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/

Personally our schools seem to have no issues, maternity covered properly, science teacher well qualified. Stem school over qualified if anything. Primary none of them even strike at all. TA’s in every class with teacher etc

How ever the old school the children went to has gaping holes, can’t even get a dept head, the current head really has no experience apart from this school. TA’s leaving, subject leaders cnba and looking else where or cutting their hours. That school is to parents considered highly sort after or it was, as this year they don’t have enough applicants to have a two form intake anymore. But they are losing staff like a sinking ship.

This is probably a stupid question but if its hard to retain teachers because of the unnecessary workload created by government demands (eg 'deep dives' into schemes of work or whatever), but it's so hard to replace teachers and so hard to get rid of even bad teachers... What's stopping a great teacher just teaching the curriculum well in the way they want and saying bollocks to the rest of the paperwork? Presumably a school might complain but wouldn't want to actually fire them?

Clearly then you don't know about the construction industry or the logistics industry if you think only teaching and nursing have labour shortages!

schools cant afford to retain "great" teachers, because they cost more, so yes, they will get rid of them. Of course, they can walk into another job, but it will probably be at a pay cut, as schools cant really afford to employ the expensive teachers, either.

It's scary, the government aren't bothered though. It makes me laugh when they're trying to encourage people with a Comp Sci degree to teach with the shitty salary and ridiculous workload. Who on earth would choose that over earning a decent wage for flexible and let's be honest much less demanding work?

Because of Ofsted who demand all the paperwork for their deep dives etc and no HT wants to be awarded an Inadequate or Requires Improvement on their watch.
I've spent all day in an Ofsted conference and trust me they haven't got a clue and don't care about anything but the 'evidence' of what you are doing. Evidence = paperwork

My experience is pre covid but the main reason I saw teachers leave was poor leadership. A great head of department makes all the difference and can keep their staff together and motivated. I had a great Head of English who had loyal and happy staff. She was brilliant at teaching and managing teachers. She was a rare beast and many HODS couldn’t care less and especially don’t know how train new teachers.

I teach secondary English and I've been out of the profession for about 7 years. I'm desperate to get back but need to work part time and no one will accept anything below 0.6. I've seen the same 7/8 applications I've been rejected from resurface on TES again and again and again...

My son Y8, state school, leafy market town, is learning maths via an online app and has been all year as there is no maths teacher for him. They usually combine classes in the sports hall and are supervised by a member of the office staff.
Last year he didn’t have a Spanish teacher for half the year.

I get cross when I hear the wretched Conservative MPs comment about the strike saying things like, “But think of the children’s education” when it is them who have run schools and teachers into the ground in the first place.
Today I heard one MP with the cheek to take credit for schools keeping vulnerable and Yr11 children in despite the strike, when that is something the school were doing anyway.

I fully support the strike. The government clearly need to increase wages for teachers and funding for schools. They are happy to have taken significant wage increases themselves over the last few years and to waste gazillions on their mates get rich quick COVID schemes, when they should have been finding public services.

They are opting out of paying into the teachers pension. If they continue to do this they will not be ok.

Some classes in my school have supply for multiple lessons. I looked into the poor behaviour of a particular child (with SEN in this case) and found they had had 4/5 lesson in that day with supply. No wonder their behaviour was off the wall that day. We have vacancies we can't fill, we have few to no candidates for interview, we can't get people to do lunchtime supervisor or cleaning jobs and TA's are a very rare sight (again can't recruit them despite multiple adverts).

It's a vicious cycle.

We have TAs in with every class too but we are actually 4 TAs short.
We have so many SEN children in mainstream now who need a 1:1 which they don’t get. Instead they get a class TA divided between 5 EHCP children and the rest of the class.
Having a TA in every class is good but doesn’t mean they are fully staffed.

I’m blessed in that DS leaves school in a few weeks, he’s had permanent staff for most of his lessons throughout. He’s in 6th form in a standard comp (which also offers classics and Latin, in an area of rural deprivation- many friends got contextual uni offers). The school is well-regarded and I think uses this to its benefit with staffing.

likewise, my own school is fully staffed. However, I’d be interested in a change of scene. I’m an experienced teacher, a maths specialist with experience in SEND and leading core subjects. I have a track record of getting kids through SATs. Local jobs are main pay scale or temporary contracts. Not what I’m after. I understand why schools only offer these, but it’s not helping recruitment.

I've taught in primary, state secondary and private. The crisis is very real but I've really really felt it since covid. I think a previous poster was right - covid hid the problems but also I know a lot of teachers near retirement who jumped early because of it.

I've also worked with teacher training providers and the trainees have been shocking recently. And they won't let you fail them. Absolutely desperate.

