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.

Obviously can't speak for all schools, but 'churn' is very unusual at my dcs independent. Dc3 has the same teachers that dc1 had. In fact one teacher was there when my 50+ SIL was there!

I have been teaching for almost 26 years ( 20 years at the same school). I am clinging on to a job that I have loved but only because I am part time. I agree with everything previously stated. Micromanagement, increasing expectations placed on us, increasing workload. My child goes to the school I work at and I am so thankful that I do not have any other children following her through the education system. So sad.

Age of women teachers is referred to again and again. A very large part boils down to sexism, pure and simple - women are still valued on their looks and as soon as they show a grey hair they are deemed to be unable to “relate to kids”. Men are more valued with grey hair. The other part is that need to get down wi’t’kids. Education is supposed to be about passing on skills and knowledge, and personal development. It’s not supposed to be about entertainment.

As in all things teaching is not operating in a vacuum and it’s the twisted “values”, disorganised contradictions - such as having to work til you drop, but older women aren’t welcome - and corruption in wider culture that is causing the collapse.

I'm a non-teaching Head of Year and have been for over 10 years. I also teach random subjects on cover most days. I have a both a bachelor of arts and a masters. Three years ago I looked into doing my PGCE but because your PGCE has to be relevant to your undergraduate degree there was no one that offered it within 100 miles of me. It's a subject regularly taught in schools by the way.

I should also point out that it's not because I live in the arse end of nowhere, I actually live in a university city,with another 4 universities within a 1 hour drive.

A huge contributor to people leaving teaching is the violence and aggression towards teachers from children, often it is not dealt with appropriately or children being backed by their parents because they shouldnt be sanctioned or disciplined. I think thats what the poster is referring to

I agree. I think some teachers (and parents) don't realise that terrible management, unreasonable demands and an obsession with data have started to spread to parts of the independent sector.

Someone moving to work in a private school should definitely NOT assume that they'll have a good work life balance or reasonable workload.

If you really want to do it apply anyway. I got on a PGCE with a degree not taught in schools at all.

because your PGCE has to be relevant to your undergraduate degree

No it doesn't, that's what subject knowledge enhancement courses are for.

Like nursing, why would anyone want to go into a profession where you are abused daily for shit pay and little support from the public. I don't blame them

Agree. There is such a need for teachers at the moment that a SKE course is the way to go in a subject related to your degree. I know people with economics degrees, for example, that did a PGCE in maths. Frequently, science graduates are encouraged to do a SKE in a different science and MFL graduates are encouraged (or forced, in my experience) to pick up a second language to teach by doing a SKE. It is better than it was in that these courses can now be done online - in my day (and it's not that long ago), you had to find 15 free weeks to do the course which for people with commitments just wasn't possible. I don't know if they are still paid - think it was about £150 a week when I did it.

Don't let your degree subject put you off - go back and step and look at your A Levels and see if you can develop your knowledge through a SKE if you really want to teach.

I work at an independent and we are also struggling to recruit in spite of smaller class size and very nice facilities and decent department budgets for teaching resources. In state school my budget was a quarter of what it is now with half the number of pupils.

I think the main problem is the amount of contact hours versus the number of hours needed for assessment, marking, planning and reporting.

Some state school teachers do not want to take a pay cut to join an independent in spite of the ‘better’ conditions. Pay portability is gone but term time hours are crushing. Pressure on to get rid of older expensive teachers but a much smaller pool in teacher training.

I’m not a teacher, but have a few in my family. It seems awful now.

DH studied/trained to be a maths teacher - he lasted a year. He just couldn’t deal with the appalling behaviour and utter disrespect of some of the children. He could cope with everything else, but not with kids bigger than him trying to square up to him, refusing to leave, swearing/spitting at him etc, with very little that he could actually do. All while the other kids were getting zero education, and he was slipping further & further behind in his plans. So he quit and went into finance instead.

It doesn’t surprise me that schools are struggling, and I don’t at all blame teachers for leaving. Our education system is a tragedy.

Get the naughty kids OUT of mainstream education at the first possibly opportunity and make schools for children who want to learn, and you'd find it far easier to retain teachers and attract new teachers to the profession. Morale would skyrocket overnight.

Pressure on to get rid of older expensive teachers

It’s so rubbish that this is a thing!

Would people go into a hospital/the dentist/onto a plane and say they wanted the cheapest/least experienced professional to do their operation/root canal/flight, please! Experience is not only not valued in teaching, it is actively discouraged.

I'm sure other people have commented on this, but the Dept for Education runs school experience days where they assign you to a school to shadow a teacher. I'm surprised the Get into Teaching advisor didn't tell you about this.
schoolexperience.education.gov.uk/

It isn’t just teachers though. My school struggles to get teaching candidates but do get some applications but they do not get any applications for cleaners, site managers, teaching assistants or midday supervisors. It is beginning to get scary and a little dangerous. This is deemed a lovely school in a nice area.

Some state school teachers would also like to remain in TPS; something which was taken away from my independent school.
We can't even keep cleaners. They'd earn more working in Lidl. That's the same for the TAs.

I disagree with this. Secondary teachers need to have very good subject knowledge of their subject, to the extent that they're an expert in it and can teach it to a very advanced level. This won't be gotten through an apprenticeship. It's not fair to put people in front of students to teach a subject when they've only studied the subject to A-Level themselves. Even if teachers end up teaching a subject they don't have a degree in, they at least have experience studying a subject at a higher level and know how to approach subjects from an academic perspective.

Someone moving to work in a private school should definitely NOT assume that they'll have a good work life balance or reasonable workload.

This x 1000,000!

Secondary teachers need to have very good subject knowledge of their subject, to the extent that they're an expert in it and can teach it to a very advanced level.

That's the dream. At the moment we'd be delighted with someone with a degree in a different subject and an SKE that means they can teach maths up to GCSE. There are plenty of maths teachers out there that don't teach A-level who are vital to the education system.

However an apprenticeship candidate without a degree would potentially be 18, so not have the subject knowledge for advanced study, the degree that proves ability to study academically and independently or the life experience that would help them deal with students who could potentially be around the same age as them.

I've been looking into what it will take to become a secondary school teacher - but frankly seeing how little respect there is for teachers, how hard my mother (primary teacher) has always worked and yet had little to show for it at the end of the month and the level of stress that teachers constantly have now has really put me off. I'd love to be a history teacher but not at the detriment of my own children, I also feel like it's too late now I should have decided what I wanted to do a decade ago.

And put them where? Those children also need support, children are rarely that naughty for no reason. Those are the children who need good teachers the most. Not to mention that many of those so called 'naughty' children will have undiagnosed issues such as dyslexia, ADHD, ASD, or difficult home lives. They also deserve a chance to succeed in life and putting them out of sight, out of mind isn't the answer. We don't have the facilities - or the teachers - in this country to provide alternatives for many children who can't cope in mainstream school.

@spirit20 Yes I was aware of this. It's only recently (last few months) become available in my area again, presumably due to the pandemic. I gave up on the idea of becoming a teacher before that. Didn't feel very wanted!

I'm aware that's what they're referring to, but simply stating it again doesn't make it true.

To be fair, since I posted that there have been a couple of contributors to this thread who have mentioned such issues, but they've still been massively outnumbered by objections to the expectations of the job from above - the long hours, excessive paperwork, constant sense of pressure to meet seemingly irrelevant targets, inspection framework, lack of work-life balance etc. These are listed by practically everyone complaining about the teaching profession, and none of them are the fault of aggressive children or their parents.

Problems with violence and aggression OTOH are mentioned only by a minority, probably in schools with particular underlying social problems. And, I would suggest, are not actually worse than they were 30 or 40 years ago. I remember schools like that and incidents like that perfectly well from when I grew up, and for all the Daily Heil outrage about "the younger generation" and conviction that intergenerational conflict is somehow A New Thing, I'm yet to see any evidence that acts of violence and aggression toward teachers have increased.

All I'm suggesting is that if we want to address what's wrong with the teaching profession, we start by listening openly to what teachers themselves say, rather than using the opportunity to put words in their mouths to fuel the culture war against progressive education.