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?

Absolutely this, but the rights of some children are forgotten or met with horror if you expect them to be able to go to school with out being assaulted. There are so many mn threads where you have posters trying to guilt or blame the teacher or your child for being assaulted 'ah but, you horrible person!! It's communication!!'

Well, my first thought is, if you as a teacher can't capture the attention of a classroom full of children/ teenagers then maybe you are in the wrong profession...

What a terribly useful first thought . How many classrooms full of teenagers have you stood in front of, out of interest? If the answer to that is 'none', then sorry but you don't have a clue. I'm a good teacher with many years of experience. I can capture the attention of any class in my current school, and I could do so if necessary with no resources, as could any teacherin my school, I should think. I have, however, taught in schools where there were quite a few classes whose attention pretty much any teacher would struggle to capture.

On the Scotland/England issue, my impression from friends and family who are teachers is that it there is a recruitment crisis in many areas of Scotland, but still really hard for NQTs to get posts in the central belt, because lots of folk graduating want to stay close to Glasgow and Edinburgh and has been like that for ages. Maybe it depends on secondary vs primary as well.

The year 2 class that finished me. One child with scabies ( passed it to me twice). Another with head lice so large she was literally ' lousey' and would pass out in lessons regularly. So many boys with ADHD they were bouncing off the walls. Mark with explosive nose bleeds Frequently poured with blood for so long his mother would have to be called. Ashley whose dad was a drug dealer. He screamed cunt throughout the day and masturbated during story time. Had to have his hands where I could see them at all times. Paris ,had semantic pragmatic disorder and would have meltdowns and attack other children everytime the class moved from A to B if the scenario he had in his mind wasn't realised. Little girl who was being sexually abused. She masturbated using the corner of the table when having her work marked . If she went to the toilet and was more than a couple of minutes she was masturbating. The child who heard voices telling her which child to hurt. There was no one to supervise her so she had to remain in the classroom . The other children were terrified of her. The boy who cut the bingo wing of the TA sitting with him during time out from assembly. She looked away to speak to a passing colleague and he cut her. He wanted to know what colour her blood was. There were 2 children in that classroom who didn't have huge problems and I had a TA shared with 3 classes. It was soul-destroying planning lessons that had to involve so many moderations for the issues so that we would get through the day without someone hurting someone else. It was a mainstream school in an area that started off as quite nice. They were 7.

Absolutely. It's like telling the victim of DV 'you just have to put up with it because he/she had a difficult childhood, how dare you moan'. They would get shot down. But you moan about your child being hurt by a child who has gone through a difficult time,and you are 'mean, discriminatory etc'. So we expect children to be able to cope with something an adult quite rightly can't. That's all kinds of messed up

It’s not just teachers, my school has a high turnover of administration staff. They often get the brunt of the angry parents coming in to school demanding all sorts of things (my child won’t ever be sitting a detention, get me the Head Teacher right now etc), and answer the phone just to get shouted out.
I have had a variety of office jobs but have never been spoken to so rudely as I have answering the phone in a school.

The passive aggressive emails from parents don’t bother me too much. I do wonder though, why don’t they just ask questions normally?

I think there is a general increase in entitled and rude behaviour. I think it reflects society as a whole.

I hear you. Many wont. I had similar in my class. They were primary 1.

Have you ever figured that maybe the sheer volume of parents wanting the same information as you do from one person might just be a tad overwhelming?

Let's say a teacher has a class of 30. They teach a minimum of 4 different classes and have a tutor group. So that's 150 kids. Everyday they will receive multiple emails off parents. They will have planning and marking on top of the very demanding classroom time. They will have duties and assemblies to plan. Every Time they call a parent, that parent will want at least ten minutes of their time. Parents expect schools to fix everything but there simply isn't the resource to do it. They need more people on the ground but the budgets are decimated.

The profession has been utterly devalued. I would never encourage my DC to be teachers (or drs for that matter). I have worked in prisons and probation and am now in a school. It is awful and I am fearful for us as a society with what is about to come.

I don't doubt that things have deteriorated in recent years, the seeds of rot were already rooted when I last taught, and the years in between have not been kind.

