To wonder how much longer it will be before all teachers quit?

[FunionsRFun]

Been called a bitch and screamed at today. Kids are making no progress because 90% of the leason is dedicated to bad behaviour.
My detentions have been taken off the system to make behaviour look better.
Why would anyone do this job?

The excuses being made on this thread make me realise that a large part of the problem is many parents not having a similar approach and kids not respecting authority

^

This.

Awful combination. Children need authority. They are looking for guidance, not free rein in life.

This is such a good point. For context, I tried teaching for a bit - I lasted 10 weeks. It was awful. I now work in a different industry.

I feel terrible for everyone involved in the teacher recruitment/retention crisis we’re having. The pupils are suffering, the teachers are suffering and there are no winners.

I won’t pretend that the situation will magically improve with more funding, because that’s not true, as it’s a very complex situation that doesn’t have easy solutions. However, more and regular funding will certainly help to improve the current situation.

I think teaching is a job which has a lot of negativity and complaining around it because of its very nature. Working with children is always and was always going to be hard. Imagine your work life interactions were mostly with children. Ooft. Yes you have some lovely ones and yes you’ll have some not lovely ones but it only takes one horror to make life unbearable. Unfortunately I don’t think people appreciate that when they choose teaching. I would never want to work with children because I want to have civilised interaction at work with mutual respect. But I do worry some teachers think teaching is going to be something different. There are people out there who are amazing teachers and really can connect and inspire the children and are natural teachers but it’s rare.

My day yesterday started off having to manage a child who thought nothing of sitting on the floor ratting a desk back and forth during instruction time, refused to step outside and then complained when they were eventually moved out by another member of staff. I teach 11-18 year-olds, not primary kids.

Completely reasonable requests (like sitting down, taking their equipment out and coats off in a room that is regularly too hot or staying silent while I am explaining a task) are met with actual wails, screams, walking off. Not the majority, by far, but it only takes 2-3 students to do this every lesson of every day for it to be a massive drain on mine and other students' time and energy.

I get told by support staff that behaviour in my room is better than in many others. I dread to think what the kids have to put up with in some lessons when I feel like I barely get anything done.

I am also one of many staff to leave soon and while I feel bad for the many kids who will now have supply teachers (because we can't recruit, especially in my subject) and even more disruption every day. It's the reality of many comprehensive schools these days, though, and I feel awful thinking my own children will still have many years of this left.

Absolutely! Especially the early post straight away blaming the teachers for causing the pupils to act like they are!

The oddest thing is that, going by MN, it seems like everyone are perfect parents who don't allow their children a single minute of screentime, any UPFs, always offer healthy home cooked meals with at least 5 a day and meeting all their emotional needs.
^^
You just need to read the smugness and outrage at threads about late potty training, children's typical diet in a day, screentime or social media guidance. If the vocal majority are parenting so perfectly, how come older kids are so fucked up that schools can no longer function?

Because any parenting forum is a self-selective group … and for a start, parents in the most dysfunctional families are unlikely to be on a parenting forum asking for advice.

For the rest, I doubt most people are going to post really honestly about their worst parenting decisions!!
Just because the ‘smug’ ones are so vocal, doesn’t mean they are the majority….

I think that there has been a fundamental change in the expectations of what schools should provide. Whenever the government decides children / families need extra support in xyz issue, the first thing is ‘schools can provide this’.

Mental health support, food vouchers, SEN support, Covid testing etc etc so that schools have moved away from places of education to be places of social support, often with no additional / minimal funding. Other sources of support (eg CAMHS, specialist schools) are completely overstretched.

This has changed the relationship with parents. Parents now expect much more from schools in terms of support for all sorts of things, and if they don’t receive it they blame and criticise the school. This damages the relationship between parents and school and makes it harder for schools to enforce discipline.

