Does your child have a teacher to go back to next week?

[fuckityfuckityfuckfuck]

My reception child doesn't.
There are 12 unfilled primary teacher vacancies within a 10mi radius of us. Only 1 of those I could perhaps be reluctant to work in due to reputation. There are also another 16 vacancies with later start dates.

Primary has historically been oversubscribed. I know this has been an ongoing issue for a while in secondary maths/science but now it's seeping into primary which has always been more desirable, I don't see how parents can continue to ignore the issue.

Gillian Keegan has warned the independent advisory board to "consider school budgets" when recommending a pay rise for 24-25 so I would imagine there will be even more classes without teachers next year!

As its AIBU... its time parents started complaining to their MPs to protect state education.

Yup my kid has a part time teacher but the other half of the role is infilled. Her actual teacher is off sick half the time too. Her description of the class behaviour and the SEN needs of some of the children explains it.

I have a SEN son. He runs away is violent and shits himself then fights you as you try clean him up. Can't sit still, climbs everything. Hurts other students in his meltdowns. They were clearing the classroom daily due to him before I pulled him out. I always have a bruise on me, everything is broken. I only take this because it's my child and I love him. You could not pay me enough to take abuse like this on the money they pay teachers and TAs. But the LA insist he should be in mainstream. 11 months wait for tribunal to fight them on school place. When I win all the SEND schools are full anyway.

Fucking fund education. I cost the tax payer because I can't work as my child has no school place. Kids don't get the emotional support and connection they need from their teachers because their teachers are human and can only fight fires all day. An epidemic in childhood poor mental health is happening. These kids will grow up with the emotional foundation s that are forming now.... adult mental health already overstretched.

And don't get me started on the cuts to early years education (my area of work). I started when Labour was in power pushing every child matters, early education is the foundation of future learning- all that's gone. Early years work is minimum wage with minimum of free training available no support so grants to improve outcomes for disadvantaged kids. I love my work but I earnt better working for Amazon with no responsibility. Cost of child care is now prohibitive for many workers. HVs seem to spew watch and wait at clearly SEND kids to gatekeep the resources. so we have kids stating school who are in nappies or need help with putting on their coat for play time or can't change themselves for PE.

It just doesn't make sense. Cutting costs now will cost more in the future. It's so evident.

I've complained to LA took it all the way to ombudsman. Complained to MP.... he just forwarded my email to the LA saying please deal with this! (He's a Conservative on a secure seat). I have a high needs send kiddo to care for I can't go to the marches organised by SEND reform.

It's the complaints parents of non SEND kids that need to start happening. Loudly and persistently. Your kids are missing out because mainstream is being forced to use dwindling resources to support kids they are not equipped and trained to manage.

I agree with so many of the previous posts on this thread.
But until it affects their own child, most people don't realise how bad things are.

@Tomorrowtomorrow77 - a few years ago there was a programme about academies ( might have been panorama) the particular academy chain was WCAT ( Wakefield City Academy Trust) and the involvement of the CEO he was one of those chaps who is a director on all sorts of stuff but can’t do the job himself. He was paid a salary and then tried to sell his IT system to the academy ( amongst other things)

Current education system is not held in high regard in this country.
It is easy for politicians to convince each new batch of parents that schools are dire ( some are but very few) so that any action or non action by the politicians are supported by parent voters
If more parents respected education and the role of teachers - we would have a better standard of applicants and a better system of support in this country ie preparing your child for school. In European countries parents are more proactive and the children starting school are at a better point ( not all obviously) because the parents understand their role.

There has been a drastic reduction in the respect and understanding of our state education. Unfortunately I am not convinced Labour will focus on this - due to the finances needed- because NHS will need the focus

Its really hard on the head teachers when staff leave and the applicants for a position are beyond scraping the barrel
Please read the coroners report regarding Ruth Perry to understand heads are also under immense pressure

Those of you still in the job and doing your best - I hope you have a good rest over the holiday and thank you

This. All of this.

