I don't want to be a teacher but

[Greenshoots1]

The pressure to return was huge.

10 or 12 emails every day, offering work in "outstanding" schools

Every job search I did coming back with hundreds of vacancies in education.

I left because it was slave labour. I took other, lower paid jobs ( which ended up as more per hour than teaching, and gave me a far better work life balance)

I have retrained in my own time, with my own money and am looking forward to an new career, and have big plans for the rest of my life!

But I am teaching again. I was promised good money ( it is) in an excellent local school ( it is, both excellent and local) with well behaved children ( they generally are) and a caring management team ( they are too)

The work load is horrendous. I spend more time doing something or other with meaningless, pointless statistics than i do teaching my lovely, well behaved, local students.

I don't see enough of my family.

I am in the school more than 13 hours a day in term time, and bringing work home. I have been in 3 full days so far this holiday, and need to do at least 2 more...

I am personally paying hundreds of pounds for resources, as are other staff.

it is wiping out my life.

I am in a department of 10, 2 of whom resigned at Christmas, 2 of who have resigned with affect from Easter, and 2 of whom intend to leave in summer.

I am just mentioning this, because I am close to the end of my tether.

If anyone of you parents complain that your child is being punished unfairly because you have believed them over the truth,

If any one complains that I have not differentiated enough for their child.

If any one of you complain that I have not marked the homework quickly enough, or my lessons are not interesting enough, or that I have only been on school trips two weekends instead of the expected four, or that I have not returned your email or phone call quickly enough, or that I was not tip toeing around your child with the proper deference and respect in some way...

then I'm out of here. I don't need this job.

I am just bringing this up, because of the number of parents I hear complaining that their child doesn't have a permanent teacher in one subject or another, are coping with constantly changing supply teachers, or the school can't get a subject specialist

when actually the previous permanent subject specialist has left BECAUSE of that child's behaviour, or that parents ridiculous complaint.

We are a rare commodity. If your child is being taught by permanent subject specialists, it would help a lot if you taught your child to be respectful and appreciative.

( help your child - I mean. Not me, it doesn't make any difference to me - I can take the job or leave it, and if people are unpleasant to me, I will leave it - as several of my colleagues have just done)

I hear you. I'm leaving in the summer. Can't wait.

I got out in the summer, I loved teaching, but the workload became ridiculous. Dealing with parents took up too much time.
I now watch in horror as the parents in my DCs class make continual demands on their teachers time over the most petty things. It actually makes me cross as it is a brilliant school with great teachers, but even they are struggling to recruit at the moment, I do wonder if some parents realise they are part of the problem.

good luck in your next steps Ahjaysus

Those are exactly the parents I m writing this for Filga!

I’m with you there - a hundred percent. I have mental health issues as a result of working as a teacher for far too long so any undue pressure from parents is liable to make me ill for several weeks. Your child will then have temporary cover supervision and not a qualified teacher at all.

Whether or not teachers are overworked is a separate issue from whether children need sufficient differentiation. The fact that there is intolerable pressure on teachers doesn't mean parents should put up and shut up about an inappropriate curriculum being delivered. If parents have to accept substandard differentiation and not complain, then there would be no pressure on management or the government to change. Gove fucked education and there is a huge tension in schools between inclusion and standards. You shouldn't be advocating throwing disabled students under the bus. We are on the same team. Power concedes nothing without a struggle.

I'm with you OP. I feel your pain.

I have a genuine and naive question.... bear with me

My DCs have great teachers - primary in Scotland, where things might be a little different (? maybe ?) - however, from a parent perspective, I think the teachers spend a lot of time doing shitty admin when they could be with the kids doing some actual teaching. They also have shitloads of work preparing graded assessment and feedback... again, I wish they spent more times with the kids, and less on "reporting". Anyhow, the question:

You say that you can take the job or leave it - which is a great position to be in - and that you'd rather be with the kids than work on admin / stats. What would happen if you pushed back / rebelled / spent time teaching / left the other stuff?

I am also generally shocked by the amount of £££ teachers spend on stickers / pressies / resources from their own pockets - I mean, WTF?

