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.

AmandaJanePisces

Who do schools outsource too?

We already know that treating schools like a business isn't going to work.

Look how much we have spent as a country on legal policy advisors to academy chains, and that ilk. Not education, mind, just the legal and accountancy fees and so on of changing the labels on schools.

£8.35 billion between 2010-2012, and rising

Amanda... Academy chains are even worse for demanding SLT who don't teach and have little experience of the new curriculum.

Whilst drawing down huge inflated salaries, and syphoning off money that could have been spent on the students education to pay their own businesses for "advising". Academies are an utterly awful way to run a school.

Your opinions are so ploarised from each other that you make little sense really. D- in presenting arguments.

www: Your use of hyperbole

EBI: You use Orwell's rules of writing especially question 1: What am I trying to say, and rule 2. Never use a long word when a short one will do.
Try to make sure that your arguments are coherently linked.

I work for an academy run by a chain. Our area advisor is rarely in school and doesn't seem to do very much. When he is in school, he seems to have very little idea of what is going on and what is needed. However, he has just had a book published about school leadership and no doubt draws a very generous salary. That makes me want to punch things. The staff at my school - including SLT, work very hard. This man's role is, as far as I can see, completely unnecessary.

OP, a visual approach to your question, to accompany the demonstration on this thread of the poor quality of 'leadership' in the teaching profession.

Amanda you are in no position to comment, your blatant vested interest in critiquing schools and their leadership has been outed and therefore your opinions do not count.

The OP's question has been answered many times, work load, expectations, teacher bashing and some internal issues are the reason. Not poor leadership in schools.

Poor leadership by the DfE yes, poor implementation of polcies, yes, cutting funding for schools and telling heads that they were to do "more with less" yes thats responsible for it all.

Correct, longtime. And evil and boffin

The reason that teachers are more respected in France is that they have not allowed their professional status to be diluted by taking on extra tasks outside teaching eg cleaning a classroom like a previous poster! No wonder kids and parents in this country don't respect state-school teachers when they allow themselves to be dogsbodies.
If the French unions had been as ineffectual as the British one, doubtless would be in the same situation. Really is shocking that unions are so preoccupied in their own internal politics and political agenda they have rolled over and accepted their members profession being devalued, and workload increased to ridiculous levels.

That is definitely one reason, yes.

Interesting discussion. I'm not really in a position to judge the merits of the argument about management of UK schools but I can tell you that this (by amanda) is complete bollocks:

"The Concierge of a French school walks the job, Iguana, checking attendance, punctuality, discipline, Carnet de Liaison etc. Issues are not dramas, if a student needs to be isolated for discipline / support, he's responsible for this. He probably draws €1200 pcm"

At my son's (deprived, comprehensive) school, attendance and discipline is dealt with variously by the head, by the class teachers, by the "educational adviser" (management, non-teaching role), by the "prefet de discipline" who is a seconded head of department who is responsible for the most seriously disruptive pupils, by the full-time administrator, and by the 3 "vie scolaire" staff who are the minimum-wage playground supervisors. That's in a school with fewer than 300 pupils!

MrsUltra - seriously, you are making yourself sound quite ignorant. The unions in this country have successfully fought to ensure that teachers do not do a lot of basic non-teaching activities. For example, photocopying, chasing absences, displays, collecting money. Schools need to, and do have systems in place to ensure that these rules are followed. Since I've been in the profession, there has been a great deal of admin stuff removed from my job - I no longer have to do certain things. Unfortunately, some teachers still work on the basis of "I'll just do it myself then..." But that is not the fault of the unions.

I "organise" quite a lot of trips, for example, as I teach drama. By "organise", I mean that I decide to do it. Letters are then written and sent out by admin staff and the students bring consent forms and money (where applicable) to the school finance office. I turn up on the day/evening and accompany the trip. No hassle, no extra work. If I need a display sorting, I tell one of the admin staff what needs to go up and it gets done. Sometimes I choose to do it myself - but that doesn't mean I'm a mug who has allowed my professionalism to be eroded.

True, Evil. But cover is coming back to teachers - academies can demand teachers do it. Some academies have two half hour "breaks" rather than a longer lunchtime, and can then demand teachers are on duty during the second "break" - they can set targets as having good display but have no staff available to do it. That kind of thing.

Ok, so Evil Twins, you have an easy gig. But many posters have complained about their workload. A person cleaned classroom. Another one dictated cover work while vomiting into a bucket. many poster complain about excessive marking. Clearly they are also ignorant of the reality and deluded to think they are overworked since you know better.

Who should be setting the cover work then? If we are concerned about workload then it can't be the ill teacher's colleagues.

Perhaps it should be the responsibility of the supply teacher who is being paid plenty and has a very low workload.

MrsUltra, far too people in teaching just implicitly follow instructions, the person vomiting into the bucket obviously hasn't seen the clause that states "where possible" for setting work. Far too many teachers don't know their rights where this is concerned. For example stuff that academies have tried to bring in which are against employment law ( not giving enough breaks but insisting that staff are there for 8 hours, and then stating that a PPA time is "lunch" etc)

Know your rights folks and you can't be walked over.