I work with SEND kids and it shocks me when I get new kids that they were
in mainstream for years. Kids who smear. Are Non verbal. Learning delay etc. these are kids that need specialist teachers who aren’t afraid of poop , can sign/communicate in other ways with non verbal kids, can be more physical without fear (stop a fleeing child for example or use deep pressure with meltdowns)

all those kids In mainstream school and the teacher having to slow dow the lessons to meet the kids at the bottom rung mean all kids suffer. And the TA often having to work with the most difficult to manage.

im barely able to do my (minor) role and I have a my own kid with send so I’m more experienced than most. These kids are often so so unpredictable. I’ve been hit, had my hair pulled, body parts grabbed forcefully, spat at by SEND kids. Often it is bad communication learned through bad management because needs aren’t met at mainstream and it takes ages to repair it.

You are definitely not being unreasonable. Unfortunately, what we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. Teaching is now unrecognisable to the career I joined 20 years ago.
It’s not about money for me, the main issue is the behaviour and lack of consequences. I’m looking for alternative careers because I’m fed up of being physically and verbally abused by 12/13 year olds. I’m also sick of seeing SLT blaming teachers for this behaviour. A recent well-being survey at my school was an eye opener! The majority of teachers admitted to being very unhappy. I think there will be several leaving my school in the next year! Sadly, I think it will have to get a lot worse before any changes happen.

I imagine it’s quite difficult to teach when a huge % of your mainstream class has SEN.

I worked in so-called ‘SEN schools’ before they were closed. I didn’t think closing them was in anyone’s best interests, but parents seemed keen for their children to be in mainstream, whatever the cost to the child.

I just saw a lot of SEN kids struggle to find a peer group in mainstream, spending your lunch break alone in the library is hardly ‘inclusion.’

i think teachers now have an impossible task. Pretty sure it was the Labour government that started the closures.

About 40% of my class have significant additional needs, either behavioural or educational or, in most cases, both. There's a full time TA vacancy in my class - we have tried really hard to appoint. The chidren are lovely but the job is increasingly impossible to do in the way I want to do it. It's so frustrating. I won't be there much longer.

Can they get rid of Ofsted and most of the paperwork and let teachers get the joy of the job back?
I'm a primary teacher in a different country and love it. Not much paperwork required in my school. You need to have basic fortnightly plans in place and follow basic guidelines (like structured regular homework for example) but other than that you're free to teach the content you and your students choose. Yes you have to cover maths curriculum for example but you can do that how and when you see fit. I perceive teaching as a respected profession here and teachers tend to stay in the job for their entire career (I'm in it 10 years and hoping to stay til I'm 65). In a recent OECD study teenagers in this country were ranked 2nd globally in reading skills so the system doesn't seem to be ineffective without the extra paperwork.
I've read lots of these threads on MN and it worries me as there are some signs in this country of Ed Dept wanting to go the same way.

@Tereo how does your country help children with additional needs, are you noticing a significant increase?

What are school budgets like?

Perhaps all the teacher bashers on here should start realising that they are playing a large part in the amount of teachers leaving the profession.

Kids don't get the emotional support and connection they need from their teachers because their teachers are human and can only fight fires all day.

Since when was it teachers, who children have for maybe one year of their lives in primary school, and who are doing the job not out of love but for pay, to whom children should be emotionally connected? Emotional support and connection is the role of parents. Of course teachers should be kind and so on but can we please stop expecting them to parent children rather than teaching them?

Take back schools into council control (with money to do so)
Develop specialist units around early years special needs and also create nurturing special schools at early years levels to support the levels of need.
Take SEN kids with disruptive behavioural problems into specialised multidisciplinary units with teachers, OT’s, psychologists and play / art therapists.
Have a public service ethos of telling parents what behaviour is expected and ensuring that children are not disruptive by appropriate awards system specialist psychologists/ workers in school to deal with disruptive pupils.
Have a sensible workload for staff.

Teacher shortages in secondary have gone largely unnoticed by the general public because teens aren't well-known for chatting to mum & dad about such things and schools don't announce staffing in the same way as primary.

From the complaints I've seen from a lot of parents in our area I don't think that's the case. Many parents complain there children are having supply teachers for certain topics. But most of them just seem to blame the school and not put together the fact that teacher shortages are causing the problem.

I've just quit. 18 years as a primary teacher and I've had enough.

