To think a lot of people are jealous of teachers' holidays but...

[Pengggwn]

...too bitter about it to admit that they wouldn't be teachers themselves?

Just that really.

I have seen so many comments and threads aimed at dissecting teachers' pay and conditions to a forensic level, people complaining that teachers are available over the summer to answer their queries, people arguing that teachers should be working anyway or claim to be working even when they're not (I'm not, at least not for the next month).

And yet, we are in the middle of a teacher recruitment and retention crisis. We can't recruit and keep well-qualified teachers.

Where are all the volunteers??

SLT all in tomorrow along with heads of departments. Everyone in Tuesday as curriculum planning. Weds most of us in as PAG training. All things that can not be done while we are also teaching students. Thursday I'll mark year 10 and 8 topic tests. Friday I'll plan first few weeks if term. Usual week

I’ve left teaching this year. I have a much lower paid job, much less holidays but I am so much happier.

Here’s why I left:

Awful Parents

Lack of funding meant lack of support/TAs meant trying to deliver the sort of lessons I wanted to was nearly impossible (roll up anyone who can have 30 6 yr old children successfully doing a practical DT lesson with the bare minimum of resources and one adult in the room)

Total and utter boredom of teaching the same thing again and again (partly that was because of the role I was in)

The emotional toll of dealing with abused/neglected children (all teachers I know do everything they can, above and beyond, to help and support these children)

The relentless slating of teachers on places like MN

The government tests on which we were not consulted and had no choice about implementing even if we fundamentally thought they were the wrong thing to be doing. Same applies to the constant shifting of goals and told to do more, more, more with no training, no funding and no extra pay

No career progression unless you go into management and therefore teach LESS

What I did like:

Children
Teaching (not the same old stuff!)
The pay - which was ok ish
Story time
The holidays (mostly but not exclusively, I actually found the relentless up and down of term time stress which builds towards the end of each term, the joy/calm of holiday and then the stress of it all starting again, very hard, that is a personal issue though!)

I only know a very small handful of ‘older’ (50yrs +) primary school teachers. People just don’t generally last that long.

Anyway, long rambly post but quite cathartic.

In what other profession are people leaving in the numbers they are leaving teaching? If that doesn't prove there is something desperately wrong then I don't know what will. I don't know any other profession where everyone is so quick to tell them how easy they have it. If a doctor tells you they work x hours a day or their job is stressful etc it is accepted by if a teacher says it they are "moaning" and disbelieved. That is the difference.

Oh and the reason most teachers are "moaning" is because they know how damaging the current climate is to the children. But no it couldn't possibly be that- it must all come from a selfish desire to work 9-3 and have long holidays doing nothing. All teachers want is a bit of respect and to be able to get on with the job they trained to do. I don't see why that is too much to ask. We all agree parenting is damn hard so why it is so hard to realise how difficult managing 30 different personalities and abilities day in day out is I do not know. Yet some people still refuse to accept that.

In what other profession are people leaving in the numbers they are leaving teaching?

Nursing, medicine...

www.theengineer.co.uk/stem-recruitment-crisis-costs-uk-1-5billion/

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/23/nhs-england-recruitment-crisis-nursing-vacancies Any more?

I think this thread just exemplifies what a lot of people have said. I think most of my dc teachers are fantastic, and I tell them so.

I still think that my friends who teach are convinced that no one has it harder than them. That seems to be the culture of teaching.

I think a lot of people assume things about many professions, not just teaching. I work in the NGO sector and people see me traveling a lot. I do travel a lot, but to Third World countries to very rural area’s and I don’t have the luxury of all of the nice things ex pats house. It’s also my own organization, so I do everything. I’m very supported by others because of my special needs, but I’m certainly not going by the beach. People will ask me what do I do for work? This summer Summer, we did the first ever inclusivity training for teachers at mainstream schools. One week after that, I attended a dentistry conference, five days after that I took my Greek language exam to be able to study in Greece. Now I am studying in Greece full-time and also working. And it’s the same thing with Greece, all of my classes are in Greek, and people think I’m on holiday.