I don't have an easy gig, but I have been in the game long enough to know my rights and to have fought for them and to have taken industrial action. The government makes me angry but so do teachers who claim to have it worse than they really do. I work for an academy chain but we still use the burgandy book. I think most still do. Terms and conditions are there for our benefit and those who actively choose to ignore then do us all no favours. We've all written cover work when we feel like shit, I'm sure, and we've probably all agreed to do a cover lesson we know we shouldn't, but the problem with the "I work Til midnight every day because I have to triple Mark and analyse data" stuff is that actually, nobody needs to do that. Ofsted will say they don't ask for that, the government will say they don't ask for that. Head Teachers will say they don't ask for that and given that we're not all doing that, it does make people look like they're creating unnecessary work.

I set cover work when ill because I know if I don't, who will have to do it and they are even more stressed than me.

Yes Giraffe, when you are able, but if you are too ill to set cover you shouldnt force it. People can cope for a day or two..

It was I who wrote of having cleaned my classroom. It's not something I would dream of doing in the ordinary way, but what was I meant to do? The builders finished in my room at around 3pm on the day before the children were due back from their summer break. The furniture was all over the place, the surfaces filthy and I'd not been able to do any classroom preparation in the days leading up to the term start (owing to the afore-mentioned builders). There were no cleaners on site. Are you really suggesting that I should have left it all as it was? Of course, I made the position clear to the SMT, but I'm under no illusion that it wouldn't happen again one day.

Your stance, ultra, kinds of bears out our earlier points about supply staff who have clearly no idea of the full range of tasks that permanent members of staff end up doing. It's all very well swanning in and out and patting yourself on the back for having a good work-life balance and knowing it all after one year but some of us are clearly working in a parallel universe to you.

Oh evil twin totally agreed on the creating unecessary work, I have colleagues that do this all the time, they don't get any better results than those of us who do a little less.

I'm in at 8.00 and out by 6 and the only time I take anything home is the half terms when I've usually set some good assessment prior and can sort my marking easily during this time. I do eat my lunch then go back to work, but I'm gone at 6 and I don't work on an evening.

Oh and I find a quiet room in my frees and work through them, I don't spend them chatting whilst getting on with work as many of the up all night crowd are.

I work for an excellent SLT. They all teach when cover is needed, know our children inside out and deflect an awful lot of aggro and unnecessary work from the teachers so we can teach. I'm not alone. Not all leaders are ineffective or in it for the money. Frankly there's a lot I would do for money rather than take on the thankless task of a promotes post in a state school.

the full range of tasks that permanent members of staff end up doing
I am precisely aware of it. which is why I raised it, but Evil |Twins disagrees.

There is a difference between the tasks which permanent members of staff are expected/contracted to do and those they "end up" doing.

The fact that there is a difference is a problem. However, teachers don't get anywhere getting cross about it as OFSTED/the government/SLT will (quite rightly, unfortunately) point out that they are not compelling teachers to do these things.

Some teachers need to take control of their workloads - and good SLTs allow that to happen. There are teachers in my school who come in early and do piles of photocopying. They do not need to - in fact we are actively told not to do this, and the school employs a very efficient woman to do all of the reprographics. However, it involves getting yourself sorted a couple of days in advance and sending the stuff you need to her, otherwise she may not have time to do it. We have a whole-school focus on effective marking and feedback - this is to prevent people from tying themselves in knots about the triple marking/becoming your students' penpal nonsense.

On the other hand, I decided last term that I wanted to change what's on the blackboard paint on my classroom wall - I could have asked the caretaker to add it to his list of things to do and he would have got round to it, but I wanted it done right away, so I chose to do it myself. It would be unfair of me to complain about it as it was my decision. Same as it was my decision to spend the first day of half term running a rehearsal for the school play.

Some teachers need to take control. If SLTs actively prevent that, then the unions are not so powerless that they can't do something to help.

In a very small school I worked in I
cleaned loos
spent hours putting up displays at the weekend
ferried children around for sports events
slept on the classroom floor for a school sleepover
used my own money for rewards etc. etc.
Don't regret it because it benefited the kids but....

Feel like this thread is going round in circles a bit, although these issues are well worth debating.
In primary schools there are more SLT members than in the past: it used to be just Head and Deputy. (The job of Deputy was often considered to be the most demanding as they often had a class as well as management responsibilities. This may still be the case in smaller or rural schools.) The fact that SLT teams have grown does give primary teachers more of a career structure with promotion possibilities than before. (I guess secondary staff have always had more of this?) BUT they're not all sitting in offices doing no teaching and bureaucratic tasks. The ones I know work hard. Most still have a significant teaching load. I could list their roles but it'd be very long. In particular, monitoring plans/ books, observing lessons regularly and scrutinising assessment/ progress have been borne out of the requirement to prove to Ofsted that the school has a goal of constantly improving teaching and raising attainment. I know teachers find this monitoring stressful, and some of it seems like a lot of paperwork, but I believe it comes from external expectations. It's important that SLT find ways to do it constructively and in the least judgmental and most supportive way possible. (That is what Ofsted should be like by the way.) I hope one day we find ways of reducing the stress of the job at all levels, or schools will find teachers only last a few years, to be constantly replaced by inexperienced and supply staff. Which does nobody any good.