Four years working for a big academy has broken me. It's the never ending relentless workload that you literally cannot ever finish. Constant demands from SLT, and living in a constant state of anxiety and stress over it all. Constant negativity. Never having the time to just be a good teacher or be trusted. Crammed in curriculum that leaves no time. It's relentlessly awful.

It wasn't like this when I started.

We home educate.

I would say 50% of the families we know have decided to HE because one of the parents is an ex-teacher who doesn’t want their child to go to mainstream state school in England.

@crumblingschools School budgets very limited... Very little money available in schools..
Yes there's been a big increase in SEN in last even 10 years. very little outside supports (SLT, ot, psych) for autistic children in particular which is horrific.
It's not perfect here by any means. I have a great class this year but every few years you get a tough one which is hard.

But big difference between UK and here I get from these threads is teachers are given more autonomy, much less paperwork and overall it's seen as a good job here and most will stay in for their full career. I get the impression it's something most only do for a few years in UK??
The Ofsted system of rating schools using one word "good" or whatever is awful and makes no sense. I'd hate that. Our Dept seem to be moving in similar direction sadly.

I taught for a decade but retrained just before covid (thank goodness). I loved actually teaching, didn't mind useful/essential paperwork but the rest was just becoming ridiculous. The rise in children who don't listen and vile parents with ridiculous expectations also didn't help; I wouldn't go back for more money, I'd only consider it if there was a major overhaul- same with lots of my ex colleagues.

You can't get computer science tea hers for love nor money here and schools are dropping the GCSE'S as a result

Not surprising though. I did a funded comp Sci degree and now can wfh when I want for less stress, substantially more pay and lots of opportunities. Why anyone with a degree in this field would choose teaching is baffling to me. The school system isn't flexible enough though to have highly skilled and qualified people come in to teach sessions alongside their own jobs.

Can I ask which country you now teach in please?

Workload being so high is directly related to recruitment issues (and therefore pay). We have one of the highest contact times per teacher in the world! It is impossible to teach, plan and mark as well as we would like on our timetable allocations. And as for managing my department, I get half an hour a week for that but it takes up considerably more time (personnel stuff, curriculum planning, enrichment, university applications, intervention planning, interventions, quality assurance). My department's workload would be more manageable with each of us losing a class. That would mean one more teacher. There isn't the money for that.
At secondary as well, there's little consideration of differences between subjects. English has a higher marking load than other subjects, core subjects have more candidates at GCSE, subjects with speaking assessments have a huge amount of admin associated with that. All have the same time allocations to staff. This affects workload and morale.

Add to the number with SEN and the way you are not supposed to adapt to that SEN.

Eg one IT class I had, I would start the explanation and giving the handout to students. One student with autism would not wait for the explanation, just take the handout and start working. He would complete the task 15 mins before the end of the lesson.

That 15 mins I allowed him to do what he wanted on the computer as long as it was quiet and not in breach of any policy. He usually played patience.

I wasn't supposed to do this, I was supposed to give him extension work, he thought that meant he was being punished for completing the work quickly.

Allowing him that downtime also allowed him to go to his next class chilled.

I agree with so much of the above. I work in a private school - I never intended to do this but I left state school teaching because it was awful. I was in a secondary in a "nice" area but behaviour was appalling and I spent all day on Sunday working and until 10 each night. I do work hard in my current role but we have about 70% of the lessons I had in a state school so there is just more time.

In every class I taught in secondary there were 5-6 kids out of 30 who were not accessing the curriculum due to significant SEN. Literacy levels were so so poor in Year 7. I felt that the format and content of the curriculum was irrelevant to lots of the kids and they needed to be out of mainstream education learning something more useful. I know the reason they don't want more specialist provision is cost but it really would be better for everyone.

I am in London and I would literally cut off my own arm before sending my children to one of the MAT secondary schools which I have visited - the whole vibe is like a prison. I did a really well regarded PGCE 10 years ago. I think of my cohort of 20 on that course about 5 are still teaching in state schools.

I have a friend who is quite a senior civil servant and when I asked them
WTF government is doing with education (this was before the RAAC stuff) his view was that there are so many other worse problems that education is seen as sort of ok. I'm baffled by this. You only have to look at COVID to see how little they prioritise schooling.

