Government slammed for 'sluggish and incoherent' response to teacher shortage crisis

[noblegiraffe]

A damning report has just been published by the Commons Public Accounts Committee into the critical teacher shortage in state schools and the government's failure to address it, choosing to spend millions on teacher recruitment programmes (which, despite this, have miserably failed to meet their targets), and comparatively little on supporting the current workforce.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/dfes-sluggish-and-incoherent-approach-teacher-shortage-crisis-slammed

The government has stood and watched as teachers have quit teaching in droves, simply issuing platitudes about how it remains an attractive profession despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I wonder if we'll now actually see any effective action taken to remedy matters.

They do this in Canada too

And are also thinking about it in school systems we think of as rigid , as they recognise that their students aren't very good at some softer skills, or at problem solving.

Can't see schools in England taking weeks out of lesson time to focus on stuff that won't necessarily boost their league table position.

Nick Gibb has just tweeted the latest 'Get into teaching' ad. twitter.com/nickgibbuk/status/960531440525078528 Comments underneath are interesting, a teacher brings up retention and Sean Harford from Ofsted says that schools should be at the forefront of retention, suggesting that it's schools that are creating the retention crisis not the DfE.

To paraphrase Christine Keeler : 'well, he would say that, wouldn't he?'

That'll of course be why many Ofsted inspectors don't bother to focus on this in inspection and don't call out leaders for not surveying staff wellbeing...

Just wanted to say thanks to this thread I've downloaded Cleverlands and am finding it a really interesting read- so thanks to all who mentioned it!

Enjoy!

Bit disappointed, I thought Sean Hartford was ok. If it’s agreed that schools are the problem then why does he spend most of his day countering Ofsted myths suggesting that fear of the inspectors is a big fat problem?

I’ve not read Cleverlands. I’ve just bought ‘How I wish I’d taught maths’ by Craig Barton and dear god it’s huge.

A lot of these books are : ex teachers have much time on their hands...

Just looked it up...

502 pages!!!!??? That's not a teaching book; that's Great Expectations!

He’s not an ex-teacher, he just admits he taught badly for the past decade. He also does podcasts where he interviews famous edu-people which are really interesting. www.mrbartonmaths.com/podcast/

However, like his book, they are not brief!! Good for long journeys, and interesting not just for maths teachers, he’s done people like Dylan Wiliam, Doug Lemov and Daisy Christodoulou.

How on earth does he find the time? Does he have children? Is there a little woman at home doing all the childcare? (I always suspect this about all these men who do this kind of thing and have pictures of their children as their wallpaper...) Is he in SLT and therefore teaching about 1 lesson a term??

Married but no kids. Was an AST (is that a thing any more?)
Also works for the TES and runs the Diagnostic Questions website. And has published 3 novels.
I don’t think he can possibly sleep.

I'm a Chemistry teacher. I left my last school in 2014. I did 5 terms as a medical needs outreach teacher (which I loved), then became a SAHM. I've just had my last child and am starting to think about going back to work. I'm currently torn.

1. Return to teaching and have term time hours, but sign over my soul and all my time, and probably a good chunk of my mental health;
2. find a normal 9-5 job doing goodness knows what and pay for wrap around care and school holiday childcare.
3. Part time teaching (0.6 max) and accept I'll be displacing the usual evening work hours to my 2 days off so I can see my children and husband during term time.
4. The imaginary term time hours only job that pays a pittance and probably has a million applicants.

At the moment 3 is looking most likely, and it makes me so angry I would be working 5 days and getting paid for 3, just to create a decent work life balance.

It's quite sad and frustrating reading this. I've always worked long hours and am no wallflower... However, retraining as a teacher was one of the most brutal things I have ever done. 70 hours a week minimum, more than 80 regularly...Limited to no support from SLT. Of the three schools I have worked in, 2 were the stereotype horror story you read in the press.

It's difficult to not become negative when almost every waking hour is spent working and yet you are still constantly told, as a collective, even when you have only had 1 day off in a month that you are still not good enough. The culture of bullying and intimidation in my school was mind boggling. I could not believe what I was seeing and experiencing.

The crunch for me was seeing my own child suffer and beginning to exhibit symptoms of extreme distress because they rarely spent more than 15 minutes with me every day. I resigned.... but that's ok, my colleagues wont have to have their souls destroyed by working with such a negative colleague any more...

Really sorry to hear that, ucf, I think being a teacher with young children can be very difficult.

