Are the staff in your school really stressed?

[christinarossetti]

A question for both teachers and parents/carers.

I've had a number of conversations today with parents and teachers from different schools and realised that there's been a reoccurring theme of teachers saying how stressed they are and parents saying how stressed the teachers seem to be.

Ofsted will be in our school next half-term, so obviously people very stressed.

Is this normal in education at the moment, or is it just the people I know?

[ipadquietly]

party what is getting you down most? What sector are you in?

[shebird]

I do not think work related stress is exclusive to teachers. I think working people in general are stressed. Employers expect more for less in the work place and we are all desperately clinging to our jobs and trying to juggle busy lives. It just takes its toll, we are only human.

[Arisbottle]

I agree shebird, although I do not think that anyone has said just teachers are stressed .

[Feenie]

Apart from the fact that I am now pt and we therefore don't have nice holidays or Christmases ... are you me?? Why FE is so appallingly paid is another thread, perhaps.

And indeed. It is shocking!

[storynanny]

It's a very very stressful job, but so are lots of other professions. Teaching jobs, however, have 30 unpredictables all day to cope with. I've loved my job for 35 years but can't do it everyday anymore due to the continuous new nonsense teachers have to cope with. I used to think that stress levels varied from school to school, but having been a supply teacher for the last 12 months in a wide variety of schools, have come to the conclusion that it is wide spread and common to all schools. Every school I work in I am observing teachers under increasing pressure and stress- it makes me very concerned for their well being and that of the children they are teaching.

[Startail]

Yes, we could really really really have done without Ofstead.

Once upon a time they were a necessary evil, DH and me both went to very sleepy lesson plan free primaries and some of my secondary staff were beyond useless.

However, that is no longer the case, teaching and schools have improved hugly.

The new Ofsted frame work is just Evil.

[tethersend]

I went from HoD to an advisory teacher role. It was a revelation.

You know that stuff that teachers do in between teaching? The stuff you do in the evenings and at the weekends?

Most other jobs call that work. They do it ALL DAY.

[christinarossetti]

I pretty much agree, startail.

I hope that teachers are no longer able to get away with teaching the incorrect exam syllabus or setting work such as 'For this lesson, copy out pages 1-5' as they did in at my school (went to secondary during early 80s - lots of strikes and work to rules etc), but can't see how the degree of stress that they're put under these days is helpful to anyone.

[Feenie]

That's how I feel about the holidays - brilliant, can get all that evening stuff done at a normal pace for a bit.

That's real life, isn't it?!!

[noddyholder]

The 2 teachers in my book group are by far the most stressed. We always meet on a friday night and they are always so knackered and seem to have more stress and anxiety than the rest of us. It is such a shame as they are good at their jobs but I can't see them lasting until retirement.

[mousebacon]

I feel physically sick reading this thread. I've been on mat leave for about 9 months now and I'm returning to work after half term. Reading this thread is reminding me of what I'm going back to.

I've been teaching for 12 years. The recent changes to ofsted criteria and the already mentioned quote about low morale are making things worse and worse. Not sure I'll manage to maintain this till I'm 70.

[LaBelleDameSansPatience]

Tethersend

[ravenAK]

Heh, I posted on my FB yesterday:

'In bed by 4pm on a school day! Result!' because our Head had, most uncharacteristically, let us all knock off at 3pm from INSET when a speaker finished early.

Cue lots of (generally good-natured) comments from friends calling me a lazy cow.

I did actually sleep for a couple of hours until CM brought dc home, then zombied my way until their bedtime - & then went straight back to bed.

I never realise quite how exhausted/stressed I am until half term actually arrives & I just keel over.

Today was all about deep-cleaning the house, so will tomorrow be, & then I'll be spending most of Monday-Friday marking & planning, although I've promised myself to work online & not actually go into school. Next weekend is theoretically going to be work-free.

I don't think I'm any more stressed than usual; I'm quite used to it, & tend not even to notice until someone else points out the weirdness of my sleep patterns or shortness of my temper...

[allchildrenreading]

The teachers in the school I worked in in the early 2000s were enormously stressed - all the reasons cited above. Earlier, the teachers in the school my dc attended weren't so stressed - HT knew exactly where he was going, what his expectations were, clarity of purpose, strong ethos, no dumbing down in spite of large, multi-racial intake. He knew what was best for children and led from the front.
Trouble is, as I see it, is that HTm SM,Senco's, bend with the wind - it's a bit like 'Simon Says' or is that unfair? I've onlly been doing one-to-one tuition for the last 9 years and following what's happening isn't the same as being at the coal face.

[exoticfruits]

Very true storynanny- I was a supply teacher in a wide variety of primary schools - all staff are stressed.
I think that we are moving away from the days where someone started as a teacher straight from training and worked to retirement. People are coming in later, after doing other things, or starting and then changing to something different. Job shares are very common with teachers with young families and becoming increasingly popular with older teachers getting near retirement.
I think that for every hour in the classroom you need an hour out for planning, preparation, marking etc- in addition there is report writing, parent evenings etc. There are not enough hours in a day. I don't think it can go on at that level and needs to be more creative than one teacher and a class - team teaching would be a way forward - and more job shares for those who don't mind earning less if they work less.

[MerryCouthyMows]

thing is, though, job shares are TERRIBLE for those parents with DC's with SN's - especially those of us who have DC's with Autism in MS. Because there is such a lack of continuity for the DC's.