I was a teacher for 15 years and a teaching assistant before that. I left last year and wouldn't go back and I've taken a 13K pay cut to get a job outside of teaching.

The reason people are leaving is not money. The unions are told this time and time again but they always make it about pay, because that's all they think they can strike about. Teaching is not a poorly paid profession, I was on 43K a year. It's also not about school budgets, chucking more money at the problem won't make people stay.

Over my 15 years there was a steady decline in behaviour and an enormous increase in SEND. When I first started teaching I had 2 children with (mild) SEN, by the time I left I had 13 SEN out of 25 children. Each child has their own plan, their own targets, their own assessments. That's a separate job.

The kids who did not have SEN basically just had to get on with it because there's not enough time to sit with them, higher ability kids have no chance of being pushed a bit further eventhough they find the work too easy.

I had 2 TA's who spend most of their day 1:1 with particular children who could not cope in the classroom.

This will offend people no doubt and I'm genuinely sorry if it does, inclusion in place of SEN schools doesn't work. I didn't sign up to teach SEN children with the level of need I had in my primary classroom, that takes special skills and training and also a special kind of person. I didn't sign up to be punched, kicked and bitten by an SEN child who's needs I can't meet in mainstream. I didn't sign up to spend my entire lunchtime trying to persuade a screaming non verbal child out from under a table. I didn't sign up to change nappies on 6 year olds.

I wasn't teaching I was firefighting, and just got fed up of not meeting the needs of an entire class of children.

Something needs to change, but people won't like it.

We have a year group running almost solely on TA teaching. It's just not good enough but it's been going on for months and the school have been open in warning parents it's likely to continue for most of the school year, if not all.

The government have spent years squeezing education and demonizing teachers in the eyes of the general public - now we're seeing the result. Working conditions are awful and the pile-on of responsibility is ever-growing. Teachers look at the private sector and see better pay and a much easier life. Why would they stay and be miserable?

You reap what you sow, I guess.

Workload and behaviour are the main drivers, but pay is also becoming more of an issue.

Someone I know has summed it up quite nicely when they pointed at the staff car park the other week and said, just look at what our teachers are driving these days. Many cars were 13 years old or older, often very old bangers that are lucky to pass their MOTs every year. I drive one such car and at the last MOT was advised to now just drive it until it falls apart instead of attempting repairs, but I also don't have the money for a replacement when that happens. I'm an experienced teacher paid on the leadership scale. One of my colleagues lives at home aged 25 because they can't afford to live on their own on an ECT salary.

As for workload, I have a friend in Denmark who was shocked that I'd be working this holiday. I told him that, despite being incredibly organised, I was unable to finish all the work assigned to me. He asked about overtime payment and was, again, shocked that no such thing existed. He knows I work 11 hour days most days, with some as long as 14 hours during term time.

Behaviour: when you have to watch every word out of your mouth while kids get away with being rude, insulting you, openly telling you they're stalking you and making tik toks of you, when parents complain about every negative point (not even detentions - almost every one of those gets questioned), when you have to justify everything instead of just being trusted to do your job and a bad class in an observation can break your career, then there is little motivation to stay.

Money plays a massive role, from not having glue sticks, a budget for practical resources, money for cover staff so every free lessons means being pulled for cover, no money to repair buildings (one recent storm took the roof tiles off and now it leaks), no money for tech so the kids don't engage - well, what do we expect? Kids don't even bring pens anymore and now we don't have the money to replace those, and kids are gleefully telling us they won't do the work, then.

It's broken.

Unless education is being taken seriously, and fast, by parents, children and politicians alike, this is a ship that will crash into the iceberg soon.

This problem will persist while the government continues to have so little respect for education, and for children in general. As far as the government is concerned, state education is a minor niggle about which they have to tick a few boxes from time to time. This was brought into crystal clear focus during the government's extremely damaging lockdowns: we saw just how little they valued the adults of the future; after all, they can't vote yet. I haven't forgotten children being referred to as "vectors of transmission". The babies and children of 2020 had their heads played with like toys, during their formative years.