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/

State schools can employ unqualified teachers as long as the head deems them "suitable"

It really wasn't much better under a Labour Government though.

Life would become very difficult.
Capability, observations etc etc.
Biggest problem as I see it are the senior teachers (not Heads of Dept).

Not at all how I remember it.

I had totally forgotten about this!

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.

And that’s the problem. People will take a mile if you give an inch. They always do. So you have to say no, loudly, at the start or you accidentally cause your own doormatification.

The advice given on mumsnet about how to deal with a CF or toxic family member is correct.

At our local grammar school a maths teacher openly sells vapes to children in school and has not been sacked. Another teacher roams around measuring girls skirts with a ruler up against their leg - yes a creepy and fucked up as it sounds. 4 teachers play an on line game with young female students. It is completely out of control and no one does anything because there are no teachers to replace them.

This has happened to so many female teachers I know.

If any if this is true, you can report to Ofsted.

Having taught for 13 years under a Labour government and 13 years under a Tory one-I can see very clearly how much better things were under a Labour one!

Totally agree @Appuskidu 13 years for me under both. Far more resources human and technological under the Labour government.

After 27 years as a secondary mainstream teacher I left last year. I still teach but not in mainstream and I love it now.

@KleineDracheKokosnuss The further slt move away from education, the more some parents put on the school.

A comment by ofsted is not the same as being failed by ofsted. There are lots of comments on here which are not correct. It also adds to my submission that grads would be mad to join in with this. I would say I think some schools need to look very hard at their responsibilities. We all know breakfast is best. However no one says schools must provide it.

It’s even down to little things like resources being freely available online-eg Letters and Sounds or the QCA units of work for topics in Primary. Now, all those have withdrawn, nothing is available free and you are forced to buy a whole phonics program and accompanying book scheme to one on their state-sanctioned list of approved ones. We had to lose two TAs to pay for that.

If Letters and Sounds wasn’t ‘good enough’ for the powers that be any more, it should have been amended and re-released. Free.

I think that that there are a lot of people out there who have made vast sums of cash from school budgets over the last 13 years. I think that is appalling.

Hard to do when Ofsted are giving schools "inadequate" ratings and causing heads to lose their jobs or even worse for the most minor and arguable deficiencies in safeguarding. The fight back has begun, but it has taken the death by suicide of a headteacher to start that, and even then it feels like little will change.

This is being enforced, it is not a choice.

No, it’s not his fault. But it’s not yours either and as soon as you step - his family don’t need to step up, social services doesn’t need to step up, the government doesn’t need to step up. You’ve sticking plastered the situation and enabled the people with primary responsibility to essentially avoid their responsibilities.

Yes. Schools are expected to educate beyond the curriculum. After school clubs can be difficult in rural areas due to coach contracts taking DC home. Therefore schools do widening of learning and development in other ways. Again, a good SLT does this.

Then it’s too late @Eleganz The idea that it’s your problem and you have to spend money is ingrained and it’s not going to shift without major political reform (probably in the form of a statute).

I think the issue is that you appeared to be saying that it is schools and teachers weakness and soft-heartedness that has caused this issue rather than actual expectations from government through guidance and interpretation of legal requirements enforced by the inspection regime. You were claiming that it was not a requirement for schools and teachers to act in this way, when de facto it is.

Over the past few years this has been a clear mission of Ofsted and many previously outstanding schools are being rated as inadequate solely because of safeguarding as a result of apparently not having the systems in place to protect vulnerable pupils and bring in relevant external agencies. What this means is the government through Ofsted is telling schools that they will be seen as failing of they do not have systems in place to intervene in the case of vulnerable pupils and assess and appropriately engage other organisations in their care - i.e. be the social worker in the first instance.

His parents are doing all they can. Other services are so stretched that they can't help except in the most extreme cases. Bob has a shit life... but it's not the most shit.
We can, and do, report to other services. But when they do nothing, are people actually suggesting that we let Bob stink and go hungry??

Maybe I’m being unreasonably defensive but that stings. SLT are not the problem. We have done everything we can to reduce workload in our school (we have removed most marking requirements, got rid of written reports, reduced from 6 data collections per year to 3, got rid of homework, moved some training online so that some INSET days could be WFH etc). It’s still shit. Staff are having to teach heavier timetables with more shared classes, more teaching outside of specialism, a greater churn of not-good supply and nervous ECTs to support, no money for resources, fewer support staff and students presenting with more complex needs and challenging behaviour.

As a senior leader, I’m busier than I’ve ever been before. We’ve not replaced a number of SLT posts so are now trying to spread the an ever growing amount of work across an ever smaller team of people. The safeguarding and child protection issues that are emerging now are so much more numerous and more complex than we have ever dealt with before and the pressure from Ofsted, parents, the diocese (Catholic school) and local authority are all very real. We are just as much at breaking point as the rest of the school staff. I’m relatively young, childfree and managing ok, but a number of my senior colleagues have had health issues made significantly worse by stress and pressure this year. One of them almost died, and two others also had significant chunks of time off sick. One has resigned to take retirement earlier than planned at significant financial cost. He will not be replaced. So we’ll be spreading the workload still further next year because we have no money. I’m sure we’re all aware of high-profile cases involving HTs committing suicide.

It’s not even primarily Ofsted. They were quite reasonable when they came this Autumn. It’s the relentless pressure of there being no money for anything, no respect for the profession and the knock-on impact of a crap economy and underfunding or removal of other services, which are forcing schools to pick up ever more complex social issues.

I started teaching when Margaret Thatcher was PM but didn't see any improvement when Blair got in so I don't think there was a golden age under Labour BUT I have not had to teach in the UK under this current government.
It is obviously much worse than I thought.

I started my secondary school teaching career 5 years ago and I am leaving at the end of this school year. I have had to for my own sanity. It’s not the kids- I absolutely love them and love teaching them. I just cannot physically cope with the workload anymore. I’m a single mum working 60 hour weeks with 3 young children, having to pay childcare, earning too much for benefits but not enough to actually live on. The amount of cover lessons I have had to do this year is beyond stupid and we get no support. There are about 5 others leaving my school at the same time as me (only 50 teachers altogether so that’s a big percentage of them). I don’t blame people for not wanting to sign up to this. I’m counting the days til I leave!

I noticed a massive improvement under Blair. Constant IT and DT refreshes. Smaller classes, loads of support staff, money to tap into everywhere.

Now it’s even worse than when Thatch/Major were in power.

This seems really hard to believe. It’s breaking every safeguarding rule going.!

@Valeriekat I disagree. The job has changed so unrecognisable since Tories came to power.