To ask if parents of secondary school students are aware…

[Curtainsblue]

I’ve seen some posts about the impact of lack of teachers on primary schools and also some discussion about impact on exam classes, but I wonder if parents of KS3 students are fully aware of the situation schools are currently in.

My friend is a science teacher in an oversubscribed, high achieving comprehensive school and has told me that from September around a third of KS3 science lessons will be being taught/supervised by cover teachers.

Maths are losing curriculum time (so fewer lessons every week) in KS3 as there simply aren’t the staff to teach them. He’s said this is a common picture throughout local schools, with maths and science departments in particular being impacted- he knows of 1 school in the areas that are fully staffed in these subjects.

A colleague of his at a different school has said they are preparing for it to become common place for students to be in ‘super-cover’ classes, where if there are staff absences, students will be sitting in exam style venues in groups of 60-90 working silently and independently while being supervised by a senior member of staff.

This isn’t being communicated to parents. I spoke to a teacher at my sons school and she said she doesn’t know what’s happening there yet but they are also incredibly understaffed from September.

Are you aware of staffing levels at your children’s secondary school and how this is going to impact them?

JamesGiantPledge1
Sorry ive just posted similar having not read your post first.

There was a recent thread about this and it's true. Lots of stories where the parents don't care if their child is badly behaved at school, some even telling the teachers that they must not punish their child or not to call them because they don't care about their child's behaviour at school.

There's nowhere to send the kids with behaviourial issues any more. No special schools and permanent exclusions are discouraged

A growing number of students see school as an inconvenience, they have little desire. Probably because we have an exam focused, performance target and highly and narrowly academic focused education system that only suits the most academic of children. If you aren’t an academic kid wanting to go to Uni, what value or interest would you see in our current education system?

You can’t blame most kids from utterly disengaging from this.

That's unfortunately not new. DD just finished Y11, she had one very bad history supply teacher and basically taught herself one topic.

Food Tech, Textile, D&T, languages are all already affected in her school. The postings with open positions were never that huge than this year. Science seems to be the next on the list where it will be difficult to find teachers.

Add on the fact that two potential A-level teachers she was supposed to have are now on maternity leave.

And yet people scoff at Home Education.

Yeah, but then kids have a full day at school, have to do more at home and then school homework too! No wonder so many of our kids have increasingly dreadful mental health! They should be getting their schooling, at actual school. After school should be time for all the many other important parts of being a young developing human being.

The growth of the tutoring sector is probably quite a good way to measure the decline in the state school system!

My DS 15 is at a school with chronic staff shortages. His maths and Comp science lessons are covered by the PE teachers. Now individually the PE staff are great people and they’ve done wonders for my DS’s self esteem. But that was in PE lessons .

DS needs extra help with maths. I’m having to find private tutors and as we’re currently surviving on my disability benefits it’s not easy at all.

As an outsider looking in, a lot of posters seem to accept or make excuses for their kids having a substandard education.

I cannot understand why other posts about home schooling get so hounded. Don't get me started on them having a better social life at school. If behaviour is as bad as people have said, there's nothing to envy socially.

Well all these elections where all these "public minded" types vote in the anti society party of wankers. They dont want anyone but their own getting a good education.

Yes, we're perfectly aware. Teaching is shit, I don't blame them.

@hestin

our extremely well off indie is suffering too. Teacher Recruitment is difficult even in PS. We have teachers, teaching well
outside of their remit (Spanish teacher, teaching physics. They'd be better off with a y6 teaching the lower years tbh. Teacher is lovely, but physics is not her strength!!)

Annoyingly , (but not an education crisis) we are having extra curricular stuff cancelled too as not enough staff to
cover them (even just as escorts).

just check out who is teaching what at any ps you look at, it may well not be worth the additional ££££

Is this a particularly English problem? I teach on Scotland and whilst we have our fair share of staff turnover at certain points in the year, most of our staff are permanent and in school teaching.

In Scotland you can only teach a subject (unless we're talking about the odd cover period) if you have enough uni credits in the subject and have specialised training to deliver this subject. Might that have an impact on staff retention and the ability to recruit? I'm an English teacher but if I was asked to teach French or Computing I'd be off sharpish. Equally, I would not want others to dilute our subject without the disciplinary knowledge that matters to kids.

That's not strictly true @FuckingHateRats you could be asked to teach BGE subjects no matter what your discipline - look at all the schools running combined social subjects courses with history teachers taking geography for example, or anyone they can find taking RE.
Where I work maths teachers are in very short supply, that and HE seem to be the hardest vacancies to fill.

Tutoring is another good way round to support them

This looks set to be another contributory factor to the shortage of teachers.

Several of my teacher colleagues have left teaching to become full-time tutors. They can earn more tutoring small (or, if online, quite large) groups than they did in teaching, with no pointless admin and "initiatives", and zero behaviour issues.

I have no skin in the game for home schooling and I’m sure, for a proportion of students, with proper structure and planning, it works well.

It’s not for everyone though and it shouldn’t be for those parents who remove their children from school, but then don’t make provision for them.

