Teaching OMG!

[LucilleBluth]

I have been training to teach this year. I started my PGCE as a 43 year old in September 2024. I’m about to finish it-well I say that. I’m feel like I’m hitting rock bottom with two weeks to go. I have worked in schools as support staff before so I wasn’t totally blind and I have good friends who are teachers, but oh my god, it is such hard work. The workload is insane-the kids are lovely but I’m dealing with so much extra stuff like SEN, EAL is off the charts, behaviour, kids without equipment and who can’t cope unless a lesson is chunked and scaffolded so much I may as well spoon feed it.

I don’t feel I can do it full time so I applied for a Cover Supervisor role-15 qualified teachers applied for a £21000 year job, I,didn't get it. What’s the point

Teacher pay needs doubling. I’ve been awake since 1am.

You aren't comparing like for like. Junior doctors have a responsibility to save people's lives. Teachers have a responsibility to Equip pupils and students in preparation for the work place. Teachers are under constant scrutiny from SLTs, Ofsted and parents. This is on top of managing high class loads, often containing violent or disobedient pupils. Added to that, are the constant moving goal posts with targets. If you've not done the job, sorry, you don't know what you're talking about.

Then find a better school for a permanent job.

Teaching is a crazy job. VERY long hours during term time, but you do get 13 weeks holiday. I take a 20% pay cut to do 4 days a week and make the term times more manageable, but yes, the pay is rubbish given the intensity of the job - 13 weeks holiday but we have to pay school holiday prices for any holiday we then want to go on!

Buy a cheap pack of biros, hand them out to kids without a pen, give them behaviour points, and make it clear they now HAVE a pen, and you expect them to bring the pen to every lesson. If they don't have a pen in future, they get a detention.

I teach children who are so lazy that they can't even be bothered to get their pen out of their bag. Amazing how they suddenly remember they have one when I go to book a detention...

As for EAL, then you can translate a whole document using Google which takes 60 seconds. For one class I had 7 EAL with poor English so had to translate to Polish, Persian, Chinese and Ukrainian.

As for behaviour, find a school with a good behaviour policy. I work in a school where those disrupting the learning of others are removed.

Doctors nurses etc also have all the same issues of moving goalposts, insanely high case loads, violent patients and under intense scrutiny!

Yes, but why are we making it a race to the bottom with whataboutery? Both professions, along with many others, are deserving of the same recognition.

Evidently others have more patience in engaging with you than I have. Your latest contribution hasn't made me feel any more inclined - in the same way as I don't feel inclined to bang my head repeatedly on a brick wall.

Well if you ever do batter ur head off a wall im sure a person working under intense pressure for shit pay and less rest wilL take care of you !

Yes, you are right x

OP didn’t come here to compare teaching to nursing, or to junior doctors, or to anyone else. OP was speaking specifically about the realities of teaching, especially around supporting SEN in mainstream schools — something that’s increasingly unmanageable due to workload, systemic underfunding, and lack of resources.

But every time the challenges of teaching are mentioned, the response is to pull in another profession with “harder” conditions. First it was nurses, now junior doctors. That’s not a conversation — it’s a deflection.

Yes, junior doctors are under huge pressure. So are nurses. So are teachers. So are social workers. The public sector is stretched across the board — and trying to silence one group by shouting louder about another helps no one.

We’re all fighting the same battle in different uniforms.

here's a thought.

Start a thread about it, instead of derailing this one.

I’ve worked as both a nurse and a teacher and whilst nursing carries many many pressures you are not constantly monitored in terms of your performance or how you manage behaviour. It exerts a constant pressure on you to meet expectations that you just cannot ever meet. Yes, nurses and docs have pressure but then imagine their manager or cqc inspector was checking every time they signed, how they spoke to every patient, if a patients family member could walk in to their workplace on a daily basis and have a go at them about the way they nurse or treat. They wouldn’t stand it for two minutes. Teachers lost their professional body years ago and no they are at the mercy of everyone who wants to belittle and exploit them.

Teacher of 24 years here and I agree with the above. BUT it is tough and everyone is tired by the end of the year. I have worked in very good schools luckily which have some issues but have been )generally) well managed and pretty well resourced. This changes how you can do the job as frontline staff. Maybe give it a year or two, op if you can find a good school abd then get out if it doesn’t get better. But to me it is a vocation still. Despite being nearly 50, I am still somewhat optimistic!!!

Absolutely agree with this. It's no coincidence that my most enjoyable position was in a grammar school.

I've never understood why teacher unions don't demand quicker and longer exclusions for disruptive pupils? Maybe when parents are forced to deal with the bad behaviour of their children, they might v well do something about it.

Gentle parenting/ not parenting at all.
Children being 'parented' by screens.
Entitlement. God the entitlement of both parents and children.
The utterly pointless recording/ planning because Ofsted might want to see it .
Parents with all the 'beauty ' tweaks ( nails , lip fillers, orange tan , tattoos) bringing in children who smell, haven't eaten properly ( so they have to be fed by the teacher before they can focus on learning anything), have lice, scabies, impetigo.

The pay doesn’t need doubling. I worked in a school and saw the payslips - £40k isn’t bad with that much holiday!

The government need to improve SEN provision though and increase school budgets to allow for more staff.

You can't have seen many if the ones that you saw were 40K

Surely pay slips have been issued electronically for years?

There are all kinds of idealogical reasons why that won't happen.

So what?

Start a thread about others jobs why don't you?

That sort of poster just looks for teaching threads so that they can have a go.

You’re a glutton for punishment aren’t you 🤣

I saw the whole staffing spend and the majority were earning £40k tops (single form entry school). The only exception were newly qualified but they weren’t far off it.

They had to be checked each month to ensure all overtime and expenses were correct.

It’s the workload for me too. 3 weeks to go (last week is a foreign residential that I’m leading) and this week, I’ve organised cover for someone who’s going on ml tomorrow (turns out it isn’t required because management got supply in last minute) so hours spent seeing whose free lessons matched then organising it so it’s equitable.

Hours spent re-writing the curriculum map (pointlessly in a new format, copy/paste but adding in all the new stuff we want to include, suppport/stretch and challenge).

Meanwhile, we have a brand new GCSE specification this year so need to write the Year 11 scheme of work and create resources.

I’ve just organised next year’s trip or we’d have lost the accommodation which is much nicer than this year’s.

I’m being formally observed (as are lots of others, I know it’s not just me) on Monday. Never had a bad lesson observation in 20+ years and to do it at this time of year is just stupid, frankly.

I can retire next year, so I think I will and see how I feel. I’m not really ready to stop, I love teaching, have a proper passion for seeing the students progress and for my subject, but crumbs, it’s flipping relentless.

Nope, calling BS on this one.

NQT teachers until recently were on £22 - £24K, Its only the last couple of years were new starts have been on 30K, still a fair distance off the 40K that you want to push.
And 40K would indicate that the almost the entire teaching staff were being paid UPS.