Coming in late to the discussion
To me it is clear the current scheme of scholarships and bursaries to train is not working in the slightest.
The quality of our trainees has gone down in general, of course we still have some good ones ( teaching school and work with a local uni so we have a lot of trainees) but way too many in the past couple of years are already of the won’t mindset, calculating hours and lunchtimes like it is an hourly paid job. Many of these are getting more money than I am, we have 2 trainees atm who are on £48 000, I think this lures in folk without the passion for teaching, wowed by the big money, who only then realise that it is hard work and they will not hit £48k again ever unless they go for slt. Neither of them have applied for any jobs and i very strongly get the impression that they do not intend to do so.
The government imo needs to look at retention not recruitment, especailly given the massive drop offs in the first five years.
They can only address that if they address workload, and that means stopping tinkering with the curriculum and put more money into the system so we have more time for prep and planning and teach fewer kids ( I teach 13 classes, all years from 7-13 totalling nearly 400 students, all of whom must have their work marked every six contacts, plus the half termly testing for all, that is not included in the marking load, I am not unusual in my load) I think most of the successful countries onthe PISA scale have far fewer contact hours than English teachers.

I'm a fairly happy teacher, but that's only because I've taken honeysuckle's option 3 and have also moved from state to independent. This year has been the first one in which I haven't needed to buy my own stationery and textbooks. I had to pinch myself when I realised the school had a stationery cupboard where you could just go and get whiteboard pens, a stapler and lined paper. Sounds trivial, but I must have spent hundreds of £ getting basic equipment over the 7 years I've been teaching. I doubt there are that many other employed professional jobs where you have to buy your own sodding staplers.

I just wanted to say (as a career changer into teaching) that I don't understand why trainees have to write their own lessons at all. I mean, fair enough, they should be thinking about how to customise them for whichever group they've got (and they should have the option of writing their own stuff if they want) but if they were supplied with teaching materials (and staplers) they could devote their time to learning the rest of the job.

It really should be possible at least in National Curriculum subjects for teaching materials to be supplied for new starters.

Goodnesss,that would have put me off teaching! The thing that has increasingly made me despair is the 'no deviating' mentality of teaching which now means everyone teaching everything at the same time to the same time frame with the same lessons. I would have hated that as a trainee, too : I actually like devising my own ideas and you need as a trainee to develop your own voice. I think as a trainee you should be busy doing this (this is when you have the most frees you'll ever have!!) I could not work in a colour by numbers/ teach to the communal powerpoint school. These are becoming increasingly common . If I could pinpoint one change I have hated most in teaching since starting it is the squeezing out of autonomy and the mistrust of creativity (sort of two things). I suspect you and I don't teach the same subject phiney ?

I think any trainee whining about having to plan lessons (if supported by others) probably has chosen the wrong career?

Just reflecting : I think the thing that should be cut out for trainees is that constant logging of everything. The trainees at my place seems to spend the whole time faffing about with folders and writing ridiculously enormous lesson plans just for show . This actively gets in the way of many other more useful things.

Ofsted have just announced that from the summer term they will no longer require lesson plans from trainees as well as experienced teachers.
When I did my PGCE the lesson plan template was 4 pages long. Totally ridiculous! So much time fitting things into boxes and it didn't actually improve my teaching at all. The Teacher Toolkit 5 minute lesson plan would have been far more useful for organising my thoughts.

But what would the universities/ providers then mark? It seems to be the required evidence...

Surely no one from uni actually reads all the lesson plans?

Article from the TES here wondering if the DfE has finally woken up to the recruitment crisis, with its announcement of lowering standards for new teachers (ITT providers told to accept any old applicant, plus you can now resit the numeracy and literacy tests infinite times) www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/has-stumbling-shambling-dfe-woken-time-recruitment

The answer seems to be too little too late and the only thing that will save teacher recruitment is a massive recession.

So that's cheery.

I get the impression it is all marked on quantity rather than quality...

When I did teacher training we were told we could provide our evidence folders in a trolley, or a single ringbinder or anywhere in between. It was made clear that they just wanted to see evidence for the standards, no essay upon essay. When we did actually write essays, they were just presented and oral feedback given. I don't recall my paperwork being marked... Just checked.

My school mentor was also not bothered as long as I could point to standards met. I was also told not to bother doing an NQT folder, just bought along bits of evidence here and there to my nqt meetings and ticked it off throughout the year. I did pