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.

No, it doesn’t. It needs money - money which can go into educational welfare, educational psychologists and SEN provision. Those services have been cut so relentlessly that they essentially no longer exist. So now we see children with huge barriers to learning in mainstream classroom, and we’re failing them. And we’re failing everyone else in the class with them.

I am a teacher. I have actively dissuaded my children from teaching. My dn is in her second year of it and is already looking for the exit door.

@Controlledmalfunction Read through this thread. The issues have been called out. You’ll find little or no mention of pensions. The pay is dire. You won’t find young blood settling for that either.

I’m not old and cynical either. I am a human being with lived experience of working in a broken system. I just glad realised I didn’t have to spend my career putting up with the unnecessary BS from all angles when govt aren’t all for the ‘sake of the kids’. BS including poor school management, poor policy and funding for SEN and EDI, poorly behaved students and parents, poor calibre of new staff, poor opportunities for current staff. You can’t expect all of that to be overcome by exhausted, pay-exploited teachers.

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.

Who do you think puts the work into improving classrooms for the children though? The teachers are ALREADY working hours beyond the school day to improve things with limited resources, spending weekends at charity shops spending their own money on stuff for projects for their pupils. The TAs work so hard, for a pittance, and now schools don’t replace ones that leave because there is no money to, the workload is even bigger for them.

My colleague is a primary school business manager, she has spent hundreds of her own money picking up things when she does her own shopping and not ended up claiming back from petty cash, because she knows how things are financially. It’s all based on goodwill and doing things in your own time to give the children a great experience. I really don’t think that parents have the slightest inkling of this going on, considering the quibbling over requests to donate a quid for Macmillan day etc, or a PRA event.

no-one really minds that IF the pay was decent. But pay rises haven’t been great for a number of years so staff are really starting to lose that sense of goodwill and “doing it for the kids” because the pay is now not matching the effort needed to make ends meet in school. Plus, you’ve got younger people coming into it now who can’t even afford to house themselves properly never mind buy anything out of their own pockets.

If the government was able to increase new entrants into the profession by only selling graduates the positives rather than giving the positives and a realistic impression of what the job is like, then that is not going to provide a long term solution to a rapidly shrinking workforce in the long term, because an even greater proportion of early career teachers will end up leaving, meaning an even bigger pool of new starters being required in the future. It's a wasteful use of public money and resources.

The story about a big fall in new trainees has to be put in context of being in a period of terrible retention at the same time.

The way of solving the crisis is by improving the conditions of the job so teachers (including new starters) stay, not by focussing on increasingly desperate measures to get more people into the job.

I hear what you are saying, but as a parent and non teacher all I hear and see is what I can only class as moaning. It's not just your profession either as I mentioned in my first comment it's the default for healthcare and the emergency services too.

Being realistic about any job is an absolute must but it is very much tipping into a general moan that's now falling on deaf ears, even among those of us who are sympathetic to your plight.

Why not just reframe it in your own mind then? You must have learned a lot from this thread: keep in mind that you don’t actually have to give a shit about teachers, only your own children’s education.

I hear what you are saying, but as a parent and non teacher all I hear and see is what I can only class as moaning.

Have you actually looked at the data to decide whether those 'moans' are justified or not?

The amount pay has been eroded by? The number of teaching vacancies? The catastrophic recruitment figures mentioned in the OP? The fact that school funding, post a pandemic that has increased pressures on schools is still lower per pupil than it was in 2010?

I mean, I don't look at the A&E waiting times and think that nurses are just 'moaning'. It's bizarre that someone might think that they are.

I can, and I do. However the point I'm saying is how these complaints are coming across to the public. They're falling on deaf ears now which is really not a good position to be in.

So what do you suggest?

No but if you look at similar threads to these from medics I know for one I wouldn't join the profession just by what they are saying. Especially when you actively have medics and teachers screaming out "don't join our workforce the conditions are shit"

So we should pretend they’re not shit in order to lure people in? Won’t that make the retention figures worse?

Have I said that?

It's the same thing we tell our children isn't it? Be careful what you put out there, you don't know who is watching/reading/listening.

So what’s your suggestion? How do we get people to join if the reality of the job is dismissed as ‘moaning’?

Why is your suggestion to 'not moan about the job being shit' instead of making the job less shit?

It’s definitely worse this year, my lovely school are struggling to cover all subjects and recruitment search is international, request in briefing last week for anyone able to help 2 international new starts arriving in January with accommodation!

We can’t recruit LSAs either at the moment, Lidl are paying more and that’s a far easier job.

DC1 is in a class of 35 for English GCSE and had a term without a permanent MFL teacher.

I work part-time because my mental health can’t take full time teaching. I love my job, it’s a good satisfying career, but budget cuts and unrealistic parental expectations make it much harder than it could be.

Fucking Matt Hancock isn’t helping either, preparing for a barrage of parents demanding dyslexia assessments next week.

Fucking Matt Hancock isn’t helping either, preparing for a barrage of parents demanding dyslexia assessments next week

As a dyslexic parent (which wasn't picked up until sixth form) to a child with dyslexia (which also wasn't picked up until sixth form) it's comments like this that make me disengage and lose sympathy for teachers.

Screening children for dyslexia earlier gets intervention in sooner which causes disruption to lesson and grades to improve. It stops young adults feel worthless and like they can't achieve and so it goes on. Would you prefer we stay in the era of picking on the thick kid/class clown?

@Controlledmalfunction are there any public sector workers whose plight you're genuinely sympathetic to? Are we all moaners, because we're all struggling, with pay, funding, impossible demands, attitudes like yours, government propaganda and - and I can't be any clearer about this - the fact that we entered our professions with eyes wide open and it isn't us who have changed the atmosphere, terms and conditions so severely. On top of that, the majority of us do have a vocation but find it increasingly difficult to square that with being taken for mugs and patronised by the likes of you.

Some on here are spectacularly missing the point. The new blood isn’t staying either. I’m an ECT - that’s a new teacher. Half didn’t finish the PGCE of those that did, I don’t know one that is staying. I’ve built a national network of colleagues in my field for support. There is a split between those who are trying to complete their 2 years probation and those who will not and have already left. The ones who will complete the probation don’t want to stay teaching in England. They are split between going abroad or leaving altogether.

It is not just encouraging recruitment, the new recruits don’t even want to teach and they haven’t been in the career long enough to become “jaded.” Those that have trained and are “new and fresh” are binning the career off faster than more experienced teachers as they don’t feel “pension trapped.” They are going into other grad careers.

I'm a public sector worker myself.

OH MY GOD, think about what you’re saying!! Your own kid’s dyslexia was missed, which I’m assuming had a huge impact on their education- that’s exactly, EXACTLY the problem! If there’s an influx in demand for testing, that problem only gets worse because there is no spare cash, none. That’s exactly the issue. That’s not teachers moaning. That’s a failing education system.

And I'm not saying the complaints aren't legitimate!!

Who's to blame for undiagnosed dyslexia? It's not teachers, we're not qualified to diagnose (in fact we're. It really allowed to suggest it) and don't have access to resources and specialist teaching anyway. How on earth can this be a rod to beat teachers with?