Guess whether teacher recruitment targets were met this year

[noblegiraffe]

Of course not.

Guess what the DfE had to say about it.

School standards minister Nick Gibb said: “There are now a record number of teachers in our schools – 15,500 more than in 2010 – and the fact that more than 32,000 new trainee teachers have been recruited in a competitive labour market, with historic low unemployment rates and a growing economy, shows that the profession continues to be an attractive career."

It's a good thing that schools are overrun with Physics and Computing teachers, otherwise the fact that they only recruited 2/3 of the numbers they were looking for would be really worrying.

Also, Design and Technology?! So much for schools being all about STEM these days. Not if they can't get the teachers!

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/teacher-training-targets-missed-all-secondary-subjects-except-history

PGCE I may be wrong but I doubt Bubbles' daughter works in the public sector. The top job bit was the giveaway.

I don't think teachers do ever deny there are other thankless jobs but this thread is about the recruitment issues specifically in teaching, so comparing it to other jobs (especially ones without recruitment and retention issues) really is not relevant.

“Especially ones without recruitment retention issues”
Teaching of course isn’t the only profession in the public sector with very significant recruitment and retention issues. Im baffled as to why so much money publicity and energy is being put into recruiting trainee teachers but not into recruiting trainee nurses/midwives/SWs or retaining existing nurses/midwives/SWs. I’m not saying that money and publicity shouldn’t be spent recruiting and retaining teachers but why only teachers? I’m not sure what the governments agenda is on that one. Anyway that’s a separate thread.
With regard to teachers denying that there are other thankless jobs out there I found that some teachers did seem slightly in denial, they don’t always seem to know what’s going on in other areas including other areas in the public sector. A couple said comments to me like “as a teachers you don’t even get paid for your lunch break” they we’re quite surprised when I said neither do most people. At my placement school they moaned if they had to park in the overspill car park as it was a 100m walk to the school, and looked stunned when I said not only did I pay to park in our work car park which is well over 100m from my place of work I wasn’t allowed to park in it every day only 4 out of 5 day a week on the fifth day I park in a public car park and pay £10 a day. Or on another occasion they complained about paying for lunch in the school dinning room a similar meal in our canteen costs £6.50.
I’m not criticising teachers in general because I know they work very hard and very long hours but I did find that some have a blind spot and seemed reluctant to acknowledge that other professions also work hard and long hours,have stressful demanding jobs, work in exceedingly difficult circumstances and are also not that well paid. I think this is why there’s sometimes less sympathy for teachers than say nurses (who generally remain popular with Jo public) and why discussions about teachers often attract comments like Bubbles or about teachers long holidays etc.

My gut feeling would be that not as much energy goes into recruiting nurses because it is easier to fill nursing vacancies from the EU (or at least it was). That doesn’t seem to happen so much in teaching (I know some recruit from Ireland).

Social workers - I guess their clientele aren’t obvious voters.

It’s amazing what you can find. The RCN estimate there are about 40 000 nursing vacancies in England that’s 1 in 9 posts vacant with the Nursing and Midwifery Council stating that more are leaving the nursing and midwifery register annually than joining! Equally worrying for teachers there are about 14000 vacancies the numbers of vacancies is rising in both professions. As for SW after a bit of research it appears rather surprisingly slightly more are joining than leaving although 1/6th of SW are agency staff.

Depends on your definition of vacancy. The 40,000 figure comes from the RCN, but the advertised vacancies was more like 11,500. The teacher vacancies for 14,000 seems to have come from a recruitment agency, so again job adverts. The actual number of teacher 'vacancies' would be much higher than job adverts (as in nursing) as many teaching jobs are filled by unqualified staff as schools have given up advertising, or can't afford qualified staff.

Not that it's a competition. Nurses will win any 'who has the hardest job, teachers or nurses?' debate hands down.

I think the reason most teachers expect to be able to park is more born out of the fact that teachers are one of the few jobs who often have to cart boxes of stuff in and out of work every evening.

I think you have a blind spot pgce because you hated your training so much. teachers rarely compare themselves against public sector workers (although I have read nurses on MN comparing themselves favourably with teaching, specifically ones who have done both) . I think most public sector workers feel we are all in it together.

I think it's that generalised resentment of our holidays from people who are more than welcome to try out our understaffed profession for a while, if qualified... funny how they don't and won't!

And, anyway, unless I am missing something we do get paid for our lunch break! (not that a lot of teachers take one)

No, lunch is unpaid, it’s why you shouldn’t do lunch meetings and they should pay you to do a lunch duty.

They do in our school but I still don't get it as we aren't paid per hour??

We kind-of are paid per hour. Directed time is paid and so they can tell you what to do in directed time, require you to be on site and so on. Anything else is technically your own time. Obviously we still have to do work at some point in that time to 'effectively discharge professional duties', but they can't tell you when or where. Lunchtime isn't directed time, you can go home in it and have a bubble bath if you like.