Qualified in 2000, here’s how I have survived:

-Find your voice or your advocate. When I was heavily pregnant with DS I was pushed down the stairs by a horrible Yr 9 (had many suspensions, most likely in prison now). School wouldn’t move him from my class until DH rang my head and threatened to go to the press. I left 3 years later.
-I work at a school now where we are directed to work in our undirected time (so have morning and lunch duties). I now refuse to run clubs or go on trips. I’m also disabled and now take my monthly physio sessions in school time where I would used to book it in my own time.
-I used to have my seating plans so all the poorly behaved students sat at the front. Now, I place them far away from me as possible and surround myself with the good kids. Want my time? Engage!

Find strategies to help you through the day - or change schools! If you’re a qualified teacher then your pupils are lucky that you’re still in the classroom!

I have to agree with this.

Dc schools are great. No retention issues, small classes. Good SEN support. Long term staff who appear happy.

I'm sure there must some issues rumbling behind the scenes but no more than for any other profession. I guess it depends where you live but I don't think the horror stories are representative of all schools.

One of the issues is now staffing levels and lack of time. This where the money needs to go. We don't have enough time. And to give us the time we need more people.

That's the point. If everyone just leaves there will be no teachers left. We are getting to that point ...

You are. I had 8 applicants for a recent teacher job. I was only prepared to interview 3 of them. And one of those turned out to be only good on paper. We've just had to readvertise for the third time for an SLT role because the candidates (plenty of them) are just not good enough to employ. Absolutely awful.

DH is an experienced teacher of 15 years/SLT, always gets good results and honestly cares for the kids but he’s desperate to get out. Anything that means we can have a life again!

For example this week it’s been meetings every night, a complusary school trip Saturday, data entry Sunday as well as marking and a pointless SLT task he has to do every week. For the pay he’s working for pennies by the time you work out the hours put in.

My son in a different school has had a substitute for 3 out of 4 years because nobody wants to do the job for the money.

Honestly you are misunderstanding the issue. I taught for 20 years. It's not that there will be less than positive interactions with kids.
Its the fact that this doesn't happen by magic. Creating an environment to which enables positive interactions and learning behaviours takes time, skill and resources.
Larger class sizes, increased numbers of learners with complex SEND but without additional funding and resource, teacher shortages, classes being covered by lower skilled TAs because you can't get a supply teacher for love nor money, kids still very much dealing with the fall out from COVID on their wellbeing, key parts of the school building being closed due to RAAC. These are the things that are making it hellish and directly correlate to government funding and policy. Throw in parents who aren't supportive due to a culture of teacher bashing or are unavailable to their kids because they have their own problems (CoL, unstable employment, inadequate or temp housing) and that makes things 100 times worse. Again directly correlates to government policy and has got exponentially worse under the Tories.
And that fact that some mumsnetters' lovely little home counties villages school hasn't been hit by the issues to ths same degree is hardly shocking, but surely posters realise this is not representative of the vast majority of schools and locations.

Exactly!

Dc schools are great. No retention issues, small classes. Good SEN support. Long term staff who appear happy.

We had a ‘nice’ school like that locally-lovely catchment, local staff had been there forever and it seemed great. Till those staff who had been there for years had enough/retired/moved on and it was virtually impossible for them to get staff because they couldn’t afford to buy or rent anywhere near the school. They eventually went into SM, were taken over by an academy and had a new interim head and are a fairly corporate enterprise now which has to take teachers from the academy sent there for a year or two on rotation as nobody wants to stay permanently.

Just watch out what happens when those ‘long term staff who appear happy’ leave.

I think teaching is a job which has a lot of negativity and complaining around it because of its very nature. Working with children is always and was always going to be hard. Imagine your work life interactions were mostly with children. Ooft. Yes you have some lovely ones and yes you’ll have some not lovely ones but it only takes one horror to make life unbearable. Unfortunately I don’t think people appreciate that when they choose teaching.

I disagree here. Teaching isn’t horrible because of the children. It was a pretty good job when I started-not so many decades ago. Autonomy in the classroom, sensible and realistic curriculum, support from management, pay keeping up with cost of living, workload expectations not ridiculous, parents generally supportive and funding for staff and external services.

All of those things have gradually changed and those are the bits that are dreadful. It’s not that I went into teaching not knowing what it was like. The problem is it’s changed, massively for the worse, increased workload hugely, and now pupils are unhappy, stressed, don’t want to go to school, standards of what the kids can do is no better, and teachers are leaving in droves. What was the point?

