To wonder if schools are just a bit crap at the moment (not teacher bashing)

[Terribleenergy]

Added that caveat as am definitely not being deliberately provocative - it’s more to do with funding and class sizes being too big, and just too much crap than individual teachers. I’m a teacher myself and I don’t know that I’m offering the best ‘diet’ for my students - I do my best but I’m limited I suppose.

It’s similar with the NHS and dentists and so on: just seems services aren’t running brilliantly.

So we’ve bitten the bullet and paid for private healthcare and I’m just wondering if I should do the same for private education when the time comes (dc still little) or if people think there will be an improvement in years to come? I can’t see it myself but interested in thoughts and predictions.

I've taught in state schools and private schools. Yes, there are some really good state schools and some shitty private schools, but an average private school has a lot of advantages over an average state school.

I'm kind of anti private schools in theory - it would be better if they didn't exist. But they do, and if I could afford it I'd put my dc in one like a shot (while feeling a bit of moral guilt).

The private school I worked in for 10 years had literally none of the many problems I've seen in all of the state schools I've worked in (which seem to get worse and worse with every passing year.

It was an absolute delight to teach there, and the kids (all girls) almost all loved school, got on brilliantly with almost all the teachers, achieved stellar results and had huge amounts of extracurricular opportunities. Totally different world tbh.

My DD is at an outstanding secondary comp. She is not v happy and I am unsure what to do as thought it was the best option in the area since we can’t afford private. The school are helpful around her SEN but the classes are very disruptive and stressful for her. She just wants to work quietly and it sounds like the children in many of the classes are out of control. She has probably an upsetting situation to deal with a few times a week. There also seems to be endless new teachers, which is also stressful for her. But the thought of changing her now also feels like something she might not cope with. My main worry is, how do I know if it is her or the school that is the problem. Not that it would be her fault but I don’t know if she would be so stressed in any secondary school or if it is not such a good school as I thought.

I taught in an outstanding comp. Lots of the students were disruptive.

One of the reasons is class size. You can get on top of 20 or so students. 35 is a different matter. Class sizes have gone up under this lovely government.

*It's an absolute shit show, lets be frank. Tories have utterly destroyed it.

I'm a third year mature student on an Education course and the number of people who still want to teach after is tiny. The reality is that there are bright, able, potentially brilliant teachers who aren't even training because they can't even begin to bring themselves to be in that environment.

Inclusion has failed, 'closing the gap' has failed, COVID has compounded all the previous issues and made them worse. There is no funding. And some of the teachers remaining, hanging on, have become so bitter and twisted that children genuinely suffer from them in ways that would never have been tolerated a few years ago.

These children need nurture, love, kindness and guidance. They need to be helped to heal from the trauma of the pandemic. Instead they are being destroyed by this desperate need to 'catch up.' Catch up to what, exactly?*

Incredibly sad. Very glad I took my children out of the system completely years ago as it seems to be becoming more toxic by the year.

Unbelievable when the system is completely at breaking point that Local Authorities are making it their life goal to push thriving, happy home educated children back into schools.

It's even worse if your child has sen in a mainstream school.

*It's an absolute shit show, lets be frank. Tories have utterly destroyed it.

Welsh Labour have control of education in Wales and have for 20 + years - and it's not great.

I'm not saying the Tories are great but I do wonder if it's a wider issue - maybe it's value attached to schooling and money that comes with that - maybe it's parenting or wider educational changes, loss of esteem for teachers or way too much focus on paper work or maybe ageing population takes political focus off child age group- I don't know maybe it's none of that and something else entirely - but it's not just the Tories and I'm not seeing solutions from other parties.

I don’t know if it’s political so much as just teaching not being a very appealing option. If I had a good maths degree, I wouldn’t go into teaching!

I have a masters in maths and I’m embarrassed to tell my old friends from university about my work day. I went into teaching through Teach First, and was (bizarrely) put in a primary school as a maths specialist rather than secondary maths. I stayed in teaching because I moved abroad and could easily find work speaking English. I’ve been teaching 9 years and I’m rather good at it, but I work longer hours for less money than my course mates did in their first years of their careers even after 9 years. It’s not like there is a lovely environment in schools or the hope of phenomenal career progression to make it worth it, so I constantly feel like I have to explain my irrational career choice. It’s no wonder there is a shortage of teachers.

Teacher here too and I agree with lots said on here. I took myself and my DC out of the system to home educate/unschool as I was so bitterly disillusioned.