Very similar thing happens with people who work in hospitality in nice places. A lot of people assume it’s a very cushy job and they’re at the beach. And there are plenty of other professions where people assume wrongly about how things are.

In Greece, I was excepted to the special education university, so I am training to become a special education teacher. Yes, all of the classes are in Greek, it’s not easy. Teaching is not easy, but I really want to make a difference to children with special needs. I already have been working in this area for 12 years now, and even in my current work, I need brakes. The work I do isn’t easy. Teachers deserve the time off and higher pay.

There are more teachers leaving than any other profession. That is a fact. That includes nurses. Also Brexit and immigration policy is a driver in many shortages in professions whereas it is not in teaching. In teaching the crisis is purely driven by workload and conditions. It has also been an issue for far longer. That is not to belittle the struggle of nurses and any staff in the NHS as the way they are being treated is a disgrace and they are having to work in an intolerable situation. I am sure numbers of nurses leaving will continue to grow as the government continues on hell bent to destroy the NHS. I disagree that all teachers think they have it worse than other jobs. There are many jobs where people work exceptionally hard and long hours. The difference being that they don't have people constantly telling them they don't or arguing about what their job must be like. It is that that most teachers get fed up of. It's not a race to the bottom and all our public services deserve better. The police, for example, do an amazing job in an impossible climate. If everyone is "moaning"- it is because the job has actually become untenable. Look up the statistics for how many would leave if they could- it's actually shocking. Teachers are not saying they have it harder than everyone- they are just saying things are awful and children are suffering and as parents we should be listening and fighting against the absolute destruction of the Education system before it is too late.

I don't even have the motivation to correct most of the shit assumptions on here. However the biggest bug bear is holidsy entitlement.

I am contracted to work 195 days a year. I get 40 days paid holiday entitlement a year. That leaves 130 days I am not paid for. 104 of those days are weekends which still leaves 26 days unpaid. That's over 5 weeks a year unpaid. My salary is divided to ensure I am paid an equal amount each month regardless of whether it is unpaid leave, a working day or paid leave.
Yes teachers get more days off but there actual holiday leave is possibly only 15 days more than the UK average.

Teacher salaries have also decreased in real terms over the last decade.

If you're still struggling to understand the struggles of teachers, the crap hours and working conditions please look at the EIS pay campaign.
Many teachers in Scotland are considering strike action for the first time in a long time. That says something.

LyndaLaHughes no it isn’t a fact and you saying it is doesn’t make it so.

And for the hard of bloody thinking, the nursing profession was filled by overseas recruitment because so many British nurses left due to awful conditions. . This thread is proving exactly what I was saying FFS.

My DSis is a teacher (secondary) and I wouldn't do that job for all the tea in China. Kudos to anyone who does it.

I neither particularly envy the holidays teachers get off or the job, and ultimately at this stage in the game anyone who goes into it surely knows the workload and salary. They do deserve higher pay and the workload appears to be obscene and i don't doubt this however it is not the only job at all where people are working hard or long hours on a low wage. I certainly would not think, or ever say to a teacher that they have it easy or the holiday is in some way a bit jammy of them. Anyone who is overworked and underpaid has my sympathy. I feel very sorry for all the teachers here who are expressing that IRL they are getting comments endlessly.

With that said i have often said to my best friend who is a teacher (primary , year 3) about how hard she works and this topic of conversation and she is adamant that her job is pretty easy and tells everyone she speaks to the diatribe about it is basically hyperbole. She claims never to work on a weekend or much during holidays other than the odd lesson plan or during report season. I can't verify if it's 100% true but she certainly is free most evenings and is quite social or at the gym or sports clubs or away on a weekend. The only thing i've ever heard her moan about are other teachers and her headteacher. Am starting to wonder whether she has massively lucked out, as it is her first teaching role and she is a few years in at the same school.

My only other immediate friend who teaches (again, primary) spent most of last summer putting up on facebook posts such as " who wouldn't want to teach when you get six weeks off in the summer every year, great job great perk where else would you get that". I suspect my friends are either the exception (unlikely) or part of the gripe so many of you seem to have here- they really do mention how easy it is reliably at every dinner party or meetup we have!

