Secondary school lack of teachers spiralling out of control

[noblegiraffe]

The govt released its targets for PGCE trainees for Sept 23 today and dear god we are in trouble.

The projection is that we will recruit less than half the number of secondary trainees that the sector needs. 47%.

We only recruited 59% of what was needed last year.

Jack Worth of the National Foundation for Education Research tweeted “Without an urgent policy response to make teaching more attractive, schools will face increasingly intense shortages over the next few years, which are likely to impact negatively on the quality of education.”

It looks like all subjects will miss their targets by a lot, except History, Classics (they all head off to private schools) and PE.

And today I hear of PE teachers handing in their notice because they are being expected to teach science instead.

On a thread a poster just commented that their child had to stop learning Spanish partway though the year as there was no teacher.

At my school, A-level students who have lost their teacher have had to continue by teaching themselves the course.

Parents of kids in secondary school, or approaching secondary school age: things are about to get a lot worse than they already are.

And still the government refuse to come to the negotiating table to try to fix this. What exactly is their plan? They don't have one. More and more kids will not have teachers.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-on-course-to-recruit-less-than-half-of-required-secondary-teachers/

You'll get posts accusing you of catastophising and some posters saying that teachers are well paid and they don't know what the problem is.

There are real problems and it won't be too long before parents are aware of how bad those problems are.

Not sorry my youngest leaves school in three weeks - it's going to be a big mess for the next few years while the pupil bulge passes through secondary age cohorts.

My DC is Y8. They have so many cover lessons in the hall with other classes. They have been recruiting overseas teachers to plug gaps but they don't stay long (we live in a part of the South East which has very expensive housing without the attraction of living in an exciting place). Other DC will join the school next year. I'm so worried about their exam chances. Have already started looking into tutoring but I know I will have a fight on my hands to get them to do more work after school.

I've heard that it is perfectly possible to learn everything one needs to by watching videos, which is how Sunak's maths initiative is going to be taught, making the UK a powerhouse once again.

jgw1 you may be surprised to hear that Rishi's plan to sort adult lack of numeracy with a £100 million online learning platform has just been scrapped.

Actually doing things isn't something this government is particularly capable of. Expect the post-16 plans to go the same way!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/25/dfe-quietly-shelves-plans-for-100m-online-adult-learning-platform

Apologies for my lack of knowledge on this issue, but when will that start to filter through and really impact secondary schools? I’m aware there are issues already but I assume this years PGCE intake aren’t in schools teaching immediately, so when will the impact hit?

It already has. We have English taught by 2 unqualified teachers, 2 cover supervisors and a PE ECT.

student teachers starting in sept will be in classrooms by oct

Already. We have had English, Maths and Geography vacancies for more than a year, just filled with endless supply. We have supply on a 6th form class in science as we have 3 vacancies that we haven't been able to fill.

As for TAs, we can only meet our legally required TA allocation by using agency staff. We don't have any who can just help in a class. This also means students with very high needs do not have the same member of staff to constantly support them. This leads to some of the TAs refusing to return, as some students react badly to strangers.

I am delighted my own DDs will both be at university by 2025. I've already been supporting their own science and maths education at home, as they also have supply at their school/college.

Then we are selling the house, downsizing and leaving teaching. DH already only teaches 2 days a week after chronic long term effects from covid; we can't do it anymore.

It's not just a recruitment crisis, there are huge retention issues too and plenty of students on PGCEs won't actually go into teaching. The constant cry on Mumsnet when teachers complain is "leave and do another job then." And we are and the effect will become more obvious in the next few years. There is no quick fix for this.

but the catastrophe is already here, it is nothing new

the year before covid we were combining all year 11 classes in the spots hall, and putting every available adult in there with them, receptionist, premises, anyone.

before lock down we we one adult from sending year 8 home because we couldn't supervise them. We were saved by covid

Last year only meeting 59% of the recruitment target is currently really affecting schools trying to recruit for September. Things are looking grim and will be getting grimmer.

But they are already pretty horrendous. Teacher vacancies are going through the roof. The pic attached is from September. If you have a vacancy in the Autumn term it is very tough to recruit for as most teachers looking have got jobs by September.

Teacher vacancies mean classes without teachers. So kids who have supply teachers instead of a permanent teacher. Teachers of other subjects will be roped in to be a warm body in front of a class.

My Y11s talk about not having had proper teachers for their other subjects, despite being an exam year. My Y13s report having to teach themselves.

On another thread a poster said that they only found out that their child had been having supply teachers for weeks because they asked. Ask your child what the situation is, parents don't seem to have much idea!

Ah well; proper Tories go private.

Perhaps this might cause a few parents to reflect on their voting habits but I doubt it. Or perhaps, be more supportive of teachers. Your children depend on them.

