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?

Thankfully this is not my experience; my head is very very supportive. What is a growing problem is the lack of respect for teachers from the government, parents/carers and the students themselves. The average parent would be horrified if they witnessed what teachers are up against every single day. If we want teachers to remain in the profession then quite simply we need to value the work they do and we need to raise our children to respect teachers.

In the current climate, schools are constantly challenged by parents who want their child to attend that school but are not prepared to adhere to the rules, that same parent then wonders why they have no control over their child and their behaviour is spiralling downwards. So much teaching time is spent managing behaviour because children are not prepared to comply with expectations. So many have ADHD, but refuse to take their medication, children with ASD are struggling to cope with mainstream education and at the helm is an overworked and underpaid teacher who works more hours than many in the private sector. For those who don’t believe that those in education are underpaid - we have started up a Foodbank for staff, that’s how dire it is. Many staff have taken on second jobs, and it’s impossible to recruit support staff.

There needs to be a huge societal shift in attitudes and behaviour, across the board, before anything will improve.

Did it occur to you people may have done this.

Did it occur to you that is mostly a complete waste of time.

I’ve contacted my mp
I’ve been a governor
ive signed every petition going.

what more can i do

They’re going to struggle with that. Lots of UK teachers are going abroad because pay and conditions are significantly better. It’s widening the gap hugely. My , independent school, is fully staffed with well qualified, experienced teachers in all subject areas including Maths and Science. Because it’s a great place to work and doesn’t micro manage.

That depends what you mean by “comprehensive education.” Teaching everyone the same limited things doesn’t work beyond a certain point (and isn’t comprehensive in its approach, either, if you think about the actual meaning of the word), but neither does it automatically work to separate out those identified as “able and academic” from everyone else so as to teach them entirely separately, in different schools, because both ways are focusing on the minority deemed to be at the top of the hierarchy and how to identify them, and putting very little thought or effort into the needs, desires or abilities of everyone else (a huge, not remotely amorphous group of human beings if you look at them more carefully). In fact, this separation process is not even expressing a genuine interest in the needs or abilities of the most academically able - plenty of the academically able have interests and abilities slanted towards the more practical, caring, vocational or creative, but they are siphoned off into schools where, for funding reasons, their actual passions and interests are not the areas focused on. Valuing a wider variety of attributes, rather than ranking them along old fashioned class, race and sex-biased lines, might be a more fair way to start reconsidering the education system, and might help reduce the desire of some people to force their square-pegged selves into the round holes that society deems to be more prestigious.

twinkl is a great place to start.....lots of resources and activities there
precision teaching is also good for skills practice

What is Precision Teaching? - Answered - Twinkl Teaching Wiki

didn't occur to you to let your MP know?

What difference would that make? The government knows full well what's going on in schools. They clearly don't care.

My MP is a Tory who votes with the government on everything.

I used to do days out to reinforce school. So find out what they are doing, go to a museum, science fair, historical house etc.
do your research before so you can relate it to their work.

it seemed to help the younger years.

secondary I’m more stumped!

It's not all honey & roses there either.

recruitment is just as difficult. Student behaviour is 'generally' better, but parental expectations are through the roof. Thus not drawing in teachers.

teachers teaching well outside their specialism.

check individual schools very carefully if/when you start to think about PE

I am in what feels like a unicorn, a fully staffed Science Department. I know loads of other science teachers locally, and they are all in schools which have unfilled vacancies. It'll only take a teacher to leave mid year, or go on maternity leave, or sick leave, for us be be screwed too though. We have had adverts in TES all year, and zero potential applicants. We do get some applicants from abroad, but they're all highly unsuitable, so I don't hold out much hope that the government scheme will come to anything. In countries that have a similar education system to us, they pay their teachers better, and their conditions are better, so why would they come to the UK? When we have had teachers come to us from countries where the education system is very different (well behaved kids, who do as the teacher asks, when asked), they cannot cope, and walk out shortly after starting. We managed to persuade a few teachers to come out of retirement to fill the timetable up for next year, they're doing a day, or a couple of days a week. There literally isn't anyone else to persuade back, and we won't get any applicants if we advertise, so who knows what we'll do if we do become short. Other local schools are organising online learning in computer rooms, with the teachers rotated between classes, so I guess we'd need to do something like that.

With regard to the original question, I think lots of parents don’t know. It probably doesn’t occur to people to ask ‘how many lessons did you have this week without your teacher or without the teacher you started the year with’.

Schools have been increasingly struggling for over 10 years as funding has been cut in real terms. First schools cut the ‘nice-to-haves’ and papered over the crack, but the cracks are so big now they can’t be hidden. Teachers are leaving in droves due to a toxic combination of a lack of funding (which helps fuel the other issues) and unbearable workload and pressure and the extremely unpleasant classroom experience many find themselves in. As more leave, those remaining are stretched even further and it becomes more and more unbearable.

In my mind, this is a downward spiral which will be hard to reverse in anything less than 10 years even with massive funding and a serious will to do it…and there probably isn’t either. How can recruitment and especially retention be boosted when the conditions of the job are so poor. People think teachers are striking over pay and being greedy as they get more and better holidays than most, but the key thing is about funding and support for schools. But yes, if a qualified teacher who has been teaching 15 -20 years only earns £2k than 10 years ago, or if a teacher on the upper pay spine finds that when they apply for another teaching job, the school can only afford and take them if they accept a pay cut to main pay spine….well people wining feel incentivised to stay.

