To think droves of teachers will make the decision by husband made today- to leave

[Peakyshelby]

Well after 6 years of teaching my husband has broken down, gone to the doctors, been signed off and says he is done.

he has done 3 years in 2 schools and then done supply for 3 years. There is too much to list but the highlights have been

been told to go and fuck himself and other insults thrown at him by kids with hardly any consequences from parents and schools

having stuff chucked at him

having to appear as a witness in court when a parent beat up his own child at home time in the playground

having parents create a smear group on WhatsApp against him and 2 other newly qualified teachers because the parents said there little darlings behaviour must be down to inexperienced teachers not being able to handle them.

having parents laugh and him and tell him he is picking on their little darlings by trying to sanction them.

have children laughing at him and saying my mum and dad don’t care what I do

hardly any support from above.

There is too much more to write but today he had a 10 year old child walk up to him and pour a water bottle over his head.

he is done. He qualified with a group of 10 others and 8 of them have since quit. 2 did not get through there NQT year.

He says the system is broken

@LoopyPooly the best head teacher my DH ever worked with had a 2:2 degree. He got amazing results from his classes, the best in the area by miles and the kids and staff all respected him.

Agree to some extent - but given that the grads with 3-4 A’s at A Level and 2;1s/1sts can walk into STEM jobs paying £60-80K, and are usually graduating with £50k plus of student debt, it’s no wonder that the brighter graduates aren’t attracted into the profession.

Just as there is no money for NHS staff, there is none for these either. We have a broken welfare state system where people want everything provided for free and at the best quality, but there is no money in the pot. And just for balance, the current conservative govt (or rather Cons/Lib government for the first 5 years) inherited a deficit so large that there was nothing to fund any of the necessary and recommended changes in education - Gordon Brown spent spent spent, but made no attempts to find the funds to pay for it. The Labour Chief Secretary for the Treasury, Liam Byrne, left a note on his desk for the new Con/Lib offcier stating : ‘I am afraid there is no money’.

Easy to blame the Tories for the current state of affairs, when they were well and truly shafted by Labour - and then add in covid, Ukraine and everything that has contributed to fuel price rises and the CoL.

We are where we are because of decades of mismanagement by governments of all colours.

@RosesAndHellebores Not an own goal at all, two entirely separate issues in education - albeit with some cross overs.

One issue is behaviour and failure of SLT to do much (in fairness they have their hands tied a lot of the time). I’m glad your DD is getting on well, but as you can see from this thread, many do not.

The second separate, but linked, issue is why would someone who is a high achiever academically want or need to go into teaching? For staters it is badly paid and has a litany of issues (including behaviour). The government ‘solved’ this by making the entry requirements to become a teacher much lower, rather than actually tackling the reasons why those who have an academically gifted record don’t want to teach.

Nobody with passes at GCSE, A Level and a 2:2 should be teaching secondary level, in my opinion.

My own Dad left school at 14, but that is hardly the same as attendance at school being optional as a pp claimed.

He left because the school was in lockdown (polio) and he decided he might as well be working as sitting at home.

all of this

@Giantpaw I would say that’s the exception rather than the rule.

It also used to be that only those who achieved highly could even go to university in the first place. Now, pretty much everyone and anyone can go, regardless of academic record.

The benefit cap is lifted if you can get any sickness claimed for.

I suggest as many of you as possible send a link to this thread to [email protected] he is (hopefully) the next minister for schools. You never know he might respond

@LoopyPooly oh dear. I think you yourself have missed the point entirely . You is perfectly sufficient.

@Supersoakers If you're going to copy and paste, can you link to the actual sources please? Just so that bias, if any or not, is clear.

It's impossible to know where the above is from, where you own words stop and direct quotes start. You've also copied and pasted the same sentences twice.

The Labour government ended 14 years ago.
Phonics have since been implemented.

Phonics was taught under the Literacy strategy and Letters and Sounds was freely available from 2007-both under Labour.

Have you considered there’s a huge portion of society who aren’t sycophants for the conservatives but don’t vote at all because what’s the point for them. Made worse because Starmer is just Tory lite.

sadly many of the more experienced teachers with 'presence' left as the government cuts kicked in alongside the widespread academisation of schools. SLTs don't care about the staff or the students, it's about running a business.
there's no provision for SEN, behavioural issues etc, the money isn't being spent on TAs, employing NQTs to save money who are taught teaching is crowd control.
The quality of teacher training is poor, the SEN knowledge is limited, the them and us attitude towards families is obvious, irl but also reading here.

instead of one to one or extra support the disruptive students are given punitive treatment and begin to play up to the label teachers give them.
all the comments here about 'little jonny' or 'the little darlings' show how little respect these people have for children and families who might need more support.
All of the societal problems including parents at the end of their rope and teachers leaving in droves can be directly attributed to government cuts over the last fifteen years including removal of Surestart centres, Connexions support in schools and NHS cuts resulting in ridiculously long waiting lists for diagnoses.

Nobody with passes at GCSE, A Level and a 2:2 should be teaching secondary level, in my opinion

I assume you want a 2:1 as a minimum? Because the difference tween 2:2 and 2:1 is 1%? In all seriousness, what difference does it make?

What is SLT?

My DH works internationally with French speakers. Do you think he should give it up because I am not fluent in French?
Of all the weird posts on this thread, I've not seen anything like this before - you think DH is not a "high calibre" teacher because of his partner's grammar (which is fine for a mumsnet post anyway)?

'discipline' is the elephant in the room, primarily parental. Not to be conflated with abusive behaviour towards minors. unfortunately there is no incentive or punishment for disruptive behaviour.

@notbelieved Not just a 2:1 in the subject they intend to teach, but a record of achievement throughout academia. A demonstration that the individual themselves did well - a minimum of a 6 for instance in Maths and English, as well as this minimum in the subject they are specialising in. That also goes for A Levels. There should be a minimum standard, not just ‘passing’.

When you’ve come across English teachers, who, for example, cannot tell you when Shakespeare was writing his plays (which is a core text at GCSE) something has gone badly wrong. There are many, many examples of teachers I have come across in my time that simply didn’t have the rigorous subject knowledge required to be teaching GCSE students.

Bit of an ironic username but woke is defined as alertness and awareness to social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of minority rights.

Which part of that do you object to exactly?

Why are you telling me something I don’t know and have already pointed out.

Yes that’s the point exactly.

I’m sure if it was the children of the politicians, and the likes of (in the private education sector) who were having their education disrupted by unruly children, then something would have been done about it a long time ago.

Who would you put in front of the children while you are waiting for these teachers?

Fucking hell at that age that is unbelievable.
That comes from the home.

Quite.

Woke has become the "political correctness gone mad" or "equality has gone too far".

For fuckwits.

@SomersetBrie That’s the issue, isn’t it? The system is fundamentally broken. In order to attract high achieving individuals, we would need a complete overhaul of the system. Better pay for a start.

We have a huge shortfall of maths teachers. As another poster pointed out, why would someone with a qualification in maths want to teach when they could walk into a STEM career paying them £60k+ starting salary?

Pay is only one issue, the entire state education system needs to be changed.

Reread my comment. I did not paint anyone as anything.