I expect the government to either ignore this completely (thinking they’ll be booted out at the next GE so it’ll be Labour’s problem) or they’ll have the bright idea of trainee teachers not needing to have a degree. It’ll be spun by suggesting that there are excellent people out there who could teach maths/physics/chemistry but have been too busy to get round to doing a degree and they shouldn’t have to be shackled with that unnecessary hassle, so they can just teach without it tomorrow.

There's already shortages, and the PGCE is 12 months long. So September 2024 will be the impact of this particular application cycle, exacerbating the existing recruitment but more importantly, retention crisis.

DH is a secondary headteacher. His school has been trying to recruit a specialist Physics teacher for 5 years. They have advertised about 10 times. It's a quite challenging but excellent school.

Sometimes they get no applications from Physics specialists. Every time they get very few applications at all. They have never had an application from a Physics NQT.

They have appointed someone who had been teaching abroad and who seemed good- he was a disaster. At the end of 2 weeks said he didn't like the area the school was in and found the children 'rough'. He left at the end of the first term.

They re-trained someone who was already teaching chemistry in the department but wanted to teach Physics. It cost a fortune and he discovered he didn't like teaching Physics- he found a job teaching chemistry again elsewhere.

They have advertised twice since Christmas and been unable to appoint because of the poor quality of the candidates' specialist knowledge. Most people who train to teach physics do not have a physics degree or even a physics A level in some cases.

I was a science technician in a secondary school eight years ago. I'd been in the job for twelve years perfectly happily. Then the Head told us we were going to have to start taking classes - no training, no experience, no particularly in depth scientific knowledge - oh, and for a science technician's salary.

So I left, there and then. The ironic thing is that I do have a teaching qualification. If I WANTED to be a teacher, I'd bloody be a teacher and earn a teacher's salary, not buggering about part time sorting out dissection samples.

It's been happening for years.

We are already in crisis with a shortages of teachers. And that includes for things such as core subjects - maths and science.

But it's going to get worse which means there won't even be the capacity to stick someone, anyone in front of a class to teach a planned lesson.

What will happen then? Who knows?

I imagine there'll be halls full of pupils being taught by - if you're lucky - 1 teacher qualified in the subject.

It'll mean more and more disenfranchised pupils with education. More need for camhs and social care. Pupils who already are disenfranchised will fall through cracks as poverty increases and they get further disenfranchised.

Which will then increase youth gangs and crime.

Sounds catastrophic. But this isn't castrosphising . This is a proven pattern worldwide when countries can't provide basics such as housing, food and education.

My ds is planning on doing a pgce but is now going to do a masters first in the (naive imo) view that in 2 years there won't be a tory govt in charge abd things might be better...

It’s already filtering through. We had anyone with a pulse and a gap in their timetable teaching Maths this year. And for next year we have a whole load of vacancies we can’t fill. We’re even finding it impossible to recruit a history teacher. Once history teachers become difficult to recruit you know that you are fucked.

We are an outstanding London girls school with excellent behaviour… and we had Ofsted this autumn so the pressure is off for a few years. If we can’t recruit then fuck knows what it’s like elsewhere.

The issue is we need to retain experienced teachers as well. Cycle after cycle of newly-qualified teachers, many of whom stay less than 5 years in teaching, is doing nothing for the quality of education either.

Good, experienced teachers are being driven out of the classroom in droves (myself included!) and all the govt bang on about is attracting and training new teachers.

There’s no specialist supply teachers out there. Desperately need a maths cover teacher, agencies don’t even bother replying any longer. They sent a guy last week, swore blind he was maths, no he was an overseas MA student in business admin. Hadn’t even set foot in an English school before. No clue on how a teacher should behave. Really don’t know how to cope with it.

A PGCE usually lasts one year. They have a high drop out rate (no-one knows how high as no figures are ever released, but everyone anecdotally agrees it's high). The targets are set yearly, i.e. this is the number of new teachers the DfE believes is needed- e.g. the biology one has just been adjusted upwards (presumably due to the massive shortage of science teachers?)- obviously there is some fudging- e.g. the maths target was adjusted downwards a while back, many believe to hide how bad recruitment for maths actually is.

So it will impact secondary schools from next year, but obviously most teachers are expected to stay teaching for multiple years, so the impact will continue to be felt for the next several years too.

It's like this every year though, and getting worse. State education feels like it is facing death by 1000 cuts.

So however bad things are now, they'll get worse next year, and then even worse the year after, and so on, unless something changes.

The gap between the privately and state educated will continue to widen. The rich will get even richer and the poor will get even poorer. This not catastrophising, it is highlighting a genuine catastrophe for society.

this is our experience tenfold. English language, year 10, whole term of cover. Every week there is usually a cover lesson most days. Behaviour is poorer when there is cover, stuff covered out of sync with usual teacher. Thinking of home Ed for year 11 and private for my current year 5 for secondary.