to think there is something seriously wrong with our education system..

[TwinkleToes101]

when teachers are leaving in droves?

Just recently reading about record numbers of newly trained teachers giving up within 5 years (that was me 14 years ago), then on MN today partners having depression/breakdowns and all the posters who teach knew the person in question was a teacher...what the F is going so badly wrong with teaching??

I thought my reasons for leaving were personal: too little me time, too much low-level classroom disruption. Other postgrads I know left as I did because of work load. But don't other professions have high workloads/stresses?

I'm in California, @luckybird07 - the California public school system comes with quite a reputation as one of the lowest ranked in the US but honestly even at its worst it is still better than what I know of from friends who teach / have taught in the UK. It is an under-resourced education system here but parents chip in a lot at the better schools with fundraising and even volunteering in class. There are also charter schools that have more freedom in how they teach and how teachers work.

It is just a more flexible system. From what I see, a lot of the teacher's job depends on the school district you work for. It's very localised. There is a school district near us that pays $40,000 more p.a. than the one we are in because it is a high income area with a special parcel tax that means their schools are better funded.

That kind of flexibility and choice makes teaching a more interesting profession here, I find. Most teachers I know here work from about 7:30 to 3/4pm, as you say, and still get their 8 week school break in the summer (although a lot use it to work in curriculum setting or tutoring to bump up their incomes) and 2 weeks at Christmas plus the Spring and Winter breaks of 1 week each. I always wanted to be a teacher but negative reports of burnout and stress and misery put me off. I never hear that from teaching friends here. They all admit it is a tough job that has intense spikes of work throughout the year but they still say it is rewarding and they love it, despite some of the downsides. Every job has downsides, after all!

As a parent, i’ve sent my child to a private primary school (also because we couldn’t get into a decent state school, so not entirely our own choice). the difference it significant though - 3 adults for 24 kids, music PE and languages are specialist teachers. The teachers actually have time andcressources (long days as well, 7:30 to 5:30, but also longer holidays than state schools). still a hard job, but doable (the only people leaving recently were retiring). They don’t do SATS etc either, so less admin there i would expect

I left after my first year. I had 42 children, 15 of whom we're send and a table three mornings. It was ridiculous to be told to do nc lessons about the finer points of grammar with half the class who couldn't read and didn't know the alphabet.

I didn't feel like a teacher I felt like a conduit for the government's warped ideas on a disfunctional education system. There was no scope for my professional judgement.

BUT one of the biggest reasons I left was because my colleagues simply would not be assertive and say no. On hours, ridiculous tasks, behavior, disrespect from superiors and parents. There were no demands they would refuse. No professional boundaries and consequently no hope of improved working conditions.

So I do think teachers should be prepared to be far more militant and get some backbone. What other profession would put up with those conditions? Why don't teachers sort out their working lives? It would do their mental health the power of good and reset a failing 'education' system.

looked at my first class of the day and just felt like walking out, as they could not even bring themselves to just stop talking and get on with quite frankly quite an enjoyable experiment

This is far too common and I often wonder if the parents realise or even care about the chatty unfocused disregard for the person trying to help them get good grades.

I am NOT a teacher. I neither qualified nor trained in UK. I am obscessed with science, technology, maths and IT ( in-return, my children teach me English and British attitudes !!!!). I love to share my obscession with young minds. I have been teaching core subjects except English to the STUDENTS APPEARING FOR GCSE in my spare time for free for a decade now. I choose whom I teach and whom I don't. This isn't based purely on my assessment as to who needs one to one help and who needs just a regular nudge. And now I get enough chocolates for Christmas and new year that I can live to without visiting supermarket for 6 months.

Believe me, there is nothing wrong with the system. It is the way system has been implemented and run.
a) I don't think courts should have any say in running an educational programme or institution
b) we should stop talking and start showing it in our work and thus results. And please don't bother talking about "high standards" "this will not be tolerated, that will not be tolerated" . It doesn't work. Sadly it has become routine when something goes wrong in any sector and not just public sector.
c) parents should start taking more responsibility for their child's behaviour, attitude and knowledge. Teacher is not there to toilet train the student.
d) A line has to be drawn to show what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to misbehaviour in the classroom.
e) there is no zero tolerance towards meddling with school policy like uniforms, holiday on term dates etc. It's either the school's way or no way.
f) teachers in UK have a LONG LONG way to go when it comes to becoming A inspirational icon for their students.

g) the least respected profession in this country is medics and teachers. You realise their value when you visit another country. Being from a third world country, even today I call some of my inspirational teachers to check on their health and wellbeing. I am very glad to tell you that my son, who is now a UK student, has also inculculated that gratitude towards teachers.

The expectation of all the "extras" is also really difficult to manage.
I work in a school, but only teach 6th form. I do lots of intervention and extra curricular lower down the school - but I only physically "teach" in lessons for 12 hours a week
This week we have had year 12 and 13 mocks. I have to mark the exams before the first day back in January (the last ones were yesterday)
The first week back in January - there are two A Level assessments in my subject. Final exams. I will have no time with my students before those exams, and because of the mocks, have had to shoe horn as much as possible into the last few lessons this term. So I will be spending lots of time emailing my 6th formers over the Christmas period to prepare them.
This is all fine. It's standard.
But add to that this week - Monday evening until 6 45 I had a meeting about some new system we are trialling.
Tuesday was a 6th form trip - got home at 11.30
Wednesday was a faculty meeting followed by a CPD session. Got home at 7.
Last night was a year 13 awards evening. That finished at 9
Today we finish at 3 30 but after school is the ONLY time I have with my department head to train to do the internal verification on BTEC. Which I need before I mark their papers over Christmas.

I'm not complaining about this as it's my bread and butter. But when I write it down, I realise that the additional expectations on top of the actual job are what's causing me, personally, to feel so run down and tired all the time.
And I only teach two year groups (I have other duties the rest of the working week so still work full time)

It's too much. It's all just too much

Yadnbu.
I'm a teacher in a school run by someone who is quite a maverick and just will not jump through pointless hoops (too long in the tooth) and the school is outstanding.
Despite this we are still unable to provide for SSN children and that causes a culture to emerge is almost gas lighting parents about their concerns that their child has SEN through denying it and squarely blaming all problems and barriers to learning on parenting ability.

I can't find the link now becuase my Google only ever shows US news but I do think MN can assert that no one repects teachers (possibly because the minority who don't can be so vocal on here) but there was a recent survey of 'respected professions' and teachers came in third. Not sure whether that means we are best of an unrespected bunch!

It is nice that there is a thread where no one has piled in to teacher bash! Phew!

From my perspective (secondary core subject 20 years plus) teaching is an entirely different job from 20 years ago because of
a) accountability and pressure
b) incompentent/ ostrich/bullying SLT
c) decline in behaviour as a mass ( I experience less extreme behaviour than I did 20 years ago but the behaviour of students en masse is far worse)
d) ideological battlegrounds from politicians and 'educationalists' which means one often can't develop one's own teaching style because there are always faddish approaches
e) for some, the detah of the text book means a huge preparation and planning burden
f) acres and acres of marking
g) ridiculous beliefs and practices around data
h) a clutch of very demanding and unpleasant parents
i) the belief that teachers shoudl solve all society's ills
j) the 'you can't shout at/ detain/ discipline/ exclude my child brigade has grown
k) a failure to tackle recruitment and retention
l) students themsleves beliveing teachers are in the job as a last resort
m) lack of decent non contact time
n) inadequate professional development
0) lack of kindness and compassion for other colleagues because we are too busy
p) an increasingly hierarchical and bitchy profession, sadly
q) relentless focus on exam results and the death of coursework
r) an anti intellectualism whihc is far more marked

I might get to z at this rate!

I’m not a teacher but I work in a school and deal with parents, a few are entitled arseholes and you can see where the disrespect comes from. I would never be rude to a teacher - I have two at secondary and some of their teachers have massively gone out of their way to help them succeed..
Unfortunately internal politics can be dreadful in schools too - I have seen staff pushed out of jobs in a supposed caring environment. It’s not good.,

think part of it is that teachers are expected to be all things - not just educators but counsellors, surrogate parents, politicians and customer service agents - some parents speak to them like they’re complaining to Waitrose about finding mould in their salad
Not even mould in their salad.
For some it's like 'I want to speak to the manager because this salad contains lettuce and everyone knows lettuce is a stupid thing to put in a salad... yes I know it's in a salad box to go but I want a freshly prepared salad with baby spinach leaves. I dont care if it's not on the menu, that's what I want and if you don't provide me with it them I will threaten to call head office and try to get you the sack'.
Or
Question- I was in Waitrose the other day and noticed that the packaging had been tampered with. I'm a little bit disappointed as the salmon quiche was the only one I wanted. This is the 3rd time I've seen something like this but the person I saw today wasn't in thay department so couldn't help. Would it be ok to let the shop know I think things are being damaged in one area?
Answer- OMG! I would be furious and absolutely fuming over that. How rude of the shop assistant too! Talk about passing the buck. It's not difficult to spend time sorting an issue out. They should have called the supplier and arranged for a delivery that evening for you thay you could collect at a convenient time and also given you a £50 voucher as compensation for your troubles. Don't waste your time talking to the store manager as they clearly don't do their job. Call head office directly and say you want to put a formal complaint in and if nobody responds theb pull up a list of shareholders and write to each of them. It's disgusting.'

