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.

Every time I read about a teenager committing a crime I think 'some poor bastard had to try to get him to do Shakespeare.' And as all of our resources and funding shrink, so the list of what we're expected to do gets longer and longer.

They won't be in gov by the time the chickens come home to roost why would they care? For years they have blamed labour for everything that has gone wrong - can't really get away with that anymore - country is a fucking mess .

Schools should be able to kick pupils out who refuse to obey the rules and refuse to take pupils who have been kicked out of other schools for refusing to obey the rules. There's absolutely no good reason why schools should have to try and teach kids who are unteachable with all the negative effects it has on the education of the kids who actually want to learn and have hopes and aspirations in life.

@Florenz so if a child is excluded at age 14, they can be refused education for the rest of their life? Seems an easy get out, especially considering a high percentage of excluded children have SEND that is being ignored by the schools.

If a school wants to exclude them then YES. They're 14. They've already been given plenty of chances by that point. What good is sending them back to a school going to do other than disrupting the education of well-behaved children?

PTSD

This is absolutely spot on and the reason my very dedicated teacher son left the profession after a couple of years. He now works in a non educational private business and works less hours, has a healthier work culture and is better paid. Whilst I'm pleased that he is now happy it saddens me that the system is losing good teachers like him.

Agree that FE teaching is good for someone retired or having a second career where they’ve already made their money and pension. There were a few like this where I used to work and they were the only ones thriving. They could focus on enjoying the job, spreading knowledge etc. and not have to worry about not making enough to live on, get a mortgage, have a pension etc. Many FE colleges only offer part-time, and I can see term-time only coming down the pipeline as they did for support staff.

How young will we go with this tactic? Do we disregard SEND or other protected characteristics? No genuine teacher would agree with this, they want the resources to help all children.

The staff demographic of modern FE isn't like this. With T-Levels, apprenticeships, compulsory maths and English resits and many schools closing 6th forms, they're bearing the brunt of many of the government's pet projects and attracting subsequent Ofsted scrutiny. Term time only wouldn't work because staff don't get school holidays, they get fixed leave allowances. My husband is managed and 'advised' by staff with no teaching qualifications who aren't old enough to have been in the first classes he taught. They pay according to expected rates of the non-qualified and are being subsumed by MATs. I wouldn't be surprised to see other educational institutions follow this model, especially EYFS.

A return to Victorian values….

I think that the Tories have realised that there are huge advantages to having an uneducated workforce. Everything ran brilliantly well for the ruling class from the Industrial Revolution until..ooh…the introduction of state education. Then, within a generation, it had become tiresomely difficult to get the labour force to behave.

It’s reading that does it. Bloody literacy. It’s got to stop.

I don't know what the answer is. Nobody wants to give up on these children, to create an uneducated underclass who will be unemployed or on the fringes of criminality for life.

But many teachers will have encountered children who are unreachable in a mainstream school. Many will have SEN or disrupted home lives. They need more personalisation, adjustment and adult support than we are able to provide.

Aye. Keep the serfs in their place.

Lazy to blame ‘The Tories’

I highly doubt Labour will do anything markedly different.

Yes, just because they're the ones in government who are responsible for the massive underfunding.

Controversial viewpoint here but I've noticed this with healthcare too. If you complain about the working conditions, pay, your colleagues, the clients/patients/students/parents loudly enough and for long enough, unsurprisingly no one will want to join your work force.

If you want to recruit, sell the positives of the job

I worked in teacher training from 2005-2016. It's not lazy to blame the Tories. ITT wasn't perfect but it was on an upward trajectory until 2010 and great strides were being made to link HE with LAs, schools and community needs. We we're learning from successful models of ITT. Within two years, there was a shortage of teachers in subjects that traditionally had gluts, and regional disparities were rife. Plans based on careful, evidence based studies, designed to link ITT with ongoing CPD and school improvement were discarded and the neoliberal tactic of offering the service to inexperienced toadies was employed. Funding was savaged and me and my colleagues left in droves after trying to stem the tide. Not lazy, accurate.

Do you think that if you lie about the pay and working conditions people will join the workforce and not notice these things for themselves?

There is a retention issue as well as a recruitment issue. It can only be solved by sorting the working conditions, not by lying about them.

The title of the thread was about graduates entering the profession. The conditions are worsened because you can't recruit, self perpetuating cycle.

@Controlledmalfunction Fair point.

but then I’d feel like a used car salesman, tbh. Complicit in talking up a dead end

You've clearly become very jaded and cynical about the profession which is a sad place to be. Maybe going into student recruitment might change that? Remember why you became a teacher.

The profession needs new blood, new ideas, less cynicism. Parents need to parent their kids, support the schools with discipline and everyone across the board needs to stop bloody moaning so much 😂

The profession needs new blood, new ideas, less cynicism.

You clearly don’t have any idea of what the profession needs.

If I go by what I'm hearing during strike action it's all about increasing teachers pay and pensions, very little about improving classrooms for the children. It is the latter that is required.

That's because that's all we're allowed to strike about.