Vast numbers of classes are taken by supply teachers who are essentially babysitting, or by TAs and timetablers have to put non-specialists into secondary classes all the time because they don’t have any specialists and a warm body who is an actual teacher will tick the box.

It’s grim. And schools don’t tell kids and parents. Why? First in the early stages they hoped the issues would be short term. And they want to remain cheerful and positive and have a ‘can-do’ attitude, because essentially they have to ‘do’. And once the cut backs became the class TAs and core resources they don’t want to say because their funding is determined by numbers in schools and if people think the school is struggling, they might not apply. So a cheerful and upbeat image is projected. Negatives aren’t mentioned.

People are passive. They often don’t know and don’t know they don’t know or don’t know how to find out what they suspect they don’t know. And when they do know, they feel powerless or put their heads in the sand and hope it will get better. Those with ‘power’ find ways to boost their own child’s learning experience through different means, but most just trudge on in an accepting way, possibly with a sense that things aren’t great, but what can they do and what alternative is there?

It’s truly shit. And some people support the strikes and others can only think short term about the annoyance and difficulties of childcare that day, or see greed in the teachers. People need to care a bit more and act. Their kids are their most precious thing and they love them dearly. This is their one chance at schooling.

Britain is well and truly broken after the last 13 years. Schools, the NHS, sewage in our rivers and seas, Brexit, the list goes on and on.
What can we do about it? People are too accepting of it and the government don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. We should be marching in the street, demanding change.

No. I didn't know this.

I think this post is spot on with the first paragraph - it’s not that parents are unengaged or uninterested, it’s just not necessarily information teenagers volunteer! I wouldn’t think to ask my son how many lessons of cover he had had in a day or a week and he wouldn’t automatically tell me.

It has been really interesting to read everyone’s replies. To the PP who mentioned writing to their local MP, do you actually believe that would have any impact? Even if we all did that? I’m not being facetious, I genuinely wonder if you think that would work?

What can we do about it?

Find out what is going on in local schools. Write to your MP with the detail. Ask them if they would be happy with 60 to a class and a lack of specialists for their own child. Remind them for a world class edge, we need world class education. Tell them anyone with a manifesto that prioritises education will have your vote.

With regard to the original question, I think lots of parents don’t know.

I think it doesn't really occur to a lot of parents to care about the dire state of schools until there is a specific occurrence which directly affects their own child adversely. Some seem to regard school mostly as childcare and assume everything is probably fine as long as there is an adult of some kind in front of the class. Of course lots of parents do care very much, but it's not as if they can do anything about it unless they can afford to move their dc to a good independent school.

I agree with you on this.
It also the culture/system as a whole many want to do good but the system hampers that.

I've done some work with MPs from several different parties on various issues apart from one most have been helpful and tried to push through change.

I was encouraged by one to join and run for MP but having spoke to several female MPs one whose daughter uses a different surname and hides her mother's identity because of the threats she got, was enough to put me off.

In reality as well we need to pay more, to attract people with things like MBAs and a knowledgeable CEO earns way more than an MP and doesn't (usually) have to deal with death threats and actual attacks.

I haven't studied the economics enough but with the economic shocks we've experienced is there actually enough money to find everything better? There might be but I suspect that would only come with higher taxes and reform that may not work anyway, you can't just tax certain people or companies more and not expect there to be some knock on effect like big businesses moving out of the country.
One thing I've randomly wondered is would it generate more revenue if taxes were a flat rate, then the people who us all the different ways to offset them wouldn't be as motivated to find creative loopholes.

I'm afraid I don't trust any political party to get it right.

Another suggestion to write to the MP. Does this actually have any impact? What will doing that achieve? And again I mean that as a genuine question.

@Curtainsblue , I don't think writing to your MP can hurt, so it's worth a shot. It's also very easy and quick, as easy and quick as posting on MN, so why not do it? Most people never write to their MP, or only do so about something they really care about, so if enough people did we might see some sort of action. Any small baby steps in the right direction are worth pushing for, as ATM we're moving backwards. Here's the link to write to your MP:
https://www.writetothem.com/

Depends on the politician I've written to many about industry related things some are quick to respond others need a bit of badgering.

I am a teacher, if I taught in Scotland, on the same point on the pay scale as I’m on now, I would earn 15K more!
I live just outside London and have a BSc. There are a million more better paid opportunities locally here than teaching.

The only people who can even begin to sort this out are sitting in Whitehall. Your MP works for you. They should take into account the needs, wishes and wants of their constituents. They need their constituents to tell them what is happening and what they would like to be prioritised and why. They need to be made aware children don’t have specialist teachers, 60 to a class, lack of TA support etc etc . Hold your MP to account.

What will it achieve? It tells your elected representative that you care about this. That any candidate that promises improvements will get your vote. It tells them that if they haven't already resigned themselves to being voted out at the next election, that maybe they should start caring about education, or they might be out of a job too.

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'd say that having to ask teachers to teach outside their subject area is largely the result of low recruitment and retention rather than the cause of it.