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?

Some children have already decided that they won't engage in the 'dull' stuff

But nowadays for children who are not into academic lessons it is all dull stuff. 5 years of being bored. Not one lesson that engages them.
Schools now teach to university and office work anything else doesn’t exist.

You only have to look at the language used when describing what year 12 and 13 pupils can wear.

Ds would have loved to engage in the lessons but failiures in primary meant he spent every day staring at a board with words he couldn’t read on them trying to guess the subject matter and every evening painstakingly tracing out words that made up the answers to the comprehension questions that he was given for homework. Which he had to do because it was the NC and if he didn’t do the homework then he lost his play time and spent the day staring at a blank piece of paper and a story and questions he couldn’t read.

Ds is not the only child this has happened to but from being a bright and happy child who loved going to school he became very depressed and school was made the place he didn’t want to be.

Teachers should teach. It is in the name but teaching the NC to test isn’t going to engage any child who can’t read or write or just doesn’t like writing and would much and would prefer to be anywhere else but stuck in s classroom.

I know 2 brothers who hated school and academics but the only reason they went to school and were no bother was because for an hour or 2 everyday they got to do metal work or carpentry or diy skills or football.

Both left school and pursued trades and now both have successful businesses.

Now there would be no reason for them to turn up. They wouldn’t get English and Maths GCSE so wouldn’t be able to qualify in their respective trades.

The outcome would have been very different.

It is fine to engage in the dull stuff if there is something interesting at some point in the day and behaviour is kept in check because otherwise there is a threat they might lose the interesting lesson.

But to plonk a child down and say for the next 5 years you are going to learn just dull and irrelevant stuff then you would expect what we have

lets do so but do you also want to bring back special schools, borstal, expulsions on just the say of the head teacher etc. and also see parents that completely trusted teachers to the extent of hitting their children

Special schools definitely.

I would have put Ds in one if there had been one available to help him.
Dd too as she has her own problems.

Friend was put in one but didn’t like it as it was boarding so left. She now regrets her decision and wishes her parents hadn’t been so easy going.

Schools were not an SN free zone but these things were managed by another teacher and helper who would teach in a different classroom for those children who were disruptive in class.
Yes I used to get the cane on a virtually daily basis for not eating my school dinner so could have done away with that

Whilst I know there is no evidence that we left predominantly literate but I didn’t know anyone who got to secondary school unable to read or write.

Now I can reel off several names of children I know who at 11 years old couldn’t read.

These are children of middle class families who have spent the time in the evening doing the comprehension or essay writing then tracing over the letters then getting their children to go over the tracing with a pencil not spending the hours helping their child to read

if he didn’t do the homework then he lost his play time and spent the day staring at a blank piece of paper and a story and questions he couldn’t read.

I used to work with students who had been excluded from school - many had undiagnosed SEN. Once assessed, one 15 year old boy had an above average cognitive ability, but a reading age of 9 years. He had no extra support in school and was obviously unable to access much of the secondary curriculum. He relieved his boredom and hid his embarrassment by being disruptive in lesson. Working with him one to one on appropriately levelled material, he was engaged and interested. It was all too little too late . He should have received proper intervention at primary school and it was completely unrealistic to expect his secondary school teachers to support him adequately without help and intervention.

Special schools are the bomb, they are awsome! My dd 11 who has ASD, learning difficulties and high anxiety is thriving socially, academically and is so much calmer in her special school. There are no tests, no fitting square pegs into round holes, teachers teach to inspire not to test. Why would I send her to the local mainstream secondary school, which is over 2 thousand students, where she will not receive the help that she needs, and may be a target for bullies, and will feel so overwhelmed and out of her depth.

We have applied for a SS for ds 6 who has neurodevelopmental difficulties, resulting in learning difficulties, and social communication problems. The special school we chose, is a government one, but looks like a private one, with the amount of resources and facilities they have. The teachers seem genuinly happy, and it is a fantastic neurturing environment.

So don't diss special schools, they are great.

BoneyBackJefferson definitely special schools. DH taught in a mainstream school with a high percentage of SEN kids and kids with severe physical and mental disabilities. He loved teaching them, but felt that due to the pressure to bring the other kids on, he couldn't devote time and energy to them. He felt their presence was for social inclusion benefits of the non-SEN kids and not the educational benefit of any of the kids.

Our school have lost 4 teachers this week!

Ds at school in year 3 scored 0 in his end of year tests.

I HE him and 1 year later I was teaching him GCSE Maths.

He just couldn’t read the questions.

