High staff turnover and 5 new teachers all NQT's - should I be worrying?

[SockPinchingMonster]

Wonder if anyone can put my mind at rest, particularly any teachers. My DTs school seems to be having some problems at the moment. They were an outstanding school for years, lots of experienced staff who had been there for years - however about a year ago Ofsted came in and knocked them down to Requiring Improvement. This seemed to put the senior management of the school into major panic, they made a few changes initially but lately the atmosphere in the school seems to have been getting worse.
A couple of teachers have already left in the course of this year, and it's just been confirmed by a TA today that 5 teachers are leaving at the end of term and the new replacements are all NQTs. I have absolutely nothing against NQTs, hopefully they will add a bit of enthusiasm to the school but does 5 seem like a lot?
I'm already worried about next year as my DTs will be year 2's in a mixed yr1/2 class as they are summer born. However they are both above average academically and I've been worrying that being in a class with kids who have just come out of reception may disadvantage them - 50% of the experienced class teachers leaving is just adding to my worry.
Am I worrying about nothing?

Sounds concerning to me. 5 out of how many?

Hi OP we had a similar situation at my DCs school, experienced teachers left and they replaced by NQTs. Not to worry you even more but one NQT left half way through the year and the other two are not returning in September. The drop out rate amount NQTs is almost 50%. Nothing wrong with NQTs they come with lots of enthusiasm but they also need a school with good leadership and lots of support. I am hoping we get some more experienced teachers next year or at least ones that want to stay a bit longer.

Thanks for the replies. BucksKid - I think there are 11 class teachers ( not including senior management team ) but 5 are going so almost 50%. I think what worries me most is that the staff seemed to be pretty stable prior to the Ofsted inspection and there just seems to have been a bad atmosphere since the school was downgraded so it makes me wonder why so many teachers are jumping ship.
Shebird - yes I have been worrying about whether the NQTs would stick around - especially if the atmosphere in school is so bad that experienced teachers are leaving. I'm just hoping that the new recruits are enthusiastic and lighten the mood a bit in school. Only time will tell I guess.

The fact that the high staff turn over started after the downgraded OFSTED, not before, is actually a positive.

I speak from the point of view of a governor, not a teacher.

OFSTED have had some criticisms of the school and so the school will no doubt have been making some significant changes in response to the ofsted report. These changes are in turn causing staff to leave. It is about weeding out the weak and non performing teachers by the school setting very high expectations. Remember that experience does not equal good or outstanding teaching.

Surely you want your school to have very high expectations of the staff that work there? If some staff are not up to standard then they will be put under much pressure to improve, especially after the OFSTED downgrade. Some staff, especially established staff, do not like extra pressure being placed on them. This could be the reason for your high staff turn over.

Thanks WaffleWiffle, I hadn't looked at it that way. I think they were coasting along on their Outstanding grading for a while and as you say maybe the experienced teachers don't like the extra pressure now that they are Requiring Improvement.
I think I'm just worrying about the upheaval unsettling the children but there's nothing I can do about that. I'm worried about a new teacher struggling to differentiate in a mixed age class but I guess I need to put the worry to the back of my mind for now and see how things go in September.

What did the school do particularly badly on in its Ofsted? Have you looked at the details?? I wouldn't be particularly reassured by lots of experienced teachers leaving to be entirely replaced by NQTs if the school's leadership isn't good enough to manage so many NQTs. Almost half the teachers in a school being NQTs?! That's one hell of a lot of work required to support them from the other teachers. I seriously doubt the school wanted to recruit that many inexperienced teachers in one go, if it had had any choice in the matter. Particularly given that Ofsted won't be any more patient with NQTs' performance than they were with experienced teachers, given that it isn't Ofsted or the government's job to be bothered by petty details, like the lack of suitable applicants for posts.

Rabbitstew - The main things the school were criticised on were children not making the desired 3 levels of progress between ks1 and ks2 (although school has always been one of the top schools in our city for SATs results ), teaching was criticised because they witnessed low ability children not being given enough help, and more able children not being stretched and sitting there bored when they had finished their work. There was concern that the governors knew very little about what was going on in school and couldn't answer questions sufficiently.
I'm not sure how often Ofsted visit schools which Require Improvement but as it was a year or so since they were inspected I'm sure it won't be in the far distant future. There is just a feeling that there is something not right with the school and finding out about the high turnover of staff seems to confirm it. I feel completely stupid now for choosing the school based mainly on its Outstanding grading when in reality it is anything but outstanding.

Yes, you should be worrying. Teachers previously graded outstanding are now finding the pressure too much to live with. Of course NQTs won't be able to cope.

But it isn't your school, it is the whole frigging country.

Surely if the school were serious about wanting to improve, they would get some experienced teachers as well as NQTs. The fact that all the replacements are NQTs would really worry me - it sounds like the management team are more interested in saving money than anything else.

DD had an NQT last year - best year ever. But that was in a school that gave the teacher loads of support.

pinkerson - if experienced teachers don't apply for the job, you can't exactly throw it at them and tell them they have to take it.

Experienced teachers are becoming a bit thin on the ground round here. Most sane people jack it in after a couple of years. almost every one with children does. The job isn't compatible with family life.

NQTs can be luck of the draw. I've worked with some great ones (my opposite number in Year 1 this year has the makings of a truly outstanding teacher - and the Year 2 NQT across the corridor is almost as good), and some that were awful.

