Anyone worried about teacher shortages?

[blackcatbabe]

Schools are struggling to recruit at the moment, particularly in the South East. Anyone particularly worried about this in their kids' schools?

Suppy tried to get away with that type of thing when I looked round here a couple of years ago. Had to beg to go over 100 for full responsibility for a 6th form class...

I’m glad DS has just finished school (just the lecturer strikes to worry about now). He was lucky to have qualified teachers in his classes right to the end of yr13, but I’m not sure it was the same for pupils in younger years.

DH school can’t recruit (specialist provision, children working to GCSE standard, tiny classes). The school next door can’t recruit (mainstream secondary). My MAT has about 20 vacancies (primary, including 3 headships).

we are fully staffed for next year, but we have no money at all. No glue, no pencils, I’ve just bought pens for my class as we don’t have any. I’ve abandoned teaching computing as the tech doesn’t work.

Yes, I think it was some sort of train as you teach scheme. But those trainees are worked to the bone - so much prep after a full day teaching. If they are on £85 per day in London they will also have severe financial stress and no one needs to tolerate all three - a hard day's work, a huge load of college study and not enough money to pay bills when there are so many other jobs that take at least one of those stresses away.

The issues partly are due to them recruiting the wrong people, they started saying they wanted people with firsts rather than a more all rounded approach to teaching. It also costs too much to become a teacher. In my opinion they need to knock 10% off your student loans after your qualifying year, then a further £5k per year of teaching, incentivise staying in the profession! All debts wiped after 10 or 15 years perhaps. (Should be the same for nursing and medicine)

Secondly bringing teachers in a bit older, I still have 16 years to retirement but was rejected 2 years ago and was told unofficially I was too old

I work for an educational publisher that's essentially a halfway house for burnt out teachers looking for a way out. Teachers are happy to take 10k payouts to work here, that's how eager they are to leave.

Pay cuts I mean

They really need to start aligning pay of in demand specialisms (maths and science) with what they could demand in the private sector.

10 a penny teachers (PE and drama) should get a pay decrease.

You shouldn’t be giving anyone a pay decrease

DH is one of 20 (!) teachers leaving his secondary school this year

most are leaving the profession

it was bad for years but got worse after the pandemic

kids behaviour is out of control, school riots, herds of kids rampaging through the school and trashing furniture. Kicking doors in. DH says he sometimes feels like a bouncer

kids don’t respect the teachers, as parents don’t respect teachers. You can see it on here too. This means behaviour is uncontrollable. Kids tell teachers to fuck off or just leave class. Getting the parents involved makes no difference, as they just see the teachers as glorified childcare and demand their kids are allowed to stay in lessons

it’s shocking

Quite.

Bit of a spiral going on too.
Staffing is so tight that PPA gets shifted/cut short, lunch cover gets lost, more break duties.
In primary teachers are being asked to lead more subjects with no time or pay.
So another one leaves and the spiral continues.

I think heads are under horrific pressure too.

Yes - DSs school has been gradually reducing the A Level subjects they can offer due to lack of teachers. Another subject has been dropped this year.

The irony is that, in the midst of the shortages, very experienced teachers are sometimes struggling to find a job, because schools can't afford to pay them.

I am in primary. We have no subject or year leads and this year has been a shite shower - all expected to step up for no extra. Year 2 moderation was embarrassing - SLT dropping like flies from stress. Our Academy group has funds but we are a business first so they say we don’t.

Absolutely this.

Indeed, because schools are not funded properly. A cause of strike action.

Yes - and it will only get worse. Who in their right mind would want to be a teacher, now? Poor pay, poor hours, extreme stress, expected to be a teacher/social worker/councellor - I come from a family of teachers and have seen how the profession has changed for the worse over the years. Behaviour and poor parenting is at the root of it. I have actively discouraged my children from becoming teachers.

In addition, many jobs are fixed term contracts. A local job was a great fit for me- preferred year group, my areas of specialism were required. It’s a year’s contract. I’m not leaving a permanent post for a one year gig.

I know schools don’t know what their funding is in future so feel they need to do this, but I need to know what my financial situation is too.

Struggling in my school. Struggling in the dc school (different area entirely). Ds had 4/5 lessons with supply the other day. This is the normal for lots of kids, especially ks3, because you try to ensure your ks4 has a proper teacher. If course, then you get ks3 coming into ks4, who've been able to run free for too long.

The English teacher crisis is also going to get worse. The gcse gove introduced killed English. Fewer kids took a level. Fewer then did English degrees, so fewer out there who even could become English teachers.

I blame academisation. It was never going to work and look where we are now.

I think teachers have been badly supported by their unions over the years. Too interested in scoring political points over initiating proper discipline procedures to deal with poor pupil behaviour, for example. The consequences of closing schools during Covid were entirely foreseeable and the enormous mistake that was is being proved
I am not experiencing much support for the teachers and lecturers strikes tbh, whilst there absolutely should be additional adequate funding for the promised pay rises, closing schools again and not marking papers isn't the way to go about it
Strong leadership is essential, but it seems quite often teaching staff actually can't cope with it and choose to undermine and bring about the resignation of determined headteachers. First thing that needs to happen is that pupils hand in their phones at the beginning of each day and go from there

I also think senior leaders get more criticism than they often deserve. The pressure they're under is immense, and it's often pressure that parents (and indeed teachers) don't see. As well as all the obvious stuff they're dealing with in school, there's all the stuff that happens out of school hours, which they need to respond to regardless of time or day. A staff resignation email in the middle of the holidays, a water leak at school on a Sunday, a domestic violence notification from the police on a Friday night, a student suicide or rape at the weekend, a 3am break-in at school, a student with a crisis about their GCSE results or their university application in the holidays, a sudden teacher illness, a parental complaint, a parent subject-access request in August. They have to be 'on' all the time. I persuaded DH not to check his emails on Christmas Day last year - that was certainly the only day of the year he didn't, and even then he could always be contacted by phone in an emergency. And he's not even a HT. He's still got all his teaching, marking and associated stuff alongside his SLT responsibilities. It's no wonder there are so many headship vacancies. Some primary heads are paid less than 50 grand a year to deal with all that.

Every time I see those govt ITT targets (posted at the beginning of the thread) it reminds me that there are some quite large subjects which are non National Curriculum (Economics for instance) for which there is essentially no training pathway at all. Business Studies is not Economics!

Students really want to learn Economics. A-level entries have gone up from around 30,000 to 40,000 in recent years.

Among all the many, many, problems currently, it was idiotic of govt to start a push to get more students into A-level without considering where the teachers would come from.

And private schools absolutely aren't protected from the pressures. Although they are in a better position to recruit directly from abroad by e.g. sponsoring visas (but they have a significant brain drain to abroad).

I’m a 10 a penny drama teacher (see graph above, even we're in decline). I also teach targetted literacy and do a voluntary extra role supporting SLT with behaviour. I give up lunchtime to assist with duties, alongside offering a plethora of extra-curricular. Similarly the PE teachers work weekends taking students to regional and national events!

How do you think that would work if we had a pay decrease and who do you think would be affected?

Also, don't Drama teachers do productions beloved of many parents?