English and any academic subject (which was all of them that you had to write an essay about) he trailed in completely bottom of the class.

English exams were mostly under 10%, under 5% in a lot of cases.

Ds is now at college, moved up a year doing level 2 of a trade so a lot of students are nearly 2 years older than him and for the first time he is actually topping the class.

97.5% average mark in all his assessments and tests.

Yet if he doesn’t pass his English GCSE in June next year it will all stop.

No English +Maths GCSE=No apprenticeship

Yet if he went to another country he could get his qualification without having to have the English GCSE and come back and actually work here yet if he stays here he can’t qualify because of 1 irrelevant exam.

That is really awful Oliver, than they are being failed by this ridged inflexibility. Maths GCSE should be about life Maths not about stuff that bares no relation to real life, unless you pursue A level Maths, and degree.

Another Mum of kids with SEN who would bring back special schools as a choice for those with milder needs like a shot.

My child has been massively failed for a decade by a system which pushed round pegs into square holes.

There are still special schools, they haven't been eradicated . I think more children with even milder SN are being referred to special schools, because the education system cannot help them. My ds 6 his special needs are mostly academic, he is 2 years behind and still on pink books, he cannot write properly. The rest, he is like an NT child. But he was approved by the special schools board in our LA and we made our choice of special school which we are waiting to hear about. The school we picked, though is a special school, it is in between a mainstream and a special school. Like a mainstream, but without all the tests and strict NC targets. There are 3 different streams (sensory-for those not able to access a NC, structured-which provides both academic and sensory learning, and scaffolded-for more able students, which provides full access to the NC in a modified way, tailored to each child.

don't other professions have high workloads/stresses?

My DH has a heavy workload and lots of stress.

BUT:
- He earns treble what I earned as a teacher
- He feels respected, valued and important
- He has the resources and budget he needs to do his job effectively
- He can take a coffee break and have a wee whenever he wants
- He works with adult colleagues (not like a teacher who is isolated as the only adult in a room of kids with nobody to talk to)
- He works with people who are interested and enthusiastic, if someone doesn’t engage they get the boot
- If anyone assaults or verbally abuses him they will be disciplined and possibly fired
- If anyone refuses to do what he tells them they will be disciplined and possibly fired
- He tells people what to do but isn’t expected to hover over them supervising and forcing them to work against their will
- If someone else fails to perform they will be held personally accountable, DH will not be blamed for their lack of work
- He is trusted to do his job properly and isn’t inspected or asked to provide evidence that he’s doing what he’s supposed to

Best post in a long while regarding the amount of negative teacher threads on MN. Thank you.

PGCE used to be rigorous and you had to be Master's level. Then they started to make the course provider accountable for the number of satisfactory, good and outstanding passes from the PGCE. So the number of people suddenly graduating the PGCE with outstanding increased. References were often very trite and generic, so the school can't tell what the candidate is really like
I know of situations where the placement school has gone down the formal competency route to say 'we do not in good faith believe this person is competent to teach' and the training providers have turned round and said 'yes but 7 weeks ago they did a nice starter and that shows they can hit the standard some of the time' and those trainees passed the course.

What normally happens is they don't get a job, end up on supply or doing long term cover in a school that struggles to get even average quality staff (and so those kids that need the best staff continue to get taught by poor teachers).

What does SLT mean? Who are they and what do they do? They sound like the Gestapo.

Senior Leadership Team

silvercuckoo The other £75,000 has to cover heating, lighting, paper, glue, reading books, writing books, pens, pencils coloured pens and pencils, rulers, musical instruments, art supplies, pe supplies, science or technology supplies, SSA salaries (fist £10,000 per SEN child has to be funded by the school), site team salaries, cleaning stuffs, cleaners salaries, admin staff salaries, Headteacher salaries, TLRs, costs of CPD courses, health and safety, first aid supplies, payments to Local Authority/MAT central resources, supply teacher costs, attendance staff salaries, repairs and maintenance of buildings and grounds, carpets, fire alarm systems etc.
I agree. I am pretty sure it does not cost £75K to maintain a shed that is used as a reception classroom in our primary school, with all the overheads.
Let me put it this way - a local private pre-prep charges £12K a year, does not get any extra funding, and is able to maintain immaculate grounds and classrooms, classes of 10 students, all the study materials and teaching aids are new and amazing. Their budget for the same reception class (but for 10 kids compared to 30 in the same space) is £120K, and I am sure their fixed costs are the same, if not higher, as for the state primary. Must be magic, or the state primary buying some super expensive special glue.

