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/

34 people squashed into a room designed for 15 too

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow absolutely

The irony is that I'm not wholly convinced that most of what we learn in school actually benefits one in the workplace. I think going to work for a company at 16yo would result in you being much more capable at 21 than if you'd spent that time at uni.

The exception would probably be subjects involving maths/science etc.

Ermm, I'd argue for teaching there!

And languages, definitely. Plus ,university is about far more than workskills as is school.

My school is a brand new build (literally, we started teaching in it last week!). It has air con system and Windows that open in classrooms and on some corridors.

Today, every teacher had the thermostat as low as possible, blinds down to keep the sun out and we opened all available windows.

It was absolutely boiling 🥵🥵🥵🥵

It was hard today. Not because the kids were awful but they were too hot, flagging in the heat and irritable as a result. My classes did a lot of work but I really had to work hard to keep them from constantly chatting, which isn't usually an issue.

All my windows were open today. About a nanometre because we're on the first floor. Can't open the fire escape door because it's alarmed. Can't prop open the main door because it's a fire door. So it was over 30 degrees and fully of sweaty teenagers.

Why is any of this different to hot days 50 years ago? We just have to cope. It’s unfortunate we have hot weather. Could have longer summer holidays and reduce other holidays? I guess that would be a no no too. So no answers are there?

@TizerorFizz

We live in a progressive society. I am not a teacher however as part of my role I spent the day in an EYFS classroom today, which was much too small and the 4 and 5 year olds were really suffering by the end of the day. Of course by this point not one of them was able to focus due to the heat. The room was much too small, and funnily enough the windows were open.

Just because something was acceptable in the 1960s doesn’t mean it has to be now. Why people don’t want to nurture and educate societies children to an acceptable standard is simply beyond me. You sound mean spirited.

50 years ago class sizes weren’t as large.

There were 19 in my primary class. That actually fitted into the room. Now there’s 34 teens crammed into a room the size of a box room. So 50 years ago it was a very different situation.

Windows opened wider 50 years ago. Classrooms were larger, with fewer students in them. There was far more leeway to do things like take students outside and do nature study or play games. The school leaving age was lower, and truancy less enforced so many students would have voted with their feet on the hottest days. Victorian schools, for all their faults, have high ceilings and large windows and are generally very cool inside. And climate change, of course.

Air conditioning. I already said.

It’s the same issue.

@PumpkinPie2016 - you need to keep the windows closed to let the aircon work (sorry if i misunderstood what you meant by opening windows) it might make a better day tomorrow.

Well, speaking for myself I know a degree is useful to get a foot in on a 'graduate job' but I feel like I learned more on the first few months of work than in my entire three years at uni.

You can be booksmart and get good grades yet still be useless with the people skills required in the majority of office jobs.

But having moved into the construction sector I'm probably biased as I meet loads of rich people without degrees who are just good at making money. Like my boss who manages the fleet at the construction company I work for. He also has a car dealership, a bathrooms business on the side, and has recently been getting odd security jobs on the side from his contacts from when he was a security guard. Guy absolutely kills it financially.

Most recent venture is weekend work driving bands and celebs around which us HGV drivers sometimes help with. I'm getting paid to drive a well known rock band to the Isle of Wight next weekends in a proper pimp tour bus. His business model of fingers in many pies is much more appealing to me than slithering my way up the corporate ladder and having to worry about 'professional reputation' etc.

I was at primary school40 Years ago, we had 30+ in each class (250 kids in a 7 year school) we had one very small overflow classroom- secondary was also 30 per class. I think these class sizes have remained roughly the same for a long time. In primary it was boils in summer - lots of glass in some rooms and freezing in winter (we sometimes sat with Coats on inside. Not ideal but totally doable.

Kids in my class were wearing coats and hats this winter. They are sweating buckets and not particularly learning anything this summer.

It's not doable. It's affecting learning. And you'd hope that things had moved on since then.

I taught a class of 52 this week. As we ran out of staff so had to collapse classes. This was in a room built for 25. With windows that open 2 inches and a door opening onto an internal corridor. At 2pm the room was just over 30 degrees. But 3pm it was a smelly, humid putrid mess of 36 degrees.
But hey, everything's fine, we don't need more staff or more money in schools. Let's just carry on like this.
Or, the stupid government could TALK and try and find a sensible solution. With the NHS too. Retention of staff is more important that training at the moment.
The hole in the bucket keeps getting bigger so it's pointless pouring more water in.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if those in charge in the government had to operate out of a school for two weeks a year, one in the dead of winter and the other right before summer holidays… let them experience first hand the conditions they expect others to suffer through.

Govt involvement in education is a disaster. Vouchers is probably the least bad way to address this.

And once they realise how much the air con costs to run it won’t even be an option!

Very different expectations though. When I first started teaching we would throw the lesson plans away on really hot days, keep things very low key, not try to teach new content, take the kids outside with blankets to sit on if we could find some shade , take out books , drawing equipment, games etc. You could have a day when perhaps everybody was heard to read individually, or got a chance to stick worksheets in their books., take time to do some art or craft work. These days everything is very tightly finessed and in many schools the senior management is absolutely terrified of responding to situations flexibly possibly because they have so little classroom experience themselves.

Yes, sadly,you'd be herded back inside if you went to sit under a tree nowadays in many schools.

Wish we had a tree. We have a sea of heat reflecting concrete.
(I'm starting to sound like those old Yorkshire men 🥴).

Weused to go outside for lessons when it was really hot! Both when I was a student and when I first started teaching. Then we couldn’t do it because of health and safety and then we couldn’t do it because they wouldn’t learn anything… and now people look at you like you’re actually losing the plot if you even thought it!

So hot by the afternoon in my classroom…. It is ridiculous! We have air con/heating system in one building but we have to have it set on 20 all year round (it changes from 20 cool to 20 warm) so it’s always too hot or too cold and the controls have been disabled in each room!

I'm sure it's not as bad, but I know of lots of private schools with big vacancies, or who have (because desperate) hired teachers who have been so bad they have been sacked before the first term is out.