There have been years and years of eroding resources, provision, staffing and building maintenance. There are few experienced teachers to mentor recent graduates, who then can’t cope and leave. Behaviour is becoming more and more challenging and both parents and children are very aware of their ‘rights’. Unfortunately, they’re less aware of their responsibilities.

Ah, yes our History, Geography and Modern Studies all teach the BGE social subjects, because they don't study those specialised subjects in S1-S3. But you wouldn't catch a History teacher teaching geography exam content, even in our school which would be characterised as a 'tricky school' with high levels of need an deprivation.

All our exam classes (and thinking about it, our BGE classes) have teachers who are trained in their specific discipline (other than general social subjects being taught by SS teachers, or general science taught by physicists/chemists etc). Cover is for absence, not long-standing. That feels different than what previous posters are describing for their own kids.

@TheOrigRights

IME the kids actually understand why that's necessary & don't take it personally. They accept that in future (exam years) they'll get more teaching hours than the then lower years.

it's FAR from ideal, but parents need to support this structure & their kids, not bring them up to let things like this 'make them feel' less.

@BoohooWoohoo

my friend is 'admin' at our local senior school. One thing that really surprised me was that the 'covers' can choose which classes they cover. She had covers turn up who are, say, maths teachers & they opt to take the English cover job, and then you have a FL Spanish teacher taking the chemistry cover position etc etc. it's mental.

@likeafishneedsabike I know a lot of admin/teachers/HT's and it's what's happening at all the ones I know about.

it's not ideal, but the exam years are getting the best the schools can manage.

It's worse than most people know.
Pupil behaviour is off the charts (covid, bad parenting, cost of living crisis, social problems etc all contribute), and with schools covering lessons with non subject specialists and non qualified teachers, behaviour is not managed properly at all, it gets worse and worse. Even those children who would normally be willing to learn and behave well, end up following suit with the kids disrupting classes because they can, or to fit in. How much learning do you think happens in a class like this?

Also, many schools are entirely unsupportive to staff in managing behaviour, adding to the horrible atmosphere in classes, because teachers have to keep disruptive children in their lessons and somehow teach 32 other kids. I really feel for the kids who are behaving, who do want to learn - their mental health must take such a hit in stressful, chaotic situations like this.

And who would join teaching with such a low starting salary, relative to the amount of training, qualifications, hours of working and stress? Teachers who have worked their way up the ladder cannot progress or get jobs because they're too expensive. Teachers' pay isn't funded by the govt, so any time the govt does announce a pay rise, the schools have to cut something else from budgets to pay for it. School trips, teaching assistants, breakfast clubs, class size limits, resources, creative subjects - all get chopped.

Not to mention that due to the rising prices and energy bills, many schools are heading for serious financial situations - bankruptcy etc.

And don't even get me started on the crisis in SEN provision and safeguarding.

Probably because we have an exam focused, performance target and highly and narrowly academic focused education system that only suits the most academic of children. If you aren’t an academic kid wanting to go to Uni, what value or interest would you see in our current education system?

You can’t blame most kids from utterly disengaging from this.

It was always focussed on exams. I agree that we need a broader curriculum and to cater better to the needs of less academic children, but imo it is very naïve to think that poor behaviour and not giving a shit about school are mainly down to the curriculum, or that those attitudes are limited to students who aren't academically bright enough to manage the curriculum.

Kids can't be arsed because of a range of reasons - parents who don't value education, problems at home, but mostly it's that in many cases it was only ever the fear/shame of being disciplined by teachers or parents that made kids feel the need to engage with school work and behave well.

Now many parents won't back-up the school's powers to impose sanctions, and those sanctions are in any case very, very limited (as students well know). God knows I have no desire to return to the days of throwing blackboard rubbers at children, and we'd all love not to have to sanction anyone. But the unfortunate truth is that only a relatively small proportion of school children are inherently motivated to learn, however hard their teachers work to make lessons interesting and engaging.

A friend of mines daughter qualified 2 years ago, (she has already left mainstream teaching), she had a placement in a secondary school, came home crying after day two, said it was hell, teachers have no control, kids throw stuff, ignore, swear at her, have their phones on all the time, talk over her ect, is this true or exaggerated?
If this is true, then no wonder there are no teachers, so its not just down to being under paid, and heavy amounts of paperwork, but down to lack of support and lack of discipline, which surely begins at home

yes, it’s true. What’s changed in school is the experience to pass on to trainees in handling such behaviour. All the experience has drained away. If there is no one to support young teachers other than other young teachers with minimal experience themselves, the situation will only get worse.

Out of curiosity: is anyone considering how they can align home schooling with attending mainstream schools? Plenty of parents support hiring tutors in secondary school, so I'm wondering about beginning sections of home schooling to support the curriculum, rather than replace it, myself. Keen to not overwhelm the kids, but work out how I can support their learning from an earlier age not just at exam years

I completely agree. Especially in the younger years. They are utterly exhausted

It doesn't help keeping kids in school until they are 18, there are kids who have had enough at 14 being expected to sit exams they have no hope of passing. It's time there was another pathway for them to start training for vocational careers, going to college instead of school which would reduce the shortage of teachers for GCSE subjects.