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/

I'm a STEM grad, and I'm massively left wing.

My department has some of the highest levels of teachers striking in our school. Perhaps it's because we understand data, or we see the impact of the teacher shortage more acutely?

STEM =/= right wing, that's an utterly bizarre suggestion.

I echo this as a science teacher.

My previous school, the department was not fully staffed for about 18 months (and still isn't). We had someone leave due to ill health mid year, and then a maternity cover come up, and then other members of staff left due to the working conditions becoming untenable. Even though we did recruit a few times, because people left in the meantime, we were never fully staffed.

I recognise the timetable changes, and I was also asked (despite not holding a TLR or being UPS) to take full responsibility for my shared classes. Because my behaviour management was quite good, I ended up with a timetable that was nearly all exam classes or poorly behaved classes we couldn't give to supply teachers. AND still having to take on additional marking and planning. The pressure was insane, so I looked for (and found) a new job.

Current school is fully staffed, but they had to advertise my current job twice. There were also conversations about trying to recruit this year, but they have decided to limit our KS5 offer and the number of students doing triple instead- which isn't great. TBF, lab space is also an issue with the number of KS5 classes we currently have, but it's still sad to think we may be turning students away in September.

I know there are going to be a lot of schools without science teachers locally in September. And I also know this often creates a vicious cycle where more teachers look to leave those schools and move elsewhere.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl that's really sad about your KS5 offer 😔

You are also absolutely right about other staff leaving because things become unbearable when you are short staffed!

My daughter has said she has supply teachers who can’t control the class so she doesn’t learn anything in some of her classes. It is frustrating for her and she would love me to home teach her but I simply don’t have the option as a single parent.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl I was a teacher for 35 years up until about 3 years ago and teaching was a pretty middle class, right wing profession, considered a good job to go into after university and I have worked with a wide range of people from very different backgrounds. What changed was that many retired. I remember one year when 10 people retired from my school as there was such an attack from government on pay and conditions - many retired early just to get out. Academisation also upset a lot of experienced teachers as schools were given to private boards to run. Their political leanings had nothing to do with whether they taught maths or English, in fact one maths teacher i worked with went into great detail about how he had a string of buy to lets plus a load of shares etc: not terribly left wing in my book. I can of course only speak anecdotely and I sure schools are very different places now. If they have become a hot bed of left wing ideology, the government can only blame itself as it wasn't always that way.

Government never enshrined in law the “prizes to all” ethos. It was a decision by schools.
No, but an expectation that schools look after students' mental health is part of the wellbeing charter looked at by Ofsted and perpetuated by student and parent voice. I've seen the surveys. Lots of it is down to social media influences, which have increased exponentially since I started teaching. Inexperienced staff just mean that more students are pandered to. I have a student who must be allowed to eat in a lab, against all health and safety guidelines, because their mental health apparently trumps physical safety.

You have not been able to suggest a child goes to another school and encourage them to leave for decades. I worked on exclusion protocols back in the day! How schools manage behaviour and support teachers is down to them.
The difference being, school can suggest homeschooling to parents who will not back any decisions made by academies. Being an academy is actually an advantage here; they can choose NOT to have certain students (but will, for funding reasons, take others with similar issues).
Most parents back down if the head teacher does not pander to them, becaus ethe prospect of being in charge of their own children's education is way too taxing.

Maybe SLTs are poor. I would agree they are undertrained. However moving schools adds to expertise and experience.
While it does, it is beneficial to do so after gaining the post of SLT in charge of whatever and staying in there for a bit. Having been part of the community for X years always trumps gaining new experiences elsewhere when you start. But sideways moves are funnily enough not looked at favourably.

Schools do not have to be social workers. It’s not mandated that they must provide extra food. Expectations of parents do not have to be met. Why childcare? Get contractors in if you want. Don’t allow parents to dictate to SLT.
Yes, that is exactly what is mandated if you want to pass an inspection. My last school was chastised for not enough STUDENTS attending clubs, even though they were offered and widely advertised. My new school is trying to combat a similar report and slap on the hand by offering more clubs at lunchtime next year (also, partially, to lessen the impact of yet more students needing supervision).

