Why would every Y6 teacher leave the school?

[brilliotic]

Single form intake, supposedly 'outstanding' primary school, that was last OFSTED-ed 11 years ago. Used to have stellar results, but they have been sliding in recent years. Still above average though, for attainment AND progress. 'New' headteacher started 6 years ago (was not new to the school though).

Since then, every single Y6 teacher left the school at the end of the school year. I wouldn't know if they were encouraged to leave or if they gave notice, but not a single teacher has 'survived' teaching Y6.

Some were new appointments, so they were at the school for one year and then left again.
Some were longstanding class teachers at the school in a different year group, moved to Y6, left at the end of that year.
When no 'longstanding' teachers were left (there is not a single class teacher remaining from before 'new' headteacher), some were teachers who taught Y6 after a year of teaching a different year group (so they wouldn't have known the 'curse' on Y6) - they too left after a year in Y6.

What would this make you think? As a teacher, as a parent? After six consecutive teachers leaving at the end of one year of teaching Y6, I am no longer inclined to think 'coincidence'.

For context, other teachers appointed by 'new' headteacher have generally stayed put, or where not, there have been known reasons (not returning after maternity leave and similar); with only one exception.

DC is moving into Y5 in September, am wondering if I need to start considering alternatives for Y6.

Too much pressure to get good results for yr6 sats from head, and they burn out?

That sort of turnover would ring alarm bells for me. Some movement in staff is natural but not keeping a y6 teacher in the school for years running is concerning.

It sounds like the new head has an idea of what 'their' type of staff are like and are happy to have a revolving door of staff to get it. I'd also bet that the people they are bringing in are no more expensive than M3 and probably young and easily mouldable so she can chisel them into her image.

The results trend going down suggests the new head knows they aren't getting the same results as the previous head and it would suggest they are placing the buck on class teachers for their own lack of oversight as a leader. 6 years of steadily decreasing results isn't good, and with the established staff who were under the old successful regime leaving, there's every chance it's going to get worse.

That's with my teacher hat on though.

As a parent, if there was a better option available without upsetting or unsettling your child then it might be worth it, but if the results are still above average then staying put for the sake of a year would be totally ok (but if there were younger siblings I would look to jump ship with them before other parents start removing children as that sort of thing happens when schools start to go downhill and you'd want to be in on the available places)

I would be inclined to think it wasn't a coincidence either. Has there been any explanation forthcoming from the school?

I know a school where that happened. A former pupil who was denied the job cursed the role. They could never keep a Defence against the Dark Arts teacher after that.

Seriously though, it does seem as if there's an issue at your DDs school, but it isn't necessarily affecting the children.

Zero explanation from the school. (Which is rather the norm.)

LolaSmiles I believe you are right with your assumptions regarding the payscales etc.
Yes, there is a younger sibling (currently YR) to consider too.

I am not so much concerned with the results, I am confident DC will do ok result wise and anyway the SATS don't matter much to me. What I am concerned about is what you say supersonictraveller: That the exam pressure in Y6 will be huge and unavoidable, and basically Y6 will be a miserable year. I was hoping to downplay the SATS as much as possible but there is only that much you can do when school is pushing in the other direction.

For now, both children are pretty to very happy at school, so whilst I have a number of concerns about the school, happiness overrides everything else at this stage IMO, hence remaining put so far.

Ex-teacher here. I would be very concerned! It's common to get an increased turnover under a new head, but that consistent pattern is worrying. Teachers leaving a new school after just one year shoud also ring alarm bells.

How might the Head react if you just asked them straight out what they thought about it?

We had a spate of teachers leave the school when my daughter was in primary, they all moved to another school that was in special measures and classed as inadequate on their latest ofsted report, turns out these teachers left because they get paid more for teaching in these schools

Have you tried published minutes of governors' meetings for clues? Unfortunately most of the info will in confidential minutes. Doesn't sound good to me either.

Governor's meetings minutes are not published on the webpage. I suppose I could go and ask for them - this is statutory, right?
I don't think I would find much of use though.

Friend has recently stopped being a governor, said it was a very frustrating experience with decisions basically being made between chair of governors and head teacher, with everyone else barely being informed, let alone involved.

How might the Head react if you just asked them straight out what they thought about it?
Head teacher is hyper defensive, even positive feedback and friendly suggestions are interpreted as criticism, leading to defensive kneejerk 'denials' that are often not really aligned with the truth. (That is my first hand experience, but also reported by numerous other people, so it's not just me and it's not just rumours.)
I can imagine her replying 'that's not true' followed by an invention such as 'there is a scheme that rewards successful Y6 teachers when they swap schools hence all of ours keep leaving' followed by hiding from me and being unavoidable for any future meetings.