I should say the vast majority of parents are so awesome and supportive.

s) lack of trust in teacher's professional judgment , because the data/ the leader says otherwise
t) the increasingly engrained belief that all sow's ears can (and must) be turned into silk purses
u) target setting culture

Retired teacher here.

You only have to read some posts on MN from parents to understand why teachers are pissed off. We are expected to teach things that are the responsibility of the parent. We are expected to think their child is more important than the other 30 odd and concentrate on their needs.

The government insists on inclusion yet doesn't want to pay for it. This leaves teachers struggling to manage SENs alongside trying to teach the national curriculum. With maybe a TA a few times a week.

Violent children cannot be excluded automatically. It used to be that the head could immediately exclude a child who was violent. Now they can't. Teachers used to be able to refuse to teach young thugs who had threatened them, now they can't. It's time heads started bringing the police in to deal with the violence if they can't.

So glad I'm out of it.

Parents who feel we are their employees and so won’t back us up or who nitpick over every tiny issue.
I absolutely do not excuse this behaviour, but I do sometimes feel frustrated as a - what would be the appropriate word here - "service user". The school gets £5K per child from my taxes, that is £150K for your average reception class (lunches, trips, uniform are all on top obviously). I'd be surprised if the teacher and the TA are on £75K combined. And then I get letters every week asking for contribution to this, contribution to that, bring your own craft materials as we ran out, bring your own books, come and help us out with reading to the children as we are understaffed etc etc., followed by a termly letter from the head complaining about money and asking for donations.
I do not mind additional contributions at all, but the disconnect between the funding and what I see delivered in practice does raise questions. It also surprises me that there are no tax discounts in the UK for taking the child out of the state system into private education. All other developed countries I had lived in had provisions like this - but I understand this to be a weirdly sensitive political issue here.

PS. I now run a dance/drama group in the community. If the kids misbehave they get one warning and then they are out. The parents can argue as much as they like It's my group and I make the rules.

It's time we had that attitude in schools again. Parents have to accept responsibility for their children's behaviour.

Parent here. I really, really feel for the teachers. For example, there's a boy in my son's class (they're in Y1, so 5/6), he throws chairs, has "punched a teacher" (so the mother casually said), shoved kids, rammed his finger into my sons mouth etc. He's only 6, and, out of the classroom, actually a kind hearted little boy. But there are so many children to just one teacher that he just cannot cope with the lack of 1 on 1 attention he sometimes gets from his mum, who seems so unconcerned/blase about his behaviour that the teachers stand no chance in dealing with him because they're not even allowed to touch him.
My own son, to my shame, can be a disruption - he hates school, finds it utterly boring, he gets homework every night with end of week spelling test homework every night on top of that PLUS weekend assignment homework, so he sees school as this horrible thing he's forced to do and he rebels in class. It's not the teachers fault at all - we are desperately trying to deal with this behaviour, and they are doing their best, but there's only so much you can do when you've got a room full of children you've also got to teach, parents who don't take it seriously enough, etc. I don't blame them for quitting.

Behaviour. It is much worse than when I started over a decade ago and I started in a school which a much worse catchment. Children are very entitled and demanding, and if they don't get their own way they react instantly. They also need so much more stimulation as their attention spans are so short. Language is awful because swearing is apparently accepted at home, and often used against me when I communicate home.

Absolutely agree. I had a pupil say to me this week 'Don't forget Miss, I'm the one with the power, my mum says so'. This from a 12 year old who had just run into the classroom and upended the table of one of the other children and throwing another's equipment across the room. SLT came to remove her on my request, but brought her back after 10 minutes after a 'restorative chat'. Child then lay on the floor before spitting on my desk as she left the classroom at the end of the lesson.

Most people really would not believe some of the behaviour in most schools. Mine is supposed to be a 'nice ' school in a reasonably affluent area. I feel totally done now.

I'm just a parent but really feel for teachers. They are pulled apart in all directions, overworked, expected the impossible.

My DS some how came up with expected targets of 9 in every single gcse subjects. He is quite clever but certainly not that clever. It's a lot of algorithm rubbish but because the computer says so, teachers are expected to get him to that level because the school wor5hiness will be rated on how they support pupils to progress to their targets.