And if there is a proven link between breakfast eating and increased results, a school under pressure to get results must, therefore, provide food. Because if they don't try absolutely everything, the head and many mambers of SLT get fired, and who wants to risk their job over that?

Schools do not have the money for contractors, so it becomes part of the contract of anyone they sign up new to teaching and it becomes an expectation for existing staff, too. Have you looked at recent leadership contracts? Mine (Lead Prac, not even on SLT) stipulates lunch time supervision, before and after-school revision sessions and I can be directed to have meetings as late as 6pm. Other academy contracts look similar - again, down to the pressure to get results without the funding.

SEND provision has been inadequate for decades too. That is the area where more money is desperately needed. However needs have grown like topsy. It’s difficult to see how they can be met.
The removal of specialised provision hasn't helped there. Both SEND and behaviour units are needed, with fully-trained staff. But they have been closed, with those children shoved into mainstream lessons where they cannot cope. And SEND funding has become worse, as I have already mentioned.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl I see that happening too with ECT’s and short term I can understand it but if we have a massive shortage of teachers and ECT’s aren’t getting employed; long term the lack of teaching staff will become much worse, we just won’t be able to recover .

The biggest problem with schools is not even pay, it's the mental workload, and the fact schools become more and more corporate, they are ma naged by a range of heads, executive heads and super heads, kids and teachers alike ar just blooming numbers not people anymore, the amount of paperwork is goign through the roof (no one every fucking read it either, but you have to do it to tick the box on someone's performance management), and bullying is ripe. Academies are finishing off the system, Nothing will repair it. I did supply for a few years and the things I have seen resulting in horrific management were shocking.

Management of the highest calibre can put some of this right. No school can reasonably expect a parent to homeschool.

I don’t think supply teachers ever did get the same respect as staff teachers. No rapport is built up so pupils just know it’s a temp fix.

There are still behaviour units. There are still special schools. Parents often don’t want them though.

I’ve not ever seen a school fail an ofsted because Dc don’t attend the clubs they offer! I think this also adds into schools talking down the profession so it’s unattractive. SLT in many schools is not good enough but it’s a product of not attracting the best people into the jobs. It’s obviously not all about money. People seem proud to strike. To disrupt education. They fine the impression that DC don’t matter. The end game matters more and DC are collateral damage. Lots of people do not want to join in. Nearly 20% of Dc go to private 6th forms. Why not encourage all good people into state schools?

There are still behaviour units. There are still special schools. Parents often don’t want them though.
There are, but it's increasingly difficult and expensive to access them or any form of alternative provision. We have a y10 who will finally get a place in AP next week - because the y11 who currently has it will leave. He's been waiting for over a year.

I'm not proud to strike but it's all we have.

I don’t think supply teachers ever did get the same respect as staff teachers. No rapport is built up so pupils just know it’s a temp fix.
I’ve seen an increasing trend towards employing supply teachers on a semi permanent basis. The teacher is hired on six separate contracts for each half term. So they teach the full year but the school doesn’t have to pay them during the holidays. Nor does it pay for sick days, maternity leave or pension contributions. Saves the school anywhere from a quarter to half the cost of employing a permanent teacher.

Kids know they’re not a “proper” teacher, they don’t have their own classroom and they often aren’t hired on a full time basis, they aren’t available during holidays or for parent meetings outside of class etc. So the kids treat them like they’re not a proper teacher. But hey, as long as it’s saving money it doesn’t matter if the teacher doesn’t have a proper job to get a mortgage etc, and it doesn’t matter if the kids can’t access any support outside of the classroom.

There are still special schools.

Not in my county. And I believe 1 behavioural unit for the whole of the county.

I’ve not ever seen a school fail an ofsted because Dc don’t attend the clubs they offer!