I know, I'm painting a negative picture of the school, but the kids are happy. I guess I'm still hoping for some innocuous explanation for all the Y6 teachers leaving?

unavailable, not unavoidable :)

I’m a school governor. When teachers leave we look at why they are leaving. If it’s for a higher salary/promotion or a move out of area then we are relaxed. If it’s a level transfer move to a similar local school then that’s more worrying and we get involved in the exit interview rather than leaving the interview to the Head. However, we would never be in a position to share that info with the whole parent body as a lot of it is personal information.

Our governors minutes aren't published on the website but they're available from the school (obviously without any bits that are deemed confidential). Ours are kept in the school foyer I believe.

They're also boring as shit (half the time sitting through the actual meeting is boring as shit too to be fair).

It could be that you've got a head with such a radar for stellar teachers that they're all doing one year in year 6 and being promoted elsewhere instantly... or they're looking for cheap and disposable teachers, or the pressure for results is so hellish it's breaking people.

I didn't want to say this to start with, as I wanted to see if anyone else came to that idea:
It has occurred to me that perhaps the Y6 teachers leave because they are made to go along with something they don't agree with, e.g. some form of cheating (or 'exploiting the grey areas, because all other schools do it too') in the SATS.

The idea that they look for cheap and disposable teachers is a possibility, unlike many others the school is not in financial difficulties, as the overall staff pay is very low. I can live with that, it's much better than the pressure for results idea. I'd rather have worse results and happier kids!

Well if the staff pay is lower than other local schools then you have your explanation for high staff turnover. Why would they stay at a school which pays less? Is it an academy.

If there were years of cheating someone would have spoken out. Would each individual year 6 teacher seriously have agreed to cheat? Seems unlikely.

Mnbb, it's a VA faith school, not an academy. Staff pay is low as the teachers on the whole are very young and inexperienced, and just starting out on the payscales. A couple of years ago the most senior teacher at the school was in her third year of teaching (including NQT year).

I don't imagine they all 'agreed to cheat', but perhaps, under pressure, went along with things they felt uncomfortable with, that were quite 'borderline' and perhaps in the end (SATS week, so just before deadline for giving notice) just overstepped the boundaries. Then decided to leave, gave notice, and figured 'I'm out of here anyway, what's the point in making life difficult for everyone now?', 'I need a good reference so best keep quiet' and also 'I went along with it further than I should have, so now I'm implicated as well - better get out of here quickly before anything starts sticking onto me'

Last ofsted 11 years ago?? I would be seriously worried about what's happened to the school in those 11 years.

Staff turnover that high is very worrying and the governors should be all over this.

@notatwork

Seeing as OFSTED chief inspector Ms Spielman is of the opinion that 'outstanding' schools ought to be re-inspected (in the news today), I have hope that OFSTED will come along some time soon. In which case I wouldn't be surprised if the governing board got sent to the desert, new governors installed, and first thing they did was to replace the head. Perhaps there is hope, if too late for DC1, then for DC2 at least.

But hang on, the reason why OFSTED doesn't inspect 'outstanding' schools is because one education minister M. Gove decided to save money by only focusing on those schools that 'need it most'. So OFSTED, though willing, have no budget for inspecting 'outstanding' schools. And somehow I doubt that this M. Gove, should he become PM in the coming weeks, would encourage making resources available for this. Nor any of his fellow contenders for the job, actually. So realistically I suppose we're stuck with the governing board and head, for the foreseeable.

OFSTED can inspect "outstanding" schools if there are reasons for concern, and often the concerns turn out to be well-founded:
schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-downgrades-outstanding-schools/

One has to wonder what the answer is.
If the school is outstanding then the KS2 results must have continued to be good or it would have triggered a red flag at Ofsted. That they have managed to do that for 6 years in succession when they have had a different year 6 teacher every year suggests that they have very good cohorts coming through the school so the standard is being reached very easily which is possible. In other words it does not need stellar teaching to get the best possible results because of the capability of the pupils.
The alternative is that something is happening. So OP do you know of children who achieved well above expectation? If not I think you have to accept that everything is above board.

I do not know anyone from upper years well enough to ask about their SATS results, so couldn't say. Couple of years ago though the results overall were astonishingly good. Mean score of 110 in all tested subjects, that kind of good (so the 'average' child in the class achieved greater depth in maths and English). The year before, very similar. But after such successes, the teachers left. It's just odd!