The problem with individual differentiation is that we are not given enough time to prepare it. I get three hours non-contact time to plan, prepare, differentiate and mark for the twenty hours of teaching each week. I also have to factor in admin time, meeting time and everything else. Marking just one set of books takes 3 hours (in an essay-based subject) on average. I teach every single year group from 7 to 13, so it is impossible to mark each class weekly or even fortnightly. I take tons of work home (working an average of 70 hours weekly and frequently more) and I still don’t have enough time to differentiate as much as I’d like. That’s just the reality. Schools have been cut back to the bone so there is no flexibility in the curriculum anymore to allow teachers to prepare thoroughly.
The mess was happening before Gove and it’s even worse now. Every school in my area has vacancies in key subjects. They have been relying on overseas teachers to plug the gap but with Brexit looming, there is less incentive for teachers to come and work here.

And reporting. I forgot that.

If I pushed back on the admin stuff then I would end up on a ‘support plan’ very quickly. I would be managed out.

Also there would be no trips for my class, no SEN support plans written, no looked after children PEPlans written, some books wouldn’t be marked, social services referrals wouldn’t happen, no school disco, no nativity show, no new books ordered, displays wouldn’t be done, parent information letters wouldn’t be written...... all those things are needed but really there should be time in my working day to do them rather than in the evenings and at weekends. And that doesn’t even touch on time spent planning lessons.

Are you primary/secondary? I don’t work 13 hours every day as Hod in secondary. I work 8-6 and only very rarely take anything Home

Agree with everything else though- also we are really really struggling to recruit with vacancies in every single dept and an endless stream of Day to day supply

" individual differentiation" - showing my ignorance here, but what exactly is ' individual differentiation'?

Individualised differentiation=personalised learning. Ensuring Work meets individual students needs/abilities. Takes a huge amount of time in a school like the one I work in where there are so many diff abilities/needs and huge amounts of eal learners at different stages.

Thanks Tolly. DS bumped along in the middle at school, so I thankfully never had to know about this.

Agree OP. I've left teaching in the past due to it being incompatible with a healthy work life balance. I've ended up going back now that my children are older and into a more supportive school (secondary, core subject) because I love it. I'm managing now mostly because I'm on a 0.8 timetable rather than full time. A dear friend, and an amazing, much loved and respected teacher left at Christmas because she burned out . In my opinion, a loss to the profession and the school.
On the other point, I spend between £20-50 a month out of my own pocket most months, the budget cuts are starting to be felt at my place as belts are tightened.

I actually don’t understand how people with kids manage full time teaching. I really don’t. I get that not everyone is fortunate enough to be p/t but I think I’d actually end up broken if I had to work in teaching full time with kids

I still love teaching, but I don't teach in the UK. Quite a few of the teachers I work with have come back from a stint in the UK and say how much worse it is over there.

But yes, I absolutely agree with you about the parents. There are important things that need to be addressed (special needs), but then there are those that don't.

For example, the parent that complained to the principal because I wouldn't peel her 9 year olds banana for her each day. No SN, just a hovermother who thinks her darling can't do anything. My suggestion of peeling it in the morning and putting it in a zip lock bag was apparently unreasonable and that I should 'know that you have to do anything to help (your) students'. Yes, like teaching them how to peel their own damn banana.

Another one complained because I made her child sharpen his own pencils.

One who complained because her child sat next to a child she doesn't like (even though the two kids are best friends) in a classroom with free seating.

The one who complained that their child bought home the same reading book twice in a month. The students are taught to select their own books, and no, I'm not monitoring the exact titles that each child takes home each day.

The mother that wanted me to write in her child's diary exactly how much of their lunch they ate each day. (Or you could just look in their lunchbox and see what is leftover when they get home???)

The parent that wanted me to allow their child to stay in at lunchtime (supervised by me of course!) because they don't like going out in the sun. Apparently my suggestion of 'they could just play in one of the shaded areas' was 'inappropriate'.

We even had a parent complain that when their daughter wet their knickers and had no spare pair in their bag, that we sent them home in a pair of (brand new) underwear with cars on them. They were apparently boys knickers and his daughter didn't like being made to feel like a boy.