This resulted in them putting a lot of pressure on mlmy DS. Pressure works well with some pupils but with others like him, brings the worse in them. Thankfully, this was discussed at parents evenings and all his teachers acknowledge the detrimental effect on him so have turned around to be more supportive of him doing his best which is working but not to the point of him getting all 9s. He will do well within ilhis capabilities, hell be happy, I'll be happy, so will his teachers, yet they will be made accountable for him not reaching all 9s. What an utter unproductive system for everyone.

I realise this is quite an eye-rolling meme, but it sums it up nicely (if you add SLT alongside the parents!)

I think we just have a weird, contradictory and generally messed-up attitude to education [at this time/in this country/something??]. So many MN threads about schools and there are strongly-felt posts furiously opposing each other.

Private education? Work of the devil, should be banned, supposedly worse outcomes than state schools, produces entitled brats, and all children compelled into state schools which are great.

State schools? Absolutely terrible for pupils and staff, underfunded and overtargetted, even the outstanding-rated schools are just smoke and mirrors, produces entitled brats with box-ticked shallow knowledge.

Buying a house in catchment? Work of the devil, pricing out poorer families, and all state schools should be considered equally great.

Not being concerned about catchment? How can any parent not worry about peer group pressure and aspirations!

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Even down to minutiae like:

Parents carrying their school bags and clustering in cloakrooms with children? Work of the devil, mollycoddling and shouldn't be allowed by teachers, it's part of education for children to be taught how to hang their own coats.

Teachers not allowing parents to cluster in cloakrooms with children messing around with bags and coats? Work of the devil, how dare they busybody with people's parenting when they should think only of teaching in the classroom.

I spend all my free time meant for planning and lunch hours dealing with inappropriate behaviour, teen pregnancy, fallings out, self harm, anxiety, gender issues, social media bullying.... literally EVERY day someone. I plan in the car on the way in, in the toilet, in my head while chatting to friends.

Then on inset which would be great to have to plan, sort resources etc, we get sent on some bullshit training course pegged as the latest best thing in teaching where we watch some twatty American on YouTube tell us their new idea which is essentially the same idea fancied up with a trademarked new name. All resources need to be changed to encorporate this new bullshit which will take weeks to do, that nobody has even close to.

This is the last day of term so I will have to transfer targets from one piece of paper to another, which will take the whole lunch and my one free hour. When asked why can’t i just attach form a to form b as the outcome is the same was told ‘that’s just not how its done’

Can’t remember when the last issue I had was to do with learning.

Having worked in schools and with teachers I'd say the biggest problem is the attitude of some parents. Their children misbehave, disrespectful, abusive etc and the parent gets angry with the school or teacher!

It is totally demoralizing as a teacher to be expected to correct bad behaviour of children that parents should be teaching.

We have an amazing head who has built a supportive leadership team around her. She’s truly inspiring. But looks so utterly exhausted- she tries to shield us from the worse of the crap thrown at us.

But what we need is an inspection system and government who look at the well being of students and staff as a primary focus. Consider the gaps which need to be addressed, particularly for the more deprived students and support humane, realistic ways to overcome them. A system which values a whole school ethos of loving support and joyful learning, a system which emulates the very values good families give their children (and so many do from all backgrounds).

But it should always remember that the staff - all the staff - are part of that wider school family and just as entitled to care and support. We are their teachers. We are what they have so they should nurture and support us to be the best teachers we can. Not beat us with big metaphorical sticks.

I did 15 years in the UK, then hopped on a plane to teach in an international school in the ME a few years ago.

I now earn over 40k tax free, plus a rent free 4 bedroom villa comes with the job, so no mortgage/rent to pay.

I teach 66% timetable - I very, very seldom need to take work home - & moan about my biggest class (of nice biddable ks3 top set kids) having 20 students.

Who are we recruiting? British teachers.

Who arrive like Black Beauty when he got a week off from pulling a cab & was turned out in a nice field full of flowers...you can watch people getting younger!

It's not perfect - stroppy entitled kids & parents who think you can fix everything are everywhere - but you'd have to put me on a plane at gunpoint before I took another teaching job in the UK.

We’ve lost 7 members of staff this term alone from DD’s school. No announcement of new staff so I’ve no idea if they will be replaced.

There are no staff out there so we are hiring teachers who wouldn't get a job a few years ago... the dregs.. and that then has a knock on effect with results, behaviour, morale as they are awful