Budgets and meeting SEN needs do not have a quick fix on the horizon. There is however slack for SLTs to make more positive working environments and cut workloads to the minimal amount required to operate within the system. Toxic SLT and MAT policies have a lot to answer for and that's the low hanging fruit. Teaching often has made work with a change for change's sake attitude beyond keeping up with curriculum changes.

It was never the pupils that made or broke a school for me, it was about the support within the school staff. 15-20 years ago, the more "earthy" schools often tended to be nicer because the staff were all in it together and had systems that worked most of the time for the challenges that their cohorts faced. It was the schools with SLTs wanting to bury problems and hope OFSTED didn't notice (then treat the staff like disobedient children when they inevitably did) and often naice schools coasting along on a usually easy cohort that were unpleasant to work in. Many of the MAT chains seem to have brought toxic cultures with them (along with petty, alienating rules).

Add in the budget cuts, reduced SEN support and the detritus of the Covid years and their impact on child development and it's a perfect storm.

I worked in a school where we would lock ourselves in during the day and once the children had gone home the door was only opened only to let staff out. We were not allowed to be there alone or to walk to the carpark after dark. If the last but 1 person was leaving then you had to leave too. You could not go in at weekends or during the holidays because it wasn't safe. This was a primary school. The female children finished their education at the end of year 6. I was genuinely frightened at times in that school.

true!

Unfortunately we're paying the price for piss poor parenting.
I sometimes wonder how some of them even got their children through babyhood

Disgusting.
Teachers aren't paid enough.
I think AI will be teaching these brats soon.

This is another reason I left teaching. If I said what I truly thought I’d be ripped apart on here and be accused of not caring, being an awful teacher etc etc etc.

The full education system is fucked, there’s very little specialist provision for children who have special educational needs, many children do not cope in mainstream and a few parents use school for respite care. Some mainstream schools can’t cope with the complex needs of many children.

Children are entitled to an education and they shouldn’t suffer due to the complex needs of others should they? Children and teachers shouldn’t be attacked in classes. Children should not be scared to go to school. There really needs to be more specialised schools who can effectively support any child who who finds mainstream difficult.

When I was at school I was so scared of my parents finding out I had misbehaved because they had implemented sufficient boundaries and authority at home. They made it clear misbehaviour at school was completely unacceptable.

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.

A bit of a generalisation , some teachers have great jobs . Example , my youngest school has classes of 10 to 16 students . I’m sure it’s not that hard . This being said I know it’s not alway the case . But what job is easy anyway ? Look at junior doctors , gaining a pittance working 16 hour shifts . Look at electricity engineers who have to restore life cables during storms , look at nurses working for such low wages .
we are all in the same boat , we just need to fight for better working conditions for everyone

If I said what I truly thought I’d be ripped apart on here and be accused of not caring, being an awful teacher etc etc etc.

I’m very interested to hear it, can you share?

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?

Yep. I don’t work in the UK, but I turn it on in the class, but cry faaar to much at home. I hate the impact it is having on my own children.

We are banned from trips now. Can’t be asking parents to pay for trips as parents have no money, and schools can’t fund trips because they have no money either.

No teacher is saying that other people don’t also have jobs. This post isn’t about junior doctors, or “electricity engineers” or nurses. Feel free to start a post about their conditions too; but this isn’t the place.

Curriculum won't allow it. One of the (many) reasons I left. Overcrowded timetable, unrealistic, irrelevant and boring curriculum. No room in the day for extras. No room for autonomy.

This is yet another of the problems with school as it is today. Zero creativity. Just ‘teach to the test’ one-size fits all outdated curriculum. Kids are generally switched off and disengaged in a system that was designed hundreds of years ago for a different age.

Combine this with lack of send support/places, underfunding, burnt out teachers, teachers leaving in droves, draconian rules, locked toilets, crumbling buildings and it’s the perfect storm.

But let’s all carry on in-fighting and getting nowhere. Let’s all carry on blaming each other. Teachers blame kids and parents, parents and kids blame teachers and SLT but nothing changes. I’m getting bored now of saying this on endless school-related threads.

I usually blame the government.

My impression is that most of the problem (apart from parents) lies with ineffective, cowardly SLTs. Also why are class teachers (in secondary school) having to answer emails from parents? Any parental inquiries should be fielded via SLT (maybe HoY/form tutor) and the pettier type swiftly dismissed with a form reply.