Teachers : what's the worst thing about the job now?

[Floursacktabletop]

I've name changed , but been here many years and teaching for 22 years.
Dreading going back on Monday. For me , the worst bit is the increasingly poor behaviour of students and the continual parental complaints and allegations.
Anyone else dreading it and fancy a solidarity thread?

Parents.

I love everything about the teaching and the school day and the children. I look firward to going in every day still after 18 years. I'm just scared of the parents' expectations and demands.

Excited for you. Enjoy your Retirement, You've earned it.

Infant school teacher here - it's between behaviour/lack of sen support and entitled parents.

We are on our knees in every classroom with at least 20% of every class having high needs / really challenging behaviour. I'm in Reception, and I am getting so little teaching done because if I so much as turn my back for 2 minutes the behaviour becomes unsafe and someone gets hurt. That's with a full time TA and an additional learning support.

During COVID, we gave our work email addresses to parents and now the constant stream of anxious/entitled parents flooding my inbox is adding to my workload. Most parents believe their child is neurodiverse and are demanding additional interventions/support despite the child managing very well, often excelling, in class.

We are so lucky that SLT in our school are supportive, prioritise wellbeing and workload has eased considerably in the last 5 years.

Children’s behaviour, parents blaming the school for their own poor parenting and the unreasonable work load and continual assessments.
There is no joy in this profession any more and I’ve lost count of the number of young trainee teachers who have left their PGCE mid way through as they just don’t want to do such a relentlessly tough job.

Parents who can't/don't actually interact with or parent their children, but immediately assume their child's behaviour is down to an SEND. No, your child doesn't know how to interact with others because if they're not at school they're stuck in front of a screen. It's the complete lack of responsibility that gets to me. Everything is someone else's fault.

Academisation has killed our local schools off. We were taken over last year by a relatively small MAT, with the CEO earning £250k a year. The MAT have refused to sign a trade union recognition agreement, so we can’t currently have union representation in any meetings, of which there have been many. They seem to want to push out longstanding members of staff and replace them with a wave of ECTs/unqualified teachers. Lots of staff have left and not been replaced, so workload has increased massively from trying to do two jobs.
We have been out on strike for 5 days over the 2 weeks before half term and have announced 6 more days of strike action with no movement towards a meeting to negotiate between the unions and the MAT. I have worked there over 10 years and it is actually depressing how they are running the school into the ground.

Behaviour

Everything is someone else's fault and there's no sense anymore of 'just get on with it' 'sometimes things aren't fair'
Every child's individual feeling is seen as the most important thing

Parents complaining about ridiculous things, and not reading with their child (primary) as they "don't have time".

Behaviour and the amount of pupils with high needs is so draining on classroom resources. Schools need more funding to help meet the needs of all pupils.

@Thedownstream
It's probably only about ten percent of the parents, but it's just too many. They want a bespoke program for their child 'Pete needs visual learning' 'Sarah is a little anxious, could you talk to her' 'Tom has a sore toe so can't climb stairs today' and on and on and on. All probably perfectly reasonable, but no thought that if every parent had a bespoke request, that absolutely zero teaching would be happening. I think in the past, people just got on with things more even if they weren't perfect. And so the cohort could move quicker.

Parents.

Lack of Human Resources - I have a child in my class that desperately needs support during unstructured parts of the day. Every break time and lunchtime I have to make the choice between supervising them myself or dealing with the inevitable issues caused if I don’t (lost teaching time to deal with the issue, contacting parents, dealing with the other parents who will pile in to complain).

Lack of physical resources - we are not allowed to print in colour. We have 60 pens issued at the beginning of the year and 6 glue sticks. Recently had a book scrutiny (a whole other issue in itself). I was criticised that some children were writing in pencil and that some worksheets were in a file, rather than stuck in books (let’s apply some critical thinking, shall we?)

The lack of/ poor quality of support for safeguarding issues. Where social care do get involved, cases are almost immediately closed because horrendously poor living conditions are considered to be the ‘lived experience’ of the child and therefore good enough.

Oh my god this. This in spades. Children in reception cannot interact. Scream and rip classrooms apart. Almost non verbal. Only thing that calms them is an IPad/tablet. Parent never makes eye contact with them. They can’t have a conversation cos they have never had one. Don’t read to their kids. Never been played with. Don’t go anywhere or do anything. Treated as an inconvenience. Then parents shout SEN…it is like an epidemic of distracted disinterested parents and the children cannot function in an educational setting. Been teaching for a long time but this is staggering.

I'm assuming the parents? I am not a teacher but do have interactions with them professionally, plus friends / family who are teachers

A head teacher l know suspended a student for attacking a teacher. Parents went ballistic, stalking and harassing the teacher. Teacher ended up trying to commit suicide but luckily failed

THIS. Absolutely spot on. The level of entitlement is insane.

Behaviour. Some of which is caused by poor parenting, lack of aspiration and an unsuitable curriculum.
Workload / staff shortages / unreasonable expectations from SLT.

Behaviour

Im secondary and the worst offenders are impossible to exclude… SEN makes them untouchable but yet they constantly swear and verbally abuse staff and other pupils

How is this inclusive teaching helping staff wellbeing and the retention of teachers?

This is going to drive the teaching profession into the ground. It’s impossible to recruit or retrain teachers… who wants to be sworn at and treated like a piece of dirt on a shoe? Of course this isn’t the child’s fault… they have SEN

I teach little ones and they are wonderful. Yes the workload or at least the expectations from SMT and parents is a lot but that's any job. I'd say the behaviour and attitude of the older ones.

And parents asking what you did, how you reacted first rather than dealing with the behaviour.

Without a doubt, behaviour. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deliver curriculum whilst managing the frankly dreadful behaviour of a significant minority of pupils. Soul destroying. I’ll be gone within the next 12 months.

Not a teacher but I feel for you, kids behaviour these days is out of control. There's no discipline you see it on here all the time don't punish them, don't take their phone, don't ground them, don't smack them, dont shout at them. So basically just let them do what they want. So many kids have never heard the word no so can't handle it.

Just the workload. I'm lucky enough to work in a school with virtually no real behaviour problems. I'm just sick and tired of never feeling like I'm doing my job properly how ever many hours I put in.

Apologist parents

Honestly- I still love it 30 years in. I’m lucky though. Great school, great department, supportive parents (generally). Pressurised and stressful but very satisfying.

Former teacher here. Behaviour has nearly always been an issue in many schools, but has it got worse most schools and why has it got worse? Has it got worse in, say, middle class areas?

The parent direct access to teachers is crazy. We have directed access but we've only used it once to email head of year and form tutor to set up meeting to discuss low level bullying of DC, which was nipped in the bud pdq.

Behaviour coupled with parents, sanctions have no effect as they are not backed up by parents. Kids are suspended for serious behaviour incidents (think violence, swearing and threatening staff, racist or homophobic abuse) - they have a day or two off vaping and watching video games and the parents blame the school for victimising their child. Kid gets removed from class for disruption and parent complains that the teacher is incompetant… and so it goes on