In my view, one of the main problems (other than chronic underfunding) is ofsted and the sheer prescriptiveness of the national curriculum. It’s so exam focused now that teachers are in the main only expected to ‘teach to the test’ type teach. There is no longer the scope to be creative and inspiring. The very things I went into teaching for no longer exist really. Children are just numbers on a graph, they’re expected to be mini robots following a set of age related expectations and it just serves to stress the teachers and most of the children. Your job ends up being trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

The system that was set up during the industrial revolution is just unfit for purpose in today’s society.

@Allisoninwunderland

I was thinking about this on valentine's Day. When I started teaching (MFL) I'd quite often do something fun & valentine's related (writing poems but working on dictionary skills) but there isn't even breathing space for that with y7 now!

If you compare state and private education, then private education is always going to look better - if it didn't, no one would pay for it and it would cease to exist. Market forces.

If I compare the state schools now with what I experience 20/30 years ago there is no comparison; facilities and curriculum and teaching and school dinners are so much better now. There is far better provision for and understanding of SEN and ND kids than when I was at school. Far better pastoral care - mental health wasn't even considered during my education.

My DD goes to an average primary and I have my complaints but overall I think it is brilliant, aside from a lack of cheap peripatetic music lessosns or any real drama lessons (that is the only thing that seems to have got dramatically worse in the past few decades). New initiatives like forest schools are a brilliant thing for our kids, and complement the curriculum so well. I look at the quality of work the kids produce and in English in particular, it is stellar compared to what we did at school. Plus they cover such a big curriculum, everything from French to electronics.

I can see all the downsides people are listing but sometimes you've just got to stand back and say, overall, is this state education good value for money? And I say yes it is.

I know, @LollyLol. I’m not convinced it’s necessarily better or worse now - admittedly, I did start teaching (back in 2003) in a really rough school - it was on a very shabby, rundown council estate which depressed me just to drive through, so god knows what it did to the kids! But we had so many fights, lots of teenage pregnancies, big families - it wasn’t unusual for mum and eldest daughter to be having a baby at the same time and we often had aunts in the same class as nephew / niece. There were some lovely kids but there were some very troubled ones as well.

A lot of schools now seem to have swung to the Michaela outlook which I also dislike.

So it’s hard to say how much of it is pandemic related and how much is just an impossible situation. As I say, my main ‘worry’ is that my children wouldn’t be pushed to achieve what they would actually be capable of in smaller classes and with more intense support.

@RoastedTurnip it’s so sad isn’t it. I started teaching in 2002 and we were encouraged them to produce ‘creative curriculum’. Yes we had to teach maths and English but there was so much scope to inspire and create. You could (in primary anyway) follow the children’s interests to an extent. You could add your own twist. Now it’s just about delivering a set out out-dated objectives to pass tests and tick boxes.

Since they changed the national curriculum in 2014 the government have tried to send us right back to the Victorian era.

Teachers are burnt out and pupils are uninspired and under so much pressure to perform.

@LollyLol
I think you’ve got a point - your child obviously goes to a good school. You’ve lucked out there. It’s nice to hear that some schools are doing some creative things.

It's all about the school. Local secondary school has loads of children coming out with racks of 9/8 and going off to top universities.

Everyone locally seems really happy with it and the kids do loads of extra curriculum stuff as well.

This clearly isn't universal nationally.

Best thing is to move close to a good secondary school

Dishwashersaurous,

I’m not sure that’s true. I taught in a school similar to the one you describe. It was full of self entitled disruptive arrogant students.

As it was OFsted outstanding, there was horrific pressure on the staff all the time.

It was very high achieving. The majority of A level students went to red bricks or Oxbridge. But still disruptive.

@AllisoninWunderland yes, I think I'm lucky and the schools in my area are all fairly great. However we are a really poorly funded school, and HT decided to invest in "staff not stuff", so compared to other schools it looks a bit down-at-heel. Not perfect- oh my life, it was a shambles in the first lockdown! But then it was a transformation and the teaching team pulled together and suddenly it was fantastic.

There is a healthy supply of cover so the teachers get a day out of the classroom each week to do all the Ofsted admin and other crap. I think that makes their lives bearable, but I'm speculating.

I feel so sad when I hear people say the curriculum is a strait-jacket. My dd has covered so much in her time at primary school and yes, that is the word for it - delivered creatively so the kids really engage ... If the purpose is to create a lifetime love of learning, then mission accomplished.

I guess I'm going to have to write a really nice Thank You to the HT at the end of Y6.

My kids is closing tomo cause the predicted wind!

@OnceuponaRainbow18 tbf we had a neighbour's 12ft trampoline blow over the wall and into the playground, almost taking out a group of year 8s today. We also have the issue of buses and trains not running so some staff can't get into work. They won't have made the decision lightly