Who would want to be a teacher now?

[Painauchocolats]

I've just read an article (found on the DM) that a 53 year old teacher has taken her own life before she was due to appear in court for accidentally catching a pupil's hair. This was whilst she tried to confiscate the girl's mobile phone.

A male teacher (also in the DM) faces being struck off for shouting 'Who the hell do you think you are?" At some pupils who filmed tik toks during his lesson, and slammed his hand on the desk.

Sometimes teachers lose their temper, especially if this behaviour is incessant. Who can blame them? This is why pupils' behaviour is so poor these days, because there are no consequences, and because of things like this.

It's a shame that parents support their children behaving so poorly in schools - even families that are affluent/parents in good jobs don't seem to be immune. Of course many of these kids are poor/average academically - you'd think parents would encourage them to keep their heads down and listen to the teacher. I'm sure when they come out of school with crap GCSEs and rubbish post 16 options - that's the teachers/schools fault too. You'd think these parents might apply a bit of forward thinking - when they're backing up their kids bad behaviour.

7 weeks till I’m out and I’m counting down every day.

And for posters saying “there must be more to it than that” ….. possibly but equally likely not. All you need is a vindictive entitled child who makes something up and parents who believes “their child never lies” and safeguarding will favour the child for obvious reasons but the system is now overrun with shitty horrible parents who can’t be bothered to parent their children. Much easier to blame the teacher than discipline your child.

Then add in children with complex SEND needs who need high levels of specialist support who are now dumped into mainstream (‘inclusion’ - what a fucking joke).

So we have a system where it is ok for teachers to be hit, bit and kicked, ignored, humiliated daily and then be blamed for it and told they have poor ‘classroom management’ skills. In no other job would you be blamed if you get assaulted.

Unions have managed to persuade teachers that this is an SLT issue - blame the leaders - rather than blame the lack of any support for families who can’t parent or for families with children with SEND. The mantra is “A strong effective SLT should sort it” ….. what bollocks! A ‘strong’ SLT usually means they are just excluding children who then have no where to go or get dumped in schools who try not to throw them out.

But nobody gives a shit - teachers are lazy with great holiday etc etc and so we are leaving……in droves. I can’t fucking wait. And not one person I know who has has regretted it. No one is going back.

But that was in the days when parents backed teachers, now they themselves are entitled fuckwits who see their brats as their mates. Some parents don't parent because their lives and phones mean more to them than the children they brought into this world.

Marjoriesdoor
7 weeks for me too I can not wait. Best of luck

Before we had CCTV and locked gates in school, l remember a parent coming in and smacking a Maths teacher.

So it’s been going on a bit!

I'm not a teacher but work in family support and that includes working with teenagers.
There is no way I'd be a teacher. We get referrals through about the teenager ( or even younger) being excluded. The reasons include calling the teacher a cunt, throwing a chair at the teacher, encouraging other pupils to be very disruptive. When we unpick why they behaved like this I can guarantee it is because the child felt 'disrespected '. When we unpick some more it's usually because of a perfectly reasonable request from the teacher, eg asking them to put their mobile away, asking the pupil not to film them and so on. On top of this, often parents side with their child.
I have no idea how this cycle is going to be broken.

We have a parent who dictates when the child can attend detention due to external commitments - now my children are younger but my attitude is if you get a detention there are no extra curricular activities that week either! I think I may be in a minority though.

I left secondary school teaching a while back now, mainly due to the behaviour of pupils and the failure of management in some schools to do anything about it.
Having a 13y boy slam his chair into my stomach, whilst I was fairly heavily pregnant, because I dared suggest he sat down and did his work was the worst. Actually it wasn't - what was worse that when I made a complaint t management pretty much asked me what I'd done to warrant it, he wasn't removed, I had to teach him the very next day, no apology from him, nothing. Just him sniggering about getting away with it and he didn't need to work. At least his classmates were appalled by his behaviour even if management wasn't.
I went on early mat leave and returned part time long enough to not have to pay back my extra pay. Then left secondary teaching for good.

I've worked at good and bad schools. The main thing that sets them apart is how supported teaching staff is by their management teams in my experience. That school just had no support for anyone. Even big burly older male teachers were struggling with the behaviour of those kids, let alone me being a petite (at the time) 5 foot woman who was 7 months pregnant! It wasn't benefitting the teachers and it wasn't benefitting the children either.

I have been teaching secondary for 20 years. 10 years ago things started to go downhill. I went on maternity leave and did t recognise the place on my return. We had become an academy. Behaviour was a joke. SLT unable to do anything. Experienced staff were being micromanaged out of the door. I'd already gone through threshold so I knew I was going to be on their radar.

