Nearly half of teachers plan to quit in the next 5 years

[freebritknee]

I saw this from a survey carried out by an education union.

Unmanageable workload is a significant factor.

This is madness how have the unions allowed the state of teachers employment to get this far where nearly half of them want out?!

There are clearly lots of teachers who hate their jobs. That's not good for them or for children. They should leave and do something else with their lives. What's then needed is plenty of recruitment of new teachers.

That model works well for sports direct, what could possibly go wrong applying to schools?

We've been abroad for nearly 4 years now. I'd like to come back to the UK eventually but no way would I want to teach here again. (I've got 20+ years experience. I love my job and I'm bloody good at it.)
I'm currently "only" a classroom teacher and to earn the same in the UK, I'd have to be a headteacher of a middle-sized primary school. I work my contracted hours and nobody bats and eyelid when I leave at 4pm to pick up DS. I'm not expected to work outside of my normal hours. I have PPA time daily, to sort things out, get planning done, do assessments and paperwork. My class is comparatively big. We take a maximum of 24 children per class and my class is full. We have other classes with half the number of kids.
How I teachnis left up to me. SLT trust me to do my job and I'm quite happy to be left to do it. I had one formal observation last year and one this year. That's it. No learning walks, no book looks, no planning scrutinies. In comparison, my class are making much better progress than my classes in the UK. However, that might be due to the fact that I taught Y6 in the UK and now have Y1. They start with me without any English and without ever having been to school before. By now in the year, they can understand, speak, read and write in English. They've made stellar progress. Ofsted would be impressed. Thing is, nobody stresses about it. I'm allowed to give my children time. They get support, if they need it.
We don't set homework. If children are sick, they are sick. We don't monitor percentages of how often someone has been absent. We don't have to "include writing across the curriculum". My foundation subjects aren't English lessons in disguise, aimed at squeezing as much written work out of them as possible. My marking is my own issue. If I tick the bottom of the page, it's fine. We have workbooks for core subjects. Not every lesson has to be singing and dancing and no, they don't have to make progress from the start of the lesson the end of the lesson.
It makes life much less stressful for everyone involved.

They should leave and do something else with their lives.

People said the same about Drs 5 years ago. They listened and walked away. And now here we are....struggling to see any Dr because they did just that.

What's then needed is plenty of recruitment of new teachers.

Aye ok, good luck with that one! You can recruit but the boiled frog jumps right back out of the boiling water when it realises what he is in for. Without change, people will continue to jump right back out.

Maybe parents don't care enough about their kids education to push for change?

@Awalkintime parents just blame teachers, probably why there is a retention crisis!

Recruitment will do nothing. I know plenty of people, young and more mature who would have liked to enter teaching but they’ve wised up to the conditions they face, and took different paths.

Even adding generous bursaries wouldn’t solve anything as people take the bursary and then they still quit.

“There is a "substantial risk" that teacher recruitment targets will not be met this year across a large range of secondary subjects, a new report has warned.

Analysis from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) says teacher recruitment targets are likely to be missed in English, which usually meets its target, along with maths and science.

Its report, published today, also predicts "recruitment challenges" in subjects that have traditionally been successful in attracting applicants - such as geography, biology, art and religious education.

Government data released earlier this month showed the number of initial teacher training (ITT) applications was 23 per cent lower than it was in February 2021.”

www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/teacher-recruitment-targets-be-missed-many-subjects

@MajorCarolDanvers

It's a good thing.

There are clearly lots of teachers who hate their jobs. That's not good for them or for children.

They should leave and do something else with their lives.

What's then needed is plenty of recruitment of new teachers.

God loves an optimist

“Secondary school classroom teacher vacancies are at their highest level in at least five years, new data suggests.

The data, shared with Tes by TeachVac, shows the highest recorded number of secondary teacher vacancies in the last five years, with a 12 per cent increase since the last comparable year (2020).”

www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/secondary-school-teacher-vacancies-five-year-high

@Dizzyhedgehog I’d love to know where you teach! And if you need to be bilingual to teach there!

@noblegiraffe

What do you predict will happen? I can see some schools partially closing/fully closing. Perhaps only being able to teach on rotas? Will it really get that bad do you think?

In ordinary times there would probably be a general strike over pay

The average classroom teacher earns what would be the equivalent of more than £55k gross in the private sector. We were discussing it on another thread. Teaching is not poorly paid.

@SandalsAndSox We're in Germany. No, you don't have to be bilingual...although it helps.

I wonder whether virtual teaching will become more a thing, so a teacher teaches across a number of classes virtually. DS's school struggled to recruit a teacher in a particular subject for a term, so used a university lecturer to cover for that term, who taught them virtually. Help with recruitment crisis and budgets too

@raspberryjamchicken

What's then needed is plenty of recruitment of new teachers.

The newly qualified teachers are the ones most likely to leave the profession.

Yep. 30% of new teachers leave withing 5 years

Just as an observation it seems to me that teachers are the pretty high up the list of the professions they wouldn't recommend their kids go into. I mean parents who are teachers usually advise their kids against it. I can see why - it's a very thankless job. Parents and schools have sometimes very wild expectations of what a teacher can reasonably achieve.

An extension of what’s already happening and has been happening for years, tulip: any warm body in front of the class. Unqualified teachers. Reduction in courses on offer. Larger class sizes.

And primary parents on here will pretend that a TA teaching their kid is fine, while secondary parents will hire tutors.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4521916-if-you-left-the-corporate-world-to-go-into-teaching-what-was-the-biggest-shock?pg=18

Here is the link.

Nearly all teachers I've known plan to quit. I would take it with a very large pinch of salt

@Silverclocks

I've worked with teachers who've been planning to quit for the last 20 years. The reality is the salary is nowhere near as bad as they think it is, when they start looking for alternative work.

I wish they would go, instead of just talking about it though. Staying and moaning/kidding themselves they're leaving is doing no one any good.

If the unions are at fault, it's because they've managed to get the job so well paid it's hard to leave

100% agree!

The problem is those who have moved up and up the pay scale, can’t legally be moved back down it - but have put their feet up and cba to take leadership responsibilities. This leaves underpaid nearer paid teachers to do twice as much for HALF their salary!

Disgusting age discrimination: I have several head of year teachers in my school, teaching full time as well, earning no TLR, no UPR, working all hours, crying daily… managing so called ‘upper ray rate’ teachers who earn twice what they do, and bring precisely zero to the school - doing the bare minimum to stay employed.

@noblegiraffe

True although my family members do have the “title” of teacher. One is in primary so I doubt very much those parents will know she only has TA qualifications. They will just presume she’s fully qualified.

It's not pay. It's conditions. It would be a LOT cheaper to sort out if it was pay.

But a previous poster has it right. There aren't enough jobs paying the equivalent package once many teachers investigate the realities of leaving. Not to say that a lot of them won't leave if their families can take the financial hit or they can find another job, but it won't be anything like 50%

However, a burnt out, disaffected, miserable workforce isn't really great for anyone.

And they need to recruit way, way more teachers than they actually need because the drop out rate in the first 3 years (for those that even make it through the course) is extremely high.

This is madness how have the unions allowed the state of teachers employment to get this far where nearly half of them want out?!

What mental contortions have you performed to let the government off the hook?

The unions aren’t listened too and are vilified as militant/shrill/etc.

Unions represent the teaching profession and if you knew how a union worked, then you wouldn’t come up with such nonsense.

@ditalini I agree

@ditalini

It's not pay. It's conditions. It would be a LOT cheaper to sort out if it was pay.

But a previous poster has it right. There aren't enough jobs paying the equivalent package once many teachers investigate the realities of leaving. Not to say that a lot of them won't leave if their families can take the financial hit or they can find another job, but it won't be anything like 50%

However, a burnt out, disaffected, miserable workforce isn't really great for anyone.

And they need to recruit way, way more teachers than they actually need because the drop out rate in the first 3 years (for those that even make it through the course) is extremely high.

Conditions are bad because school budgets have been squeezed so they try and get more out of less.

If they funded schools properly, had smaller class sizes, then a lot of these conditions would fall away.

We have loads of unqualified teachers in our school (secondary academy), many of then doing a superb job. They usually come with different life experience and dare I say it are a bit less jaded than their career teacher colleagues.

They're all called teacher though and students and parents have no idea which teachers are unqualified