I feel like i'm going to need to reiterate that that doesn't really form any part of my opinion on teaching which i still think sounds stressful and awful. Indeed, i wanted to teach myself for several years before realising what the job was now like!

And no, I don't think teacher's have it hard compared to some professions. However we are now making our opinions heard. If other professions decided to do the same I'd support them. Although a lot of people don't seem to think that way about teachers.

sing data from a quarter of the UK’s schools, analysts for education recruitment service Eteach said there will be 13,969 teacher vacancies at the start of the school year – almost 24 per cent, up from 11,275 in September 2015

There are 40 000 un filled nursing vacancies.

And if a nurse complained they'd have your support, anyone bar the teachers.

Yanbu...have just left the profession.

I don't think July and August are good enough reasons for putting up with hell for the rest of the time.

sailorcherries I disagree, loads of nurse bashing on here and I don’t think any profession is above criticism. You don’t see the continual moaning threads like this with long winded stories of how it is so much harder than any other profession.
Honestly it’s in the culture, I don’t get it. Leave if it’s so awful, it’s not the hardest job in the world and it’s pretty insulting to people who are doing absolute drudgery for minimum wage and often a second job in the evening to say it is.
I socialise and go on holiday with teachers, there is no way they are working 90% of the summer holidays.

Without the moaning, state your case, drop the exaggeration and I think there would be a lot more support.
It gets people’s backs up to claim that no one else has it harder.

We state our case and we get accused of moaning.
We tell the facts and we get accused of exaggeration.

Many Scottish teachers have started to speak out about conditions - unsuitable curriculum, unobtainable targets, too little support, lack of funding, lack of resources, not enough hours to do the job, unmanageable workload expectancy. They are doing this anonymously because others who did not remain anonymous have been disciplined by their local authority. They are actually given warnings and placed on measures because they have dared critique the way things are being run.
We can't win either way.

If our contracts were altered to acknowledge the workload, if funding was not cut and our pay was reflective of the rise in the cost of living and hours worked there wouldn't be half as much 'moaning'.

Each week I work at least 20 hours over my contracted hours because I cannot do my job in the time given. Even if you don't include my 'holidays' that's an additional 780 hours unpaid work in my working year, at 20 hours a week for 39 weeks. That's the equivalent of over £13000 in overtime that I'm not paid for. That's more than 1/3 of my current salary. I'm sure I'm entitled to moan about that.

Shitland pony- approximately 29,000 nurses left versus over 50,000 teachers. So please don't tell me that more teachers than nurses are leaving is not a fact. I'm not disputing the fact that nurses are leaving in their droves too and rightly so. I was stating that teaching is the profession with the highest number of leavers. Which it is. As for the nurse bashing- who on earth is bashing nurses? Nurses do a tremendous, underpaid and often thankless job but do not come in for the level of criticism that teachers do. Certainly not in my experience. I have the utmost respect for nurses. How anyone does it in the current climate I do not know. If you are a nurse yourself then surely you of all people should understand what it is like to be in a job where you are belittled and undermined at every turn, not trusted as a professional and subject to constant changes and decisions made by people who have no idea what it means to actually do the job. My relatives and friends who work in the NHS all talk about how crap things are and no one argues or questions that in the same way people do when teachers do. That's the frustration.

Christ what utter self inflated pompous rubbish.usual martyred no one has it as hard as teachers
People don’t routinely volunteer in many public sector jobs and that’s ok. But hey I don’t rock up to a tech company offering to volunteer
Not wanting to pursue a teaching career isn’t bitter,it’s simply having a clear idea what’d suit what wouldn’t

LyndaLaHughes your stats are wrong- I have no idea where you have created them
from. What are your sources- I quoted mine.

nurse bashing- who on earth is bashing nurses? Nurses do a tremendous, underpaid and often thankless job but do not come in for the level of criticism that teachers do. Certainly not in my

😴 same old, same old.