And yes it is a 'leafy' school, so they don't really have to do much, as parents will put all the effort in (many children heavily tutored). So perhaps the good results despite ever changing teachers are to some extent due to this.

The SLT is toxic...

I think you really need to know where the staff are going. Is it for promotion? To a new area with spouse? Out of teaching? Or just another local school for no more money?

Schools don’t pay more if they are RI or worse. They are usually recruiting though due to poor teaching being exposed and staff leaving. They often need to recruit decent staff from elsewhere and of course some of the roles might be promotion.

It’s certainly odd. I wouldn’t disrupt a child for y6 though.

Governors are not able to stop staff leaving. They are informed why someone is leaving and set the pay policy but they cannot intervene with a resignation. It might just be really bad luck.

The teachers might not have wanted y6. That’s quite normal too! If the school has good teachers all the way through, then y6 shouldn’t be too bad. Just the normal push for DC to do their best and no surprises! In other words, attainment is what is expected. If children are tutored, is the pressure from the parents?

Bubbles, that kind of info (where teachers go next, after leaving our school) is quite understandably not shared with parents!

When the third teacher left, I thought 'stroke of bad luck/coincidences'. When the fourth left, I thought 'this is starting to look like a pattern, but probably it isn't - teachers leave for all sorts of reasons'. After the fifth (and by this time I had my own experiences with the SLT) I was starting to feel uneasy, but figured that SLT would now perhaps learn from experience, and make huge efforts to keep the next (internal transfer) Y6 teacher for more than one year. But well, that one is leaving too.
So now I am at the point where I am only vaguely interested in the 19-20 Y6 teacher, because by the time DC get to Y6 in 20-21, they will most likely have left anyway.

I know that Y6 can be unpopular, and perhaps in some schools more than in others. It can't have been just that though. Pretty much every year there was at least one other vacancy, so if the Y6 teacher had merely wanted to leave Y6, they could have asked to be moved to Y3 or whatever. So the school would only have had to recruit 2 new teachers rather than three, or one rather than two. But they didn't want that, or it wasn't approved.

I couldn't say if the school has 'good teachers all the way through' as they are all fairly new. The most senior has been there less long than my DC. My impression is that things used to run very smoothly (combination of established strong team, ambitious parents/bordering on selective intake, good results achieved fairly effortlessly) but not anymore. Now there are issues with changing teachers, some school years having huge disruptions, rising numbers of SEN (that the school is ill equipped to deal with), overall lack of experienced staff. So children entering Y6 are no longer the strong cohorts they used to be. So the pressure gets ramped up on Y6 teachers.

Yes there is pressure from some parents too. Quite a few chose this school for the results and will not stand idly by as their child falls behind expectations. It may be that the type of tutoring has changed though. There used to be a fair number of kids who were tutored for 11+ and/or private school entrance exams. The kids I know now who are tutored are mainly trying to catch up/fill in gaps (though the other type exists still too).

You're right I think, disrupting my child for one year is probably not worth it. And I can hope that things get a bit more stable by the time DC2 reaches Y6... five years to go!

brilliotic - I do understand that info isn’t shared by the school although you said there were known reasons for some teachers leaving but in the circumstances I would be perplexed too. Sometimes parents get wind of where teachers are going on the grapevine! You often get to hear when teachers are very unhappy and cannot wait to go! I didn’t expect the school to announce why they are going but sometimes talk is of nothing else!

Unfortunately, of course, this inevitably means you are guessing. Try googling their names. They could pop up on staff lists of other schools.

I too think there must be issues and with very many young teachers the problems are likely to increase because they will need a lot of mentoring and guidance. It will be very hard to maintain teaching standards with no role models or experienced teachers. Most Heads I know want a mix of experienced and younger teachers that blend together for the good of the children and support each other.

If you think SLT are the problem (does the Deputy not teach?) then perhaps that’s why teachers are leaving? What is the KS2 leadership model?

What is the ethos in the rest of the school? When I was a governor (just come to the end of my term) we looked very closely at the progress of each year group and SAT results would not be a surprise. Obviously a few do a bit better or a bit worse than you think they will but are you given accurate progress info by teachers? We had little change of y6 teachers. They saw it as their usp! The school clearly should know which DC are not making good progress and make efforts to speed that up. I’m wondering if inexperienced staff are not good at assessment, there is no evaluation of assessment accuracy by other teachers and therefore y6 is a slog?