I decided to jump to independent and I am so so grateful I did. I get to teach my subject and don't have to worry about behaviour. I felt awful as some kids really needed a teacher who would help them but I was a mum and needed to have some energy left for my own kids!

It sounds like things have got even worse over the past 10 years. I am even more relieved I went private as now I get a fee discount and I don't have to put my own kids through it. I just don't know how the well behaved kids are expecting fed to learn when behaviour in class is so bad.

That's a difficult one if a parent has shelled out loads of cash for it though. I think the detention still needs to take place. Maybe double the time on a different day.

I'd say things have got significantly worse over the last couple of years as well as the general decline over the last decade.

Teacher shortages and lack of funding are really beginning to bite.

I work in a primary school that recently academised and behaviour has gone down, work load has sky rocketed and everyone is so stressed and poorly that we are all making exit plans. For some that means getting out with no where to go (it’s either that or a mental break down) most others are job hunting outside of teaching. It’s horrendous. I’ve been teaching 10 yrs and it has just got steadily worse and worse.

Depressing thread! I’ve been teaching secondary for 12 years and will be leaving when I can. I feel a bit trapped as my DS has ASD and I really need the holidays as he couldn’t realistically do a holiday club at the moment. I’m hoping that when he’s secondary school age he’ll be more independent and I’ll have more flexibility. I only cope because I’m part time and even then it’s tough. The behaviour issues are shocking, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to enter the profession at the moment. Most of my department are actively looking to leave. There are just no boundaries with kids - huge fights most days, swearing, getting aggressive with you. There are far more lovely kids (and supportive parents) than not, but the ones that are aggressive and rude with huge entitlement issues and demands of respect are REALLY unpleasant to deal with. The system is so broken!

www.award.co/blog/employee-turnover-rates

This website highlights the employee turnover of different industries, albeit during the pandemic.

Education had one of the lowest turnovers over the 3 years of all the industries.

@notacooldad.. You need to go deeper and unpick why that child has no interest or motivation in learning.

Usually it's undiagnosed sen.

Lots of jobs are now really not appealing, it's been on the cards for years especially in the public sector, I think covid and the fallout has accelerated it further. We are going to be facing huge issues very soon in staffing in essential services including of course teaching, and yet the government do nought about it.

Is be interested to know what behaviour and fights are like generally within that school where the resent attack happened in Ashford

Those retention figures during the pandemic are useless as nobody moved schools: therefore no vacancies created for teachers. The advertisement rate was really low.

Ain't like that now

That's a pretty useless graph for the point you're trying to make.

Why have they lumped education and health together? What does that cover? Teachers being grouped with university admin staff and hospital porters?

And turnover during a pandemic is pretty meaningless.

That website is talking about the US

I feel very lucky to be a primary teacher in a nice school with a supportive SLT and mostly supportive parents. The workload is still crazy but I do at least feel appreciated and have job satisfaction.
For the 1st 10 years of my career I was a secondary teacher. That was much tougher in terms of behaviour and management, and less support from SLT who were themselves overwhelmed by behaviour. I managed it because I was in my 20s.

Slt support is absolutely key.

For those who are leaving teaching what do you intend to do as job? I'm intrigued to see which jobs you think don't have any issues...

I've witnessed people die,l and commit suicide at my place of work, seen and had to break up physical fights and been sexually harassed at my job. The grass isn't greener!

I should add that I now work in primary Ed, teaching every day with children from 4-7, and I love it. Yes, we have some very challenging days and some children who really struggle in mainstream school settings. We have some who will lash out verbally and physically but ultimately it's a fabulous job, where I get a great about of job satisfaction. It's hard work but it's usually rewarding work too. I can't imagine doing anything else.

So much so that my own Dd is due to complete her primary Ed degree this year, having been volunteering regularly in primary schools from being early secondary herself. She is going into the profession with her eyes wide open. Even in primary Ed, almost half of her tutor group have already decided they don't want to teach long term, some aren't even going into after graduation. It's a worrying situation.

I live my job now but I refuse to call it a vocation. I do think we need to move away from that idea. It's a professional job, which deserves to be treated as one. By allowing the media, and the government, to push the whole vocation idea gives them the idea that the professionals doing the role don't deserve it need decent pay and conditions. We need to do all we can to rid the public and the media of this.

I wouldn't become a teacher but if I did my first question would be phone policy. Reality.
How is it backed up and if I have a phone box and students get nasty in not wanting to comply what support will I get.
That would tell me re job