I'm willing to understand... but I find it really hard to shake the suspicion that some teachers are just really, really bad at time management. Take this:

I get three hours non-contact time to plan, prepare, differentiate and mark for the twenty hours of teaching each week. So, 20 hours teaching, 3 hours non-contact time (presume this means timetabled in school) - we're up to 23 hours work in a week so far.

I also have to factor in admin time, meeting time and everything else. OK. 2 hours per week on average? If it's more (on average not in the worst week), why?

So we have 25 hours work so far. My employer claims a working week is 35 hours per week; of course as it's a professional job it's actually more than that, and I don't get long holidays. I'd be unimpressed if any teacher were complaining at under about 45 hours per week in term time.

Marking just one set of books takes 3 hours (in an essay-based subject) on average. I teach every single year group from 7 to 13, so it is impossible to mark each class weekly or even fortnightly. 7 year groups, maybe more than one class in some of them, say 10 sets of books? Marking one of each is then 30 hours. Fortnightly, say 15 hours per week. Let's assume none of the 3 hours we already mentioned is spent on that; it's all for "plan, prepare and differentiate". We're up to 40 hours per week.

OK, maybe 3 hours per week isn't much for planning, preparing and differentiating, especially in the early years of teaching when you haven't done it all a zillion times before, or after a major curriculum change. Even so, though:

I take tons of work home (working an average of 70 hours weekly and frequently more) Where does this 70+ hours each week go?!

My week in primary:

Daily
8-8.45 prep for the day (photocopy, talk through planning with TA, speak to a parent maybe 2-3 mornings a week....)
8.45-12 contact with pupils (teaching, have to attend worship, break duty)
12-1 lunchtime but really I’ll be marking or running a club
1-3.30 teaching (once a week this is PPA non-contact time)
3.30-3.45 dismissal (waiting around for parents who don’t value my time and turn up late)
3.45-5.30 marking (30 Maths, 30 English, 1 other subject per day).
Once a week this is staff meeting instead. 1-2 times a week I have to meet with a parent or have some other sort of meeting (eg SEND).

So that’s:
Morning prep 2.25 hours
Teaching/contact with pupils 26.25 hours
PPA non contact time 2.5 hours
Waiting around for late parents 1.25 hours
Staff meeting 1.5 hours
Other meetings 1.5 hours
Marking at school 10.75 hours
Planning at home 4 hours
Other admin at home 4 hours (planning trips, writing SEND plans, updating safeguarding logs, coordinating 2 subjects, replying to emails from parents and headteacher etc).

So I’m at 54 hours.
Planning can often take longer if my PPA time is taken up with dealing with behaviour issues or calling parents or a SEND or LAC meeting.

And I didn’t count my lunchtime spent running clubs or marking so add 5 hours to that.

Bless you ofcol.

Being given 3 hours PPA a week to plan your teaching doesn't mean that it only takes 3 hours!

Generally, an hour of teaching = an hour of prep.

You can certainly cut that down if it's a course you've taught before - maybe 15 minutes tweaking to make sure this particular lesson will work with this year's group, assuming roughly similar ability levels - rare; generally if it's a year 10 lesson & last year you had a lower ability group, this year you'll have top set.

More than likely, the specification & course content have completely changed anyway.

I'd expect 20 hours teaching to translate to 30+ hours prep before I opened a book to mark it.

Oh, & I'm also doing that planning to support a less experienced colleague, so we'll need an hour or two to meet about that.

Admin time & meeting time < 2 hours? . That's hilarious!

Then add on an extra hour every afternoon of booster sessions. Plus coming into school most Saturdays to run, yep, more booster sessions...

I'm overseas, btw, & live the life of bloody Reilly compared to any UK teacher of my acquaintance.

My planning time consists of the following:

100 minutes - whole team meeting
50 minutes - colleague observations or being observed
50 minutes - my own time for administration

So just because I have 200 minutes per week non face to face time, it doesn't mean that time is actually where I can sit at my desk and plan anything. And even in that 50 minutes, I'll lose ten minutes - five to walk my students to their specialist lesson, and five minutes at the end walking over to pick them up.

Thank you to those teachers who have posted to support my comments; it is demoralising when the hours I put in are never enough. The 3 hours I am planning/marking time is the issue.

‘Generally, an hour of teaching = an hour of prep.’

That’s absolutely the case - without any marking or anything else.