What do I want, as a parent? I want a FT teacher, who is there EVERY day (no half day for PPA etc, get some other poor sod to do the paperwork!), who is good at what they do, who can differentiate effectively for both the highest working pupil in their class AND the lowest working pupil in their class, who isn't stressed out by stupid Ofsted targets etc, who hasn't got work encroaching on their private lives, as then they won't be as stressed in class while teaching...

not much then!!

[CailinDana]

I trained as a primary teacher in Ireland and worked there for a few years before moving to England. I loved teaching in Ireland but since moving to England I've quit, I just can't stand it here. In Ireland there's very much the atmosphere that you're a professional, you know what you're doing and while there's a degree of supervision for the most part you're trusted to teach a class well and you're left to it. It's up to you what way you want to teach things, there are initiatives but they're not set in stone and the attitude is as long as the children come out at the end of it with the skill you wanted to teach, any legitimate way of getting it into their heads is great. It was a bit of a shock coming from that to be told that I could only teach long division one particular way regardless of whether the children got it or not.

Even as a student teacher I felt I was I was given more scope and responsibility in Ireland than I was as a fully qualified teacher here in England. Here I felt that someone was constantly looking over my shoulder, checking my work, monitoring whether I was following the current gospel, seeing if I'd produced "outcomes" and "evidence" and "proof" of every twitch the children had made. It got the point in one school where we were photocopying the children's hand-held whiteboards to "prove" we had worked on mental maths. I mean FFS!!! What a fucking waste of time! On top of that we were expected to spend hours on gaudy displays all over the classroom, "generate statistics" for every single thing the children thought or might think, mark work in books in three different colours (WTF??) add a comment and a follow on task to every single piece, create, type up and photocopy reams of "lesson objective" sheets for every lesson, etc etc. So much pointless busywork that takes hours and hours for absolutely no reason. When you spend a whole evening agonising about how to teach division to a class who just aren't getting it, and they finally do, it makes you want to just jump off a bridge when the work is criticised because it doesn't have a lesson objective or because you forgot to write the date on the board that day. So many irrelevant details have taken over in teaching here that trying to keep on top of everything is just too difficult.

If I ever move back to Ireland I might go back to teaching but I definitely won't here. I can earn a lot more in a much less stressful job and get a bit of respect while I'm at it.

[Feenie]

MerryCouthyMows for Education Secretary, please!

[Feenie]

It got the point in one school where we were photocopying the children's hand-held whiteboards to "prove" we had worked on mental maths.

Since around September we have been well beyond that point - you are right, it is insane.

[CailinDana]

Feenie, it just seems to me that it doesn't matter what you actually do in the classroom day to day as long as you have a pile of paperwork that looks right. It's just all about the paperwork.

[ArielThePiraticalMermaid]

Poor, disruptive behaviour of children used to stress me out most.

Dealing with that at the same time as being expected to deliver all these targets was impossible.

I left.

[Feenie]

No CallinDana, that's just it - your progress has to be spot on, on top of paperwork. That's what is so frustrating!

[shebird]

CailinDana I think you have just summed up the madness that us our education system and the reasons why we have stressed teachers. I was educated in Ireland and my DCs attend primary here and I really struggle with the system. I feel anxious that they are missing out because their teachers are busy ticking boxes. I am frustrated by the fads and levels and obsession with OFSTED. I do not want to be told off by a stressed out teacher for teaching my DD how to do maths so she gets it. Can't we just let teachers teach?

[CailinDana]

The slavish devotion to initiatives drove me bonkers. In Ireland, for example, the approach to reading is to just do everything to get the children used to words - so you do a mixture of phonics, whole word reading, letter work etc. The attitude is that everything that exposes the children to words and reading is good, and then if a certain child shows a preference for one type of teaching, you focus on that with them. It's sort of a scattergun approach to begin with and then you hone it down to suit your particular class for that year. It means that you'll rarely have a child not reading by the end of their first year of school (barring SN). Here in England the message I got was "phonics or nothing." Not only that but there seems to be an attitude that doing anything other than phonics is actually damaging in some way . So feck the children for whom phonics is gobbledegook, they just miss out. There's no sense of adaptation, no sense that you're a professional who can judge for yourself what the right approach is - it's just "You are a robot who must teach like this, end of story." So all the creativity and mental challenge is taken out of teaching.

And levels - good fucking lord. I was teaching a group who were with me specifically so I could move their level from a 3 to a 4 (for SATS of course). HT observed a lesson where they were comfortably working on level 5 triangles, which I had taught because they had grasped level 4 stuff easily and I was keeping pace with the other two year 6 classes who were still on triangles (so I couldn't use the time to move on to something else). HT praised the class but then expressed concern that I was "above their level" - ie I was supposed to only bring them to level 4 and no further. How fucking crazy is that? In Ireland when I've had a very good class I've taught them quadratic equations and vectors, because if there's time it's worth expanding their knowledge. And nothing at all would be said about that, why would it? Yet I was actually pulled up over teaching the children too much here. About making them too good.

I'm not saying the Irish system is perfect, it definitely isn't, but it's a far better place to be a teacher, that's for sure!

[storynanny]

Merry, I want to be that teacher too, you have hit the nail on the head. I would want my little grandson to be taught by that teacher as well. Re whiteboard phôtocopying, I've had to do that too and had to stop myself screeching don't rub it off before we get to the photocopier.I have also had to follow 4/5 year olds around with a clipboard asking them what they could do to get better at ....( whatever activity they were involved with, eg sand, water, role play area).