That was, quite literally, one of the criticisms in our last report.

My DC’s school was criticised by Ofsted for not offering after school clubs. Can’t win!

*There are still special schools.

Not in my county. And I believe 1 behavioural unit for the whole of the county.*

And that's the problem.

To combat the lack of after-school attendance teachers are being made to put on lunchtime clubs instead and children are forced outside. So the only way they have of being in the building is if they are eating or attending a club.

"Problem solved".

Yup, if only decent management existed in all schools, but then we are back at my earlier point.

Management of the highest calibre can put some of this right.

But nobody wants to do the job. The number of head and deputy roles advertised for my area have sky rocketed.

The 20 % of students attending private schools doesn't mean they move from state to private. Private just take a bigger proportion of in school students because of colleges and apprenticeships.

If teaching is so great at private why has DH's maths teacher mate just left the private sector to work in a warehouse?

Schools do not have to be social workers. It’s not mandated that they must provide extra food.

Yeah, let's just let the kids go hungry, because no one told us to feed them.

You'd hope that people working with kids would have a bit more of a moral compass than that.

If people who have no legal obligation do so keep papering over the cracks, the ones with a legal obligation will abdicate their responsibilities.

The ones without legal obligation take on the responsibility and then, through custom, suddenly find they have created a duty of care that means all those who come after them are forced to do it.

Then when they don’t do it, they are lambasted in the press, society, etc. and when they try to say ‚it’s Not my job‘ they are met with ‚if it wasn’t your job, you wouldn’t have been doing it‘.

If people who have no legal obligation do so keep papering over the cracks, the ones with a legal obligation will abdicate their responsibilities.

There are kids going hungry because their parents can't afford to feed them. It's not just about abdicating responsibilities.

Some nutty posts on this thread.
So if teachers are acting as social workers / food banks it's their own fault (my understanding of previous post).
But teachers/ schools have to show evidence of children's learning and progress. If you identify lack of food or social issues within the family as a barrier to learning, you can't just down tools, wait for someone else to address these issues and start teaching again once it's resolved. Resolving those issues becomes part of your teaching, in that it's a stepping stone to give that child a chance to make progress.
And good middle management can resolve some of these issues, according to pp.
Really? Pray tell, how? They're the ones stuck in the middle, with nonsense coming down the line from govt, Ofsted , academies, leadership, no resources to call on, they're tasked with making the impossible happen. No thank you!

Safeguarding has meant it is very far from clear that schools can just claim that they have no responsibility for the general well-being of children at their school. I'm afraid that schools are expected to move into the area traditionally occupied by social workers, especially when there are known shortages in that area too.

The reality is that the Government know what needs to be done to improve teacher recruitment. There are countless reports and papers giving them routes to solve the issue, yet their strategies continue to be watered-down, poorly funded and on a backdrop of antagonism to the profession as part of a general antagonism towards the public sector. This is an active policy decision to create this issue, don't be fooled otherwise.

As for STEM teaching it has always been a big issue because most STEM graduates have better options than teaching. I'd have to be a headteacher to earn the same as I earn in my STEM role and there is no way that my job is as stressful as that and I work in the public sector - similar roles in the private sector would command much higher salaries than most headteachers get.

So when Bob comes to school and he smells and he's hungry and we find out it's because they can't afford to run the washing machine or eat more than one small meal a day, we should what?

When he's the first kid in and the last out in winter because school is warm and home doesn't have any heating, what should we do?

He can't afford toast and tea at breakfast club because his free school meal money doesn't go that far, but it's not our problem?

We could ignore it. We could pass it on - although to whom, I don't know.
Or we could tell him to bring his uniform in on Friday after school and collect it again on Monday.
And tell the canteen to give him some tea and toast.
Because Bob is 12 years old and none of this is his fault.

I don't recognise these issues in the Scottish secondary where I work.

Is it predominantly an issue in England then?

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

My year three has had an unqualified teacher in his state school this year (it’s not an academy). His job title is “instructor”.