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.

34 years service. In my case I truly believe that it was a vocation, but I would no longer recommend teaching as a career to anyone.
The job has changed beyond recognition in the last few decades.
Pointless paperwork, crappy curriculum, underfunding of absolutely everything. Total change in parental attitudes.

The only thing I still love is the actual kids
The rest of it I can't wait to see the back of.

Same here. I've never earned again what I earned in teaching, but no money on earth would have tempted me to return.

Teaching has suffered from mission creep over the past 15 years and so workload has increased immensely. Pupils with SEN significantly adds to workload and according to 2024 stats

• The percentage of pupils with an EHC plan has increased to 5.3%, from 4.8% in 2024.
• The percentage of pupils with SEN support (no EHC plan) has increased to 14.2%, from 13.6% in 2024.

I took early retirement and agencies are always in contact offering a range of positions. I just say no it is not worth the stress levels.

There aren't "at least ten threads a week". And dismissive people like you do create an environment where teachers feel the need to explain why they are so unhappy.

How are you surprised by this? Have you never read any of the many, many Mumsnet threads where someone considers becoming a teacher and they are heavily warned about all the things you've just written?

No point in engaging with posters like that.

I retrained at 40. I loved teaching. I also hated the insane workload. 80 hours a week. But the kids were FAB. I love stroppy teenagers and was in my element in front of 35 of them.

The workload drove me out in the end. That and Ofsted and absolutely sh*t SLT who would rather we killed ourselves with admin/reports/data etc etc than really give the kids a good learning experience.

But the kids! Nothing like a good lesson. Better than chocolate, sex or vodka.

YANBU. I think it’s not so much the teachers pay but the money input into the rest of the system. And by that I mean support staff, admin staff, and also investment in local communities to help parents and families

Having been a parent of 2 SEN kids - the teachers that always work the hardest and do the most for them has always been the new ones.

Teachers that have been around the block a few years always dodge the extra support, but have better overall classroom management so they get away with it.

Take it easy on yourself.

I voted YANBU but on reflection, like others, I think the workload is the main issue not the pay. Even if teachers were paid twice as much, nobody with a life outside work can do everything a full time teacher is expected to do without risking their mental health. Experienced teachers probably just about cope because they have the experience to know which of their responsibilities they can get away with neglecting (e.g., as @OhDeerohDeerie says above)!

As previous posters have said, it's not the pay.

By the time I left teaching (after more than 20 years) half of my job was additional pastoral work.

Lessons had to be (in effect) differentiated seven or eight ways, to cater for pupils new to English, children who would have been better suited in schools for pupils with MLD, children with neurodiversity, then for the less, more and most academic. Then for those who needed to fly.
That's every single lesson.

We had LSWs routinely teaching classes.

We had to organise our own supply when sick - literally ringing the agencies.

We were micromanaged in class and under constant scrutiny and observation, as the SLT were punch-drunk from the inflexible target-led curriculum, and from being subjected to continual abuse from Ofsted.

The system is broken.

(I took a large pay cut and started at the bottom in a project management setting. After 4 years I'm in a senior management position and very happy. The transferrable skills teachers have are insane.)

What's worse, is that those agencies are useless. It would help, if they were ex practioners.

Cuts. Staffing is cut down to the bone- there’s no support, no money for cover, etc.

The workload is huge in the first year or two as there is so much planning to do. However, it gets a lot easier once you have your resources, have taught topics before etc. You’re a novice - of course it is hard at this stage.

Why doesn't the relevant school department have all the resources online?

Yes, adaptation will be needed but all SOWs and lesson plans should be up there.

@Jojimoji same here. I am out of it now though. Because most people attended school at some point (and I include those in government) they think that they know what actual teaching involves. They don’t. Oh and to all those asking what has changed one word INCLUSION. A crappy experiment that has failed children, parents and teachers.

This.

The problem is that teachers seem expected to be social workers, SEND and mental health specialists and to plug the gaps for all the other failing services.

Because they're in school with children being failed by all these other services they don't really have any choice but to step up and deal with at least some of the problems or otherwise they'd never manage to teach at all.

It needs to go back to teachers doing teaching and not everything else, but this would require a complete overhaul of all the other services. Honestly, the only way they'll work is if they're shut down entirely, everyone fired and started again from the ground up in my opinion. Far too many people in Local Authorities, MATs etc getting fat salaries and doing not a lot for it. All money needs to be diverted to front line services and face to face interactions with children.

You only have to talk to any parent with a SEND child to realise how useless all the 'support services' are. And teachers and TAs are left to pick up the pieces. Unsurprisingly, many schools now struggle to recruits TAs - crap pay and huge risk and responsibility - who wants that?

Sadly I don't see any political party remotely interested in changing this.

Asking for a friend. Honestly..What jobs/careers have those of you who have left the profession gone into? Are you now happier because you earn more, or because your life is less stressful? Did any of you leave because you needed to earn more? Etc etc..

(Friend , family man early 40s, has been told his school is making him redundant at the end of this term. He does not know what he should look for outside teaching, but his experience of the redundancy process makes him unhappy at the idea of staying in it.)

I think entitled people are part of the problem. The parents who think a teacher has nothing better to do than answer their questions and pupils thinking they can act however they want. Plenty of my friends are teachers and I am glad I did not consider it as my occupation .Parents who do not believe their child can behave badly.

I am not a teacher
I don’t have any friends or family that are teachers

and yet OP even I know about all those negatives of teaching!

If he's got the persona for it, he can try business development opportunities in education. Advise him to stay away from training providers.

Yes the pay is smoke and mirrors. It’s not about pay. It’s about workload, professional trust and boundries of the job description (and therefore funding for SEND schools, social workers, therapists etc). Teachers want FAIR pay, but they don’t want to be paid for what they actually do (4 people’s jobs usually!) as it’s not sustainable.

I suspect there are two things going on:

1. the general toughness of the landscape at the moment

2. the fact that you’re new in and haven’t got all the planning sorted.

It might be premature to be done already and you might find things improve in a year or two. The environment may always be tough but any new role is hard work and exhausting at first. One of the best teachers in my children’s school has done the same year for the past 10 years. There won’t be anything about that year she hasn’t seen or done before. That is going to give a very different experience to picking up a role for the first time.

There is a podcast called the pitpony. It’s all about what teachers do when they leave the profession. @Gagagardener

I started teaching in 2011 and it was so different then. There was so much more flexibility over what to teach and how. Now it's all scheme, scheme, scheme, being told what to teach and when and how all the time. I get that it makes it easier for certain people to show progress but it's overkill for most primary school aged learning and sucks the joy out of everything for students and teachers alike. Add the extra pressures of rising SEN demands and vanishing resources. I work two days a week (effectively three once planning etc is added on) and that usually feels like the equivalent of a full time job.