Number of graduates in teacher training in England at ‘catastrophic’ level - DfE figures

[sunnydaytoday0]

When is the government going to do something to address this, with more and more leaving and fewer and fewer wanting to enter teaching despite the governments attempts so far at making it "more attractive".

Will there be anyone left in our classrooms? Will parents be thinking of any of these issues and their implications during strikes?

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/01/number-graduates-teacher-training-england-catastrophic-level

The number of graduates training to be teachers in England has slumped to “catastrophic” levels, with the government missing its own recruitment targets by more than 80% in key subjects such as physics.

The Department for Education’s initial teacher training figures show that just under 29,000 graduates have signed up this year, a 20% fall compared with 36,000 last year, and far below the 40,000 trainees registered during the pandemic in 2020-21.

But the figures are far worse for secondary school recruitment, where they are at just 59% of the DfE’s annual target, well below the 79% reached last year. It means the government has missed its own targets in nine of the past 10 years.

I am thinking about what I'm saying. My child was missed because they don't fit the stereotype for dyslexia. Screen all children (which happened at 6th form) and you'll catch these children.

@Controlledmalfunction
'I'm a public sector worker myself.'
That's not an answer.

It doesn’t seem like you are, tbh.

And when, and who, and with what resource are we screening every child?

I worked in a school that screened for dyslexia, it was the worst I’ve been in. They use a computer program. It was useless at picking up either highly able children or children with Co-morbid SEN. The false positive were high too.

The only things that work are:
-effective communication in school for teachers to report concerns promptly
-an out of class SENCo with the time to actually follow up reports
-good quality teacher training, that includes dyslexia awareness

If there’s no funding for support, or adults free or support from Leadership it’s pretty pointless even if you do manage to identify dyslexia. I see so many like my friend’s son, he has the label but has never had any support- only allowances like he doesn’t have to do certain things. He’s probably even further behind than he would have been. He just needed quality intervention, and that has never happened. He’s just basically been opted out of a lot of literacy and writing over the years, without much to replace it skill wise.

@Controlledmalfunction I think that if you can presume to speak for the public, so can I.

Keep complaining, teachers. Keep moaning, nurses. Evidently the conditions in your professions are getting worse, and if you don't make a noise about it, nothing will happen. Get angry and get active. Be militant. You have a calling to pursue, but you also have lives to live, children to feed and house, futures to plan for. And if we - the people who need you and pay you - are forcing you to choose between one or the other, that's our problem to solve, not yours.

@Controlledmalfunction who do want to do the screening? If you're arguing it should be in the toolbox of teachers, good luck adding a specialist psychologist's skill to the teaching standards. And what do you suggest should then happen if you get your diagnosis? 6th form colleges and universities use catch all, imprecise metrics and testing, easily manipulated and often done at the expense of identifying other cognitive and sensory processing issues.

I'm not speaking for anyone here, you make a lot of assumptions with that one statement

Don't call them 'moaning' then.

Still waiting for the advice on how to screen every kid reliably for dyslexia without putting money into education.

You said a general moan that's now falling on deaf ears, even among those of us who are sympathetic to your plight

And you said all I'm saying is how these complaints are coming across to the public

I am sympathetic to their plight and I'm the public. So you were presuming to speak for me. So I spoke for me, and for the public. On the basis that if you can, I can.

In fact, neither of us can.

Moaning’, ‘cynical’, ‘Jaded’ And greedy for a pension and wage… Sadly this poster is only being honest of their view. And this is how the general public and govt approach it. They don’t want to know.
Just shut up everyone and smile while you make teach my kids or fix my hip for £28k a year and appalling conditions.

