the system too. And dh has so many late meetings.

I agree raven. When the doctor asked me a few years back 'So, what are your hobbies?' I just looked at him with a blank, uncomprehending gaze.
I couldn't think of a single thing I did for myself.
He'd get a very different response now.
My life is more like leccy's now, I work 4/5 days a week. Less money, but teaching was never about the money for me and when the joy and excitement went away, more money wouldn't have fixed it anyway.

It was never about money for me- I wanted time - time to have a life outside of work.
I considered becoming a TA but went for supply teaching because it paid better. Of course that does leave weeks where you have no chance of earning any money.
I was lucky to be able to do it and don't regret it.

When I have done full time my main regret was that even if I was physically there, and doing things with my family, mentally my mind was on work. It was impossible to 'switch off' in term time.

With supply teaching you work hard all day, but when you walk away you can 'switch off'.

Yup!
Can't take work home with me, and I turn down any offers that are longer that a fortnight.