I tried private too. Yeah it was nice but actually the difficult behaviour ( a hang over from covid) continued even in private. They are bending over backwards to please parents so no real behaviour system. Private pay about £1500 more a year than state (where I was) but that wasn't worth the ridiculous amount of bloody shmoozing I was expected to do and events after school. Plus the longer school day to make up for longer holidays. No thanks, I've got a life and my own kids. I left after 6months. I'm about to go part time before I crash out of the career completely. I'm taking a 20k pay cut but it's worth it.

Huge shortage in most schools I've been in recently.
No applicants for head of history or head of pe.
Short of science teachers.
Can never get maths specialist supply even for long term supply.
One school has had to move an experienced head of department from another academy in the trust as no suitable external applications.
Not enough maths trainees on pgce.
Even with almost 30000 to train.

I'm not sure private schools will be protected. I am a state teacher and wouldn't work in private because they often expect evenings and Saturdays in school which wouldn't suit my family life. I wouldn't touch a school not in the TPS. SIL worked at a private school and moved back to state after having a baby because of Saturday commitments.

The problem will absolutely spiral, because these current children being taught by long-term supply or non-subject specialists will not be choosing to go to university to study those subjects further. It's a vicious circle, because there'll be even fewer of those graduates coming through who may be available to do a PGCE.

I told my own teenagers 5 years ago when they first entered secondary to make sure they studied hard and got a decent job so they can pay for their own children's private education.

Yes, the cost of living is one thing. But it's behaviour and workload that are the killers for teachers. Workload covers a lot of different things. I think someone really needs to be inspecting Ofsted regularly to check they are fit for purpose and give THEM a target to increase teacher recruitment and retention as their main goal for the next few years. Because at the moment they're wanting the equivalent of a champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget.

I’m not teaching anymore, but I’d never have worked in private,

Millions of open evenings, Saturdays, endless trips. No thanks.

DD3 had a cover supervisor who couldn't speak Spanish, trying to introduce her class to a new topic in Spanish this week. DD3 said it was hilarious because they had questions but they didn't know what the questions meant, so they didn't know how to answer them, and the cover supervisor had no idea.

What is the solution? Clearly things will get worse before they get better.

If you were the government, what plan would you put in place to turn things around?

Blair came to power on the catchphrase ‘education, education, education’

We need that again. I was teaching when Labour came to power. The difference between them and John Major was huge. Funds for everything. Smaller class sizes, new IT everywhere.

Wow to all of your answer to my question - thank you. My two are just finishing their first year of Uni (own did a gap year) but the only real issue their school had over the last few years was getting and retaining chemistry teachers for some reason - guess they were just lucky.

Perhaps this might cause a few parents to reflect on their voting habits but I doubt it

Thats sort of why I asked what I did - wondering if the impact of this will be catastrophic before the next GE and whether it will make a difference to voting.

Dd year 13 has to do a supervised piece of work as part of her final grade. They will not be given the information on the day the exam board release it as due to staff shortages, and a teachers resigning earlier in the year their teacher is now having to cover two classes. Usually, the year 13s are given the work and trusted to get on with it while their teacher covers the yr7 class.

This piece of work requires 8 hours of supervision, they will have 6 hours of contact scheduled in their timetable, so a quarter of the time needed is missing, this will contribute a large percentage of their final grade. We've yet to hear how the school plan to fix this.

I don't blame the school, they are doing their best under difficult circumstances.

We’ve been lucky to be fully staffed but have so many staff leaving, and leaving teaching entirely. Next year it’s going to a different kettle of fish. We are likely to be three down in both Maths and Science for a start. Currently parents have no idea of this. We keep advertising and getting nothing or very little. I don’t know what we will do. I’ve taught for over 20 years and it is heartbreaking to see what damage has been done over the last 9/10 years in particular.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow spot on. I would add to that we need to value the educators of our children, from Earky Yrars through to HE. Get rid of the 'them Vs us' mentality of teacher bashing. Celebrate and value the education of ALL children and thereby fund appropriately.
Abolish Ofsted and replace with local inspectors who are allocated several schools in their area to work long term WITH schools/colleges/ITPs, supported by innovative thinkers and academics to introduce new pedagogies which are centered around the child.
Move the burden of proof away from paperwork and onto pupil and parent feedback and judge success based on children who are happy, engaged and exquisitive. You can easily gauge this through a series of informal observations throughout the year + online surveys etc.
Empower Head Teachrmers to implement a curriculum that works for their school + community rather than a National Curticulum which just saps innovation and creativity. Obviously there will be mandatory levels of English, Maths + digital skills but outside that let teachers teach what they want.