For most, once they get their kids educated and their healthcare for free, they don’t care about personal sacrifice - how teachers/nurses pay the price in quality of life. ‘Just think about why you went into teaching!’ The people will be the first with threatening emails, shouting at the school gates, and with legal claim if anything falls sub-par.
You should be out in droves supporting these roles/people. They’re the very marrow of our society. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

in my schools, the number of average children with SEN is 30%. That’s 9 children in every class with an SEND need which could be a speech and language, communication and interact, specific or global learning difficult or a social, emotional and mental health issue. That’s 9 different needs that need to be met alongside non SEN pupils with their huge range of background and ability. 9 needs that the teacher needs a knowledge and understand of and then needs to adapt practice and work for.

25% of children are open to social care either as Child in need or child protection. They are usually traumatised and their behaviour reflects this. There may be some cross over with SEND but not completely. So let’s say 3 children per 30 who have complex trauma responses and incredibly challenging family situations to deal with.

70% of children are reliable fir pupil premium …. Now this is a broad sweeping category that can mean just about anything but statistics show that as a class (not individuals) these children have low educational outcomes than this who don’t so they have to be catered for.

and my teachers have to get 75% of these children to pass tests that are standardised to ensure that the bell curve if results stays about the same

And all if that doesn’t include parental behaviour which is now so off the scale ridiculous. Demands for access to teachers 24/7 with demands for services that we simply don’t have and cant supply and a “not my (insert child’s name) to excuse every behaviour.

Thera will soon be no one in the building (including me) and I’ve gone from a passionate educator who has always championed working in more challenging areas to some one who literally could not give a toss.

Wouldn’t blame you one bit @Noname99
Why should you be the one sweating it, with no support and for a pittance. But a sad read all the same - feels hard to compute when you read it all of those challenges in the same space. They’ve obvs lost the interest of a good one.

I saw this on twitter from Laura McInerney

I didn't say greedy...

But yes public perception is skewed by what we see in the press, on social media and in our children's classrooms. It isn't a moan, I can see that but it can be seen as moaning which causes us as a public to switch off when we too are in difficult, underpaid, time consuming jobs.

I like the tweet noblegiraffe has posted. Very true.

Nail. On. HEAD.

‘Think of why you went into care. You’re a caring person. Doesn’t matter about the food bank or if that parent is waiting for you at 4:30 at the school gates. Cheer up, this is your vocation*!’

*cheap female labour
**role where you sacrifice you personal well-being and QoL; acceptable to pay you pittance for loads of work and responsibility

I meant the post above in reply to @noblegiraffe ’s post

@Controlledmalfunction what did you mean about moaning for pay and pensions mean then? Moaning in a good and deserving way?

@Controlledmalfunction if @noblegiraffe’s post is so true, why are you calling me old, jaded and cynical? for not wanting to trick younger women into the same situation?

The profession needs new blood, new ideas, less cynicism

The profession can’t recruit new blood. FFS. Are you not listen8ng to what teachers are telling you? Are you not reading the many, many articles in the press? The many threads on MN?

In my subject, recruitment for the 22-23 academic year stood at 31% of the total required. Some of those won’t complete the course, others will complete but never do their ECT year. Some of them will resign before completing their ECT. The life span of a teacher today is around 5 years.

Most of us have kids in average schools - not bad, not amazing, just doing what they can. Those new teachers training this year will have their pick of jobs. I know of one school local to me that in September invited students studying science PGCEs to their school, had them teach a lesson, and offered 2 of them a job on the spot. So that’s 2 already picked off before they’ve been training for 4 weeks. The rest will be able to choose the best schools in the best areas and the independents. Which means your child, in the average school, will be missing specialists in maths/science/MFL and possibly other subjects. You can forget having a specialist in front of your primary kids for ICT, MFL, art, drama or anything else. Those days are long gone.

Stop blaming the teachers that are hanging on. We are not the problem. We are not cynical, we are full of ideas and know better than those in Westminster what schools need to thrive and do their best for our children. Stop making assumptions about us, as a profession, and understand that we are on our knees and it is your children who are bearing the brunt of that. Our children deserve better and as a country, if we want to continue to play in the global market, we have to do better.

I was a very experienced primary school teacher and could not get a permanent job on upper pay scale after going part time when my kids were tiny. Schools couldn't afford to pay me over m4 so basically 4 years experience instead of 14. Unsurprisingly I left, retrained for a year and now work in Childrens Social Care for more money, more flexible hours and some home working. Lots of my colleagues are ex teachers and Tas and lots of my friends from my teaching days have done similar. It isn't just a recruitment issue it's a retention crisis

A lot of people on this thread are saying it isn't the pay, but honestly for some people, pay is the issue. I trained to teach in Bristol, and a lot of my friends from the PGCE did go on into teaching BUT most of them have left the city, because even with, say, two teachers earning a decent wage, they can't afford housing in the city.

If you've got ties to the city and want to stay, the alternative is that whoever can get a higher paying job (and as these guys are science teachers, there are options for them that are better paid than classroom teaching) does so, leaving teaching. So I do think the pay matters- but I think it hits more 3-4 years in, ECT wage is okay for a graduate job.

Also, there are lots of paid routes into teaching, and some of the subjects that recruited least well this year have hefty bursaries for the PGCE.

I don't agree that getting rid of the degree requirement (in a related subject) to teach secondary is helpful. Yes, lots of people teach outside their specialisms already BUT having done this, I can tell you it's lots more work to teach a subject you don't know as well, and people who don't have good subject knowledge do often flake out early on in their careers. And often, the kids find them out, too.

The only solution is to reduce workload significantly AND increase salaries towards the bottom of the pay scale (and ideally at the top of the pay scale for classroom teachers too). I don't think one or the other is enough, unless you reduce workload so much that getting a second job in your ECT years becomes viable.

It's also pretty hilarious to say that teachers "moaning" is the issue. Once you start an ITT course, you pretty quickly get out on placement, and see the state schools are in. The drop out rates on PGCEs etc are really high!

I actually do think remote working has had a huge impact on teaching. It used to be, even say 5 years ago, that in certain parts of the country, there weren't that many highly paying jobs, and teaching was, in some cases, one of the few options to bring in a decent, reliable salary. Now people can work remotely, and so they aren't reliant on the options in their local area only.

Teaching also appealed to people with young families- a teacher parent means not paying for childcare in the holidays, for starters. But now remote and flexible working is often better for parents, so again, teaching loses out.

The only way to make teaching attractive to people is to significantly improve both the conditions and the pay- the pay has to outcompete other jobs which have better perks, in order to be attractive. The pay progression has to be really good, and not the sort of situation where one bad class, or a line manager who doesn't like you can hold it up. Pay enough to make part time working really viable for people.

The pension is irrelevant to a lot of young teachers, btw, and a significant proportion of ECTs can't afford to pay in, anyway.

Instead of always dumping additional work on teachers, the workload should be reduced. We should get rid of the bit in the STPCD that says "reasonable hours for duties needed to discharge the job" and the expectation should be that teachers can usually do most of their job within a normal working day of, say, 8-4. Yes, there might be some exceptions for parents evenings etc, maybe at certain "crunch points" of the year, but the idea that people who are working 7.30-5 are still taking work home every weekend is ridiculous.

This would likely need a significant increase in PPA, which would have to be funded, too. Maybe we could try to reduce class sizes whilst we are at it.

Yes, all of this would be really expensive, but long term, investing in education will massively benefit the economy.

Different issue, but I find the phrase "falling on deaf ears" offensive. A less ablist saying would be appreciated.

I hope the BBC do another documentary series like School from a few years back, which was raw and unpolished in showing some of the issues a lot of the issues in schools face. A few things I remember from it:

When the staff were telling the school in a meeting that the planned restructuring of the TLRs (to save money) would have a big impact on them which will in turn have a big impact on the students.
When a mother was asking the school leader/academy boss when her son was actually going to be taught by a qualified maths teacher.
When a boy who was sitting next to someone from management observing a lesson and told her as a matter of fact that the class were only vaguely behaving because she was there observing.