Bingo. Now to read the dozens of pages of justification...

Oh god. And mine have the gall to say unisex toilets are OK because male students are nice even though it's only men that rape women in mixed sex toilets.

I agree, and I'm also lucky that my union have my back (and I know that's unusual - have had a few run-ins with HR/my boss over things like flexible working).

I'm so sorry this hapenned to you when pregnant, thats terrible.
And its great to set boundaries for your own self preservation.
But it's a shame re trips and clubs, these really enriching activities which can be make or break for some children. After a horrific experience earlier in year 2, we had a very anxious school refuser, and completly justifiably considering the trauma she had been through at school. It was the before school 'talk and toast' club and the after school drama club which helped put my daughter back together again, gave her back her calm and her confidence and I will be forever grateful to these kind and generous staff who did these clubs.

From the parent side of things I can see where some parents are coming from. I've had parents have their children sit for 6 hours in period blood, holding their bladder because they're told not to go. The situation like this happens because of teachers that don't allow children to do normal human things (go to the toilet, change their pad etc). However, the teachers that aren't like this don't deserve to be treat like crap.

I have several friends in teaching and two of them have now left. The one that remains feels like she can't because she's single and needs to keep a roof over her head. Watching her is like watching someone in an abusive relationship, honestly. She's a shell of her former self.

All three experienced verbal abuse daily and physical abuse weekly, and when this was reported to parents, the parents either took on the baton and started verbally abusing as well, or reported the teacher to SLT in an attempt to have them disciplined. For the temerity of somehow causing children to call them slurs, spit on them or hit them.

They all say that they're in teacher groups where tens of thousands are reporting the same thing, and are leaving the profession.

I guess all those wanting teachers to leave will get their wish, and it'll be your kids and grandkids who suffer.

I know this is MN and so will go down like a lead balloon but at some point parents have to actually be held accountable for something. We see so often on here people justifying the public money they receive for raising the next generation of taxpayers but it seems like the majority of parents are 'raising' children that will not be fit for society, let alone the world of work. There's going to be an astronomical bill in a couple of decades time once these kids become adults and can't cope with any kind of civil society.

I don't think you read my post properly.

The instances about the luck of response were not send willy nilly.
DD was told to contact her teacher via email to arrange a tutorial. (Teacher was in for 2 days every fortnight... but that's another issue.)
I was told by school to contact the teacher in question via email to discuss GCSE choice for their subject.

...and yes, DD and myself have stated the reason for contacting the teacher in the subject line.

I'm not sure why you think teachers don't have the capacity to check emails and prioritise or highlight what needs attending to. I get easily 40 emails each day. If I don't prioritise and filter out the junk, I'll be soon overwhelmed. And my current job isn't a pure desk job either so this has to be done on the side.)

I used to put the naughty kids at the back too. I got sick of all the lessons being about them.

When l put them at the back l could then focus on the ones who actually wanted to learn.

I'm not sure why you think teachers don't have the capacity to check emails and prioritise or highlight what needs attending to. I get easily 40 emails each day. If I don't prioritise and filter out the junk, I'll be soon overwhelmed. And my current job isn't a pure desk job either so this has to be done on the side.)

I am a head of department for my subject in a school with around 260 students in each year. In all seriousness, do you think I should be available to each and every student and their parents to discuss whatever it is they want to discuss? Year 9 options can generate a huge amount of extra work and yes, it's important to discuss with teachers and parents. But most schools have an options event (not always well attended) and obviously, children can discuss with their teachers at any time whether or not they consider they should be doing the GCSE in their subject. But it can't be a meeting for everyone, or more than a few minutes discussion because there isn't the time.

I was at an open evening earlier this week with parents moaning about the school closing at the time that it said it was closing (8:30pm) with an overwhelming ignorance as to the fact that teachers are people with families and lives that also need their attention . It's really not unreasonable that when you've walked in the door at 8am, you get to walk out of it at 8:30pom