Poor parenting has been mentioned a few times: kids living at multiple addresses, attachment issues. In these situations, kids attach to peers, hence the very poor interpersonal relationships between students. We all know how cruel kids can be (think Lord of the Flies). Without significant adult figures to bond with, kids turn to each other. Extremely unhealthy behaviour patterns and MH as a result.

Other problems raised here:

• Policy of SEN inclusion good in theory but tack on austerity leading to lack of adequate support staffing levels, and the result is an Eton mess (without the Eton!)

• haemorrhaging of teachers over the last 15 years is now feeding into the quality of those moving into SLT posts (shit rises)

God. I'll never, never go back to mainstream FT classroom teaching. And I worry A LOT about my kids.

Enioneilse

I am also CA and I agree with what your friends say. It is still a demanding job but nothing like as hard as it was in the UK.It is very unfair on the UK teachers that this is how it has become. Teachers in my district can go up to about the equivalent of almost 75K after ten years plus of teaching- no other responsibilities. I rarely work weekends and I just get so much more freedom over choices I make in the classroom. The pension is also amazing-not sure if you have looked into that side but teachers who put 40 years in get something like 96% of their final salary for the rest of their lives. This does make it harder to find jobs in some parts of CA because people tend to stay teachers here.
The intrinsic stresses of the job are still there but it far more sustainable here. I feel like even if we wanted to return to the UK, I cannot face teaching there again nor putting our kids into that breaking system.

silvercuckoo There is is often a top heavy managment structure in schools - many of whom have little or no contact time with students. In addition, implementing the latest initiative is often expensive, particularly when it is likely to be ousted for a new initiative very quickly. Consultants to advise on the new inititatives, which are often without any evidence base, (remember Brain Gym anyone?) are also expensive.

the state primary buying some super expensive special glue.

Probably - some of the contracts negotiated with suppliers are laughable.

However, I do not believe you can apply a business model to education. Part of what is going wrong with education is that children have become units of data, rather than individuals with their own quirks, strengths and weaknesses. The powers that be only place value on the elements of education that can be quantified and measured; hence, teaching to the test.

There are plenty who scape through teacher training. We used to regularly fail students as they weren't up to standard... then the uni would move them on. I have come across several who should never have passed...

Poor parenting has been mentioned a few times: kids living at multiple addresses, attachment issues

But we have for example dyslexic children of perfectly good parents being failed.

They put their dc into school for 6/7 hours per day they have to do inappropriate homework and as a parent with a ft business/job we come home and have to spend 2 hours every night doing homework so our children don’t lose their playtime and then every one throws up their hands in the air when the child gets to secondary school and finds studying a narrow band of academic subjects boring and dull and disrupts the class because being sent home or into isolation is preferable than trying to feign interest in a subject they can’t even read the title of.

lack of adequate support staffing levels, and the result is an Eton mess (without the Eton!)

From the Eton College website demonstrating the difference in support

"Learning Support is staffed by the Head of the Learning Support and three part-time teachers, all of whom have specialist experience and qualifications. The Head of Learning Support is the school's Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO).

At present about 8% of the boys in the school receive such assistance, which continues for as long as they need it. A high degree of success is achieved in ensuring that they can do full justice to their abilities"

In contrast, I spoke to a SENCo from a school in a deprived recently. He was only given 5 hours a week to carry out his responsibilities and had an almost non-existant budget.

Wow, i had nonidea schools get £5000 per child. it is shocking that a private school for 12 £12000 (=£144 000) can provide more teachers, better facilities etc than a state school for 30 5000 (£150 000)

When kids are unable to express their needs, feel threatened by their peers and exhibit avoidant/anxious behaviours, it is any wonder they don't succeed at learning algebra.

Of course good parenting does not stop SEN, but bad parenting sets up high likelihood of academic failure.

For me, it's the lack of funding and support for SEN children. I have one SEN child in my class who makes every day a nightmare. It's not his fault, he Needs a full time 1:1, but there is no money for that. Total joke.

JUst re read that and it sounds really dismal- the school I taught at had so many amazing teachers creating a great experience for students and that is STILL going on in many UK schools because teachers tend to push themselves to their own detriment rather than have students miss out on what they need. Those committed teachers are still out there and we can only hope that there will be some sort of reform to make the system one they wish to stay in. I think parents should, when they look at a school, try and determine how happy the staff seem because that is more an indicator of whether the school is being run well. That is also a school that retains its teachers. Teachers do an amazingly hard job and they have my full respect;)