As a teacher age and experience are no longer seen as economically viable!

[Glama]

I am a primary teacher of 23 years experience, both in state and independent schools in the Uk and recently an Independent school in China. I have taught from Nursery to year 6, and have lectured part time at a North West University for 4 years.

On returning from China, and applying for UK jobs, I find that the term
" overqualified for the position" constantly crops up. On further investigation into the supply market, I find that due to economic restraints put on LEAs by the current government, schools are employing newly qualified teachers in the morning, they cost less than a more qualified teacher, and in the afternoon, splitting classes or putting in a classroom assistant to " supervise" them. The position is the same when applying for permanent jobs, few of which are currently advertised on TES, the teachers job site. It saddens me to see all my qualifications including SEN and EAL, not being utilised, purely due to economic restraints. Is this sour grapes on my behalf? No, I have had my opinion confirmed by two careers advisers, one of whom works with the Department of work and pensions, and privately by two local authority headteachers, who are friends. I am not the only highly qualified teacher in this position, sadly I now know at least 4 others, who like me feel they are at the top of their game and have their best teaching and learning years ahead of them, however, because our qualifications and experience equals a slightly higher rate of pay, we are unlikely to be employed in order to pass on our teaching expertise. Instead, we have been advised to retrain! I will if I have to, but what a waste of 23 years experience doing a job I love and am excellent at.

Still I hear that a certain poLe dancing bar in Blackpool is looking for "over 50s" dancers, I wonder if my hips will cope with that retraining programme?

I have noticed that in primary schools there are very few teachers in their mid 30s to 40s. There are loads of younger ones, and when they leave they are replaced with very young ones. There must be a vast number of ex-teachers around not working in the profession. Unless these teachers can be re-hired on lower rates of pay when they wish to return, the career of many primary school teachers will be only around a ten-year one.

I guess, if what an earlier poster said is true and, you are not allowed to be employed at a lower salary than the scale point you have previously reached then this odd pay protection mechanism is now working against you in as much as it prevents you form getting back on the teaching career ladder and working your way up again.

Surely it would be wiser for teachers to lose one scale point for every complete year that they are not teaching in UK schools so that they find it easier to get back into a job if they want to return to UK teaching.

It would remove a bar to your employment prospects.

Private sector employees know that when they step off the UK employment ladder they might have to get back on at a lower level and work back up to where they were once they return to UK employment.

If you retrained you'd lose valuable earning year(s) doing so on a low income so IMHO this is something you need to take up with your union as if the not being able to be employed at a lower scale point is true then there is currently a restriction on your employability which is unfair compared to other professions.

I am in a profession where there is no automatic scale point increase, all salary increases are based on merit and "output" so the salary is "affordable" from an employers point of view providing the business makes a suitable "profit". However this means that while the recession continues I have now been subject to several pay freezes and the constant possibility of redundancy looming over my head plus that of my husband and a few of our friends have lost their jobs in the past 2/3 years since the recession first hit the private sector.

The public sector have been sheltered from this for a couple of years but schools are now having to bite the bullet and operate with greater financial restrictions which will affect their employees earning capacity so surely now is the time to challenge the possible restriction on your employability.

the thing is though that children are not like money or contracts and their education really does make or break futures and the future of our economy and society. you screw up in business by cutting too many corners and there may be a company going under and another one springing up. you mess up on a generation of children and the repurcussions are somewhat more significant and long lasting.

when it comes to the frontline of teaching, nursing, social care etc the stakes are human and societal and potentially disastrous if you try to run them with only money as the focus.

i'm one of those many mid thirties absent from the profession teachers.

at the time i trained it was something like 30% dropping out at the pgce stage, a further chunk not bothering to take an nqt place, another drop off after nqt year and then another huge one within 3 years of starting teaching. the profession is not good at retaining people anymore. working conditions can be awful and at least a significant part of that imo is due to employing senior management along big business value criteria that creates a real tension between what works really for education and students and teachers and what works for management and figures/tables/pr/tickboxes etc. and it is a fact that in education the biggest resource is teachers and if you don't take care of your resources and use them wisely the results are the same as with industry.

ime, and that of those of people i trained with, there is also a very dodgy culture in many schools that makes them unpleasant to work in and incredibly stressful and unhappy. when i say that i got out of teaching people assume it was because of the kids (i taught 11-18 yrolds). it wasn't that, i loved working with kids and i miss teaching them. it was the staff and the politics and the fact that it felt like management was working against you rather than with you and refusing to do and bring in what was needed to make a school work as a whole - a real refusal to deal with reality and changing demographics and to address the problems schools face proactively rather than just sweep them under the carpet (ie. dumping it all in the classroom upon individual teachers to deal with rather than putting in the systems to support them and the children who needed meaningful support and intervention to be able to positively engage with learning and in some cases with people full stop).

it is a very frustrating situation that many find themselves in if they genuinely are good teachers who want to do their best but are constantly having their hands tied behind their backs. it's also remarkable how different things can be in one area of the country from another. moving from the south coast in a university town with lots of interplay between training institutions and schools to middle england was like going back in time in so many ways.

long ramble not saying much but yes there is an absence of my age group in teaching and it's a shame as i came across lots of people like myself who had gone into teaching at a later age with lots of life experience and diverse backgrounds who were very good teachers who got great results with their students but couldn't hack the unpleasantness of the working environment (again not talking kids being naughty here but the complete lack of joined up thinking and cooperation from decision makers) and left.

and the proposed changes Mr Gove is suggesting won't help with retention

there is also the sheer frustration of seeing kids with so much on their plates and so many issues being treated like sausages and just shoved along through the factory. can be heartbreaking at times to see so little being done for young individuals who really need help and support and then to realise that you too are going to let them down because your hands are tied and you don't have the time anyway.

that's just me though. i would imagine primary is less stressful in that way because at least you have just your class and for a whole year so you really can get to know your students and make an impact.

Situation is even worse in Scotland :( very, very few jobs in the central belt. Any that do come up are long term supply. We're being contacted constantly by English recruitment agencies trying to get us to move down. 7 people I trained with (tutor group of 20) now live in London, 2 went travelling, 1 training as a careers advisor, 1 living in Doha.