Are staff turnovers on increase at schools?

[jennyben7]

Is anyone else worried about staff turnovers at their children's schools. Loads of staff leaving at a school I know. It can't be good for the children. As parents shouldn't we all be asking questions about this? Here's a blog from new zealand talking about this at a uk school!saveourschoolsnz.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/18-teachers-resign-from-one-school/

18 is nothing. 60 would have resigned from my school, since December

That is shocking! Are you a parent, teacher or both? Has anyone asked questions about this? It seems to be a widespread problem and I just don't understand why it doesn't seem to be discussed more! A school can't be healthy with that amount of turnover?!

Given that 40% of newly qualified teachers will have quit the profession within 5 years, it's hardly surprising that some schools have a high turnover.

True and that is concerning. But many of teachers wanting to get out of teaching are experienced ones. 60 teachers resigning at applysomepressure's school since December. If my children were there I'd be asking serious questions. Are the teachers being bullied??
What's going on?

Teachers are under pressure you cannot possibly understand or imagine looking in from the outside.

However, when they stand up for themselves they are accused of negativity and moaning by the Education Secretary (amongst others).

Yeah, because teaching is a lovely profession that people love, but are put under a lot of unnecessary pressure from people who haven't set foot in a classroom for 40 years.

Hopefully parents will start to see what we are striking against. It really is a horrible profession to work in right now

How large is the school ApplySomePressure ? 60 is an awful lot of teachers to lose.

We have a very static staff, teachers come for two years and never leave.

What's your school mrz - I'll pass that on to some teachers I know! Sounds great. Have you got stable and kind management?

My secondary school is set to lose a load of teachers this year too, way more than previous years. There's a lot of academy stuff going on, new SLT, lots of pressure on exam results which are inevitably falling due to the changes made by Gove, then all the new exams and curricula coming in over the next few years which are causing masses of extra work.

I know lots of teachers who are not simply moving schools, but just quitting for a better life.

yup - loads this year in the schools I am associated with.
And ( and I am not a professional doom monger or Union wrangler) more leaving because they cant hack it.

Fairly static at the infant school I work at. One or two younger teachers have moved on since I have been there, but for career moves not quitting. Two older teachers have taken early retirement for personal reasons.

This summer no teachers are leaving, though one goes on maternity leave. One TA is leaving as she has found a teaching post. The HT left at Easter for a job overseas.

What is it they can't hack do you think karlwrenbury?

There have been more jobs on my Local Authority website than I have ever seen there at this time of year before. That's been the case all year - whenever I look, in whatever month, there's a record number of advertisements.

My school is a lovely one to work in with very low staff turnover. Uncharacteristically, and for very good reasons, we've had 2 vacancies this year. For the first one we had 3 applicants and for the second one only 1 applicant.

Make of that what you will.

What can't they hack? The endless workload. The relentless pressure to get above average progress from all children, regardless of circumstances (which of course is a statistical nonsense). The fact that there's always more to do - you never finish. The impact on family life and friendships. Being permanently knackered - lacking the brain cells to work out what's for tea each evening. And I'm sure that's not just me!

But primarily it's the workload. Without wishing to big myself up too much, I'm good at my job - I know what I'm doing and I get good results. I also touch type so it doesn't take me long to get what I want down on the page and I work quite efficiently. I started planning for this week at 9am this morning. I stopped for lunch cooked by DH, then went out for a couple of hours this afternoon for a walk. It's now nearly 8pm and I've just finished my planning for the week. So now I can organise my assembly for Tuesday, make a new seating plan, pack up all my bags and make sure I've got all the resources with me and double check that I have copied everything important from my laptop (paid for by me as the school don't provide one, but I couldn't do the job without). That's a completely normal Sunday for m.

Why do you think it's worse in some schools than others?

Current head has been in post for 10 years following previous head's retirement. New deputy this year following previous deputy's retirement after 39 years at the school. We joke it's the hotel California

Cackademies generate a whole new level of teacher churn, which is generally pretty high anyway.

The first couple of years have always winnowed out lots of new teachers who struggle in the classroom, or who quite sensibly decide early on that it's an awful lot more work than they fancy committing to for the next 40 years.

More recently, you've got a huge trend of experienced teachers being neatly levered out in certain Academies because they are both expensive & not terribly biddable/bullyable.

Then you've got an NQT-drain because the same Academies have a nasty tendency to recruit lovely cheap NQTs & then find excuses to deny pay progression to keep the costs down. The confident ones realise they're being played & bugger off, whilst the more easily cowed struggle on a little longer, until being constantly told they're a bit below par sees them off too.

It's grim. I love teaching, plus I'm naturally bloody minded, so have a cast iron intention that there'll come a day when I'm still in education & Michael Gove is not, but I can't pretend I don't feel like I'm in the band on the Titanic.

I think appraisal and levels of shitting improvement

When we all know levels are a giant hoax

oh and welcome to mumsnet jennyben7

We've had a big problem with Heads at our school - 3 in 3 years it's not good for the stability of the school.

Teaching staff and TA s especially are all long serving. I wish some of the TAs would leave personally as they've lost their interest and there are a lot of excellent people volunteering at school who would be great in the job.

& I hear you on the planning thing toomuchicecream.

I did a througher last night - got kids to bed, then sat down to write a new Scheme of Learning about 10pm, finishing at 6am.

I do this about one Saturday night in three, & actually, I'm a night owl & quite enjoy it, but it's certainly not a sensible level of workload. Heck, dh is a rock musician & he knocks off work several hours before I do on a Saturday night...

It's a secondary school with around 110 teaching staff. So around half our staff will have left by Summer.

Went into special measures before Christmas.

What field do you work in, OP?

A couple of primaries near us have had the bright idea of getting their staff to reapply for their jobs, at a lower salary with more work.

Guess what?

Some of those teachers were pretty fed up to start with and decided that, while they were about it, they might as well apply to the private sector.

They were snapped up.