Are they still graded ad requiring improvement? Unless things have changed they are not allowed to hire nqts until they are out of requiring improvement. The turnover of staff after a bad ofsted itself isn't unusual though. I'm assuming you meant they didn't have enough children making two levels progress? The three levels progress criteria is newer and not meeting it tends to be what makes the difference between good and outstanding.

I find it difficult to believe that a 50% turnover, replaced with NQTs is weeding out the weak teachers. I guess that the issue with insufficient progress in KS2 won't impact on your DTs this year, but I would want to know how they intend to stretch the most able as your DTs are likely to be in that cohort. Also I wonder how they plan to support NQTs where they have odd overlapping classes. A system of all mixed classes with parallel 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 pairing each NQT with an experienced member of staff might work better, but would depend on numbers.

i work in primary school as a LST(learning support teacher) mainly i work with children on a 1;1 basis, this year 3 class teacher's have been promoted to non-teaching roles and also 7 are leaving and 1 going on maternity leave out of a total of 14 possible teachers, so far they have filled the positions with 5 nqt's and 3 teach first students, they still have another 3 positions to fill and there's only 3 weeks left till the end of term, there were supposed to be interviews for these positions on wednesday but they had to be postponed due to ofsted!!
so no 3 is not alot really!!

Thanks for all the replies. Wombat - yes they are still requiring improvement and yes I meant 3 levels of progress, although it was the school themselves that were adamant that this was the sole reason they were downgraded and that it was completely unfair ( as they already get great results and lots of level 5's ). I think in reality it was the other things Ofsted saw that really knocked them down. Pico - yes I wonder how the NQTs will be supported, especially if they are taking one of the mixed classes where there must be a massive range of abilities. Sideshowbob - wow that is a massive turnover, maybe this is the norm in a lot of schools now.

yes some were unhappy with the way they were treated by senior management team but deserved it and shouldn't be teachers, one is going be to canada, most are moving to schools closer to their homes, if 3 hadn't been promoted to phase leaders that are non-teaching management type roles it wouldn't be so bad!!

Are schools having to recruit so many NQTs because of a lack of experienced teachers or are they hiring on the cheap and hoping for the best? Schools should have to demonstrate that they have the support required when hiring an NQT or both the teacher and the pupils will suffer. This was the case at out school, too many NQTs this year with no support and they are all leaving or have left. As usual it is parents have to pick up the pieces and worry about what gaps in their children's learning.

shebird - either or both could be the case. I know that at my dss' school, if a post is advertised specifying experienced teachers only, they're lucky even to get one reply, so the same post often has to be readvertised eventually, allowing NQT applications. And the way the recruiting seems to work, you don't want to leave it too late to recruit NQTs, because the best of the NQT bunch get snapped up by schools very quickly, leaving you with the dregs if you held out for as long as possible for someone with more experience to come along. It's a brave school that would leave a post unfilled for September.

OFSTED have had some criticisms of the school and so the school will no doubt have been making some significant changes in response to the ofsted report. These changes are in turn causing staff to leave. It is about weeding out the weak and non performing teachers by the school setting very high expectations. Remember that experience does not equal good or outstanding teaching.

On the other hand, it could also mean that the SMT are weak and ineffectual. Getting RI often leads to management setting totally unreasonable workload expectations on teaching staff which the experienced teachers didn't want or have to tolerate. I've seen that happen in plenty of schools around here. We've been lucky enough to benefit by gaining the experienced teachers at my school! The schools they've left (there are two in particular that I know well) have lost truly excellent teachers and have been left with inadequate and lazy managers and a string of NQTs who are now either leaving or off sick and endless supply teachers to cover.

There is a teaching recruitment crisis. The good teachers can pick and choose where they want to go.

Rollon - that's something I worry about in the school that DD will probably go to. If you assume that the problems with a school are down to staff (probably a big assumption) and it is either the SMT or the teaching staff, then the ones in positions of power and directly reporting to the governors are the SMT who are likely to point the finger at teaching staff rather than themselves. This wouldn't particularly be out of malice, but there is an inherent bias. I suspect that you might go through a couple of sets of teaching staff and a further RI inspection before eventually identifying that the leadership was the weak link (you'd have to be pretty awful as a head to be solely identified by OFSTED as the problem). So you eventually work out that the head needs to go, but in the mean time you have completely destabilised the body of staff and have a bunch of NQTs struggling through. So if you are then able to recruit a new head, which isn't easy, they have a real challenge with the staff (and demoralised environment) they are left with.

It's all horrible. And there aren't queues of excellent teachers waiting at the gates for jobs. Teaching is all stick and no carrot at the moment. I have no idea what will happen when so many teachers are beaten out of the profession that there aren't enough to go round. I suspect there will be lots of use of TAs, undermining the profession and even more depressingly many of those TAs will be ex-teachers.

Our school had the problem of a HT that had to go, before the entire of the rest of the school left to get away from her. The biggest symptom of this was a shrinking SMT, then departing senior teaching staff and lots of poorly supported NQTs coming in to replace them all. As Pico2 has pointed out, the new HT then has one hell of a lot to sort out! Luckily for us, the minute the HT left, the school miraculously managed to recruit three much needed, more senior members of staff and a new headteacher... and this year, nobody is leaving, for the first time in several years. Ofsted, however, was not involved in this debacle, which would just have added to the problems, tbh - we didn't really need Ofsted to be able to identify them!