I'm part time and I have trapped time at school, e.g. I'm teaching P1 and P3 but not P2. I've got more trapped time than paid PPA so I'm in school but unpaid for that time. If school want me to do a cover in unpaid trapped time, they have to ask me nicely and pay me supply rates.

I had to look this stuff up earlier this year for the first time ever due to being asked to carry out certain duties during lunch time. We are not paid during lunch time and shouldn't be carrying out duties during the lunch time that the children get.

I think part timers are maybe more conscious of these pay issues than full tiers. We change the structure of our school day during exams and I do know that causes chaos for some part time staff!

Interesting anyway since on the morale thread tow of us were comparing notes about how we felt we would be told off these days if we left the site at lunch.

And I know year staff are fully expected to be out and about/ manning offices/ dealing with students at lunch time despite not having SLT contracts! Since I gave up that role I have had at least part of my day back!

Hello, again.

Back to stick my oar in. What a week! We’ve lost two members of staff ( one NQT and one old timer) and the timetable of everyone in the department has had to change to accommodate this. Not to worry though. It happens every year now. We’ll have another two disappear after Christmas. Mark my words!

And I’m now down to two hours PPA a fortnight on a 0.6.

This is why we have a retention crisis. This.

Oh dear, this isn't good: Applications for starting teacher training next year are down by over 40% on this time last year. And last year we totally failed to meet recruitment targets.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/teacher-training-applicants-drop-more-40

We're already having a critical shortage of teachers. When will the DfE take serious action regarding retention? They clearly can't solve the issue by hiring more teachers.

I know of three people in my school out with stress : there is undoubtedly more.

I think the reason most teachers expect to be able to park is more born out of the fact that teachers are one of the few jobs who often have to cart boxes of stuff in and out of work every evening.

So do academics - how often do you have to mark several hundred scripts of 30 pages long?

So might some accountants, lawyers etc - particularly junior ones, who need to catch up on their billable hours on evenings and weekends.

Academics typically pay a lot every year for the privilege of parking 5-10 minutes away from their offices way across campus - and then they have to lug teaching resources/assignments etc back and forth to their parking/lecture rooms. Junior academics may not even get university parking at all - they have to use public transport, again carrying boxes of scripts back and forth, to mark in evenings and weekends.

user It’s not a competition but I’m taking home two full sets of Yr 8 books this weekend. They fit in two massive boxes.

It shouldn’t be a race to the bottom. I think it’s appalling that you have to pay to park at your own work place. What a rip off.

Sigh. I did say one of the few jobs and fully expected someone to prove me oh so wrong.

We have exercise books which are heavy. My dad is an academic. He brought quite a lot home but not all of them at once and also had his own office to keep stuff in but hey ho. I gather an awful lot of it is unprinted and online these days.

No one is suggesting academics have it easy and I would offer my sympathy and empathy - but it doesn't seem to cut both ways.

It really isn't a competition. I was just saying that would be why most teachers , working at schools on large ,dedicated sites would expect to be able to park in a staff car park. To be fair, they can at most schools I know of! the only ones I know who can't work at a town centre free school. I have no idea how they do lug marking about.

Also as a teacher you do tend to take in other stuff (plastic swords, large poster board, Clay modelling material) which most other professions aren’t taking back and forth. Although I very much agree it is important to be in this together with nurses, and higher education employees, rather than compete for most horrible work life. The Tories have done a very good job of dividing and conquering to ensure their continued power amidst the current chaos.

I think it’s appalling that you have to pay to park at your own work place.

But for many (most?) of us parking charges of £50 per month or more are normal. That's £600+ per year taken from net salaries, as from next year parking can't be paid for pre-tax.

No, it's not a race to the bottom, but it is important to be aware of both the "positives" and the "negatives" of jobs. Teaching really does have some positives relative even to other public sector jobs (e.g. pensions are still pretty good) and one has to weigh those up against the negatives.

That isn't really what this thread is about. And, genuinely, being able to park at one's work is not a 'privilege' only bestowed on teachers.

It obviously depends slightly on the locale of where you work but I do think all the employees local to my area can park for free at their workplace, including hospital employees and staff at the local uni.

The ones paying through the nose tend to be the ones who commute to London.

user Thanks for suggesting this activity. Let’s try it.

Positives- working with the students.

Negatives- data entry, punitive performance management systems, unrealistic work load, getting treated with suspicion by kids/parents/SLT, dragging kids through the new (more rigorous but total balls) GCSE syllabus, not getting to teach the child but the spec, not time for out of school activities or trips, spending my own money on stuff for school so they kids don’t miss out, being shouted at by kids, being shouted at by parents, being shouted at by SLT, constant Work trawls (see the point about trust), constant ‘learning’ walks by SLT (read observation).

I think I missed a few but hey ho.

And I genuinely didn't go into a job at the age of 20 with a view to what the pension was like.

I am not up on these financial considerations but I thought teachers were being told they will have to work up tot he age of potentially 70 to gain the pension. I don't know many teachers who could survive that long in the classroom.

I read a horrifying stat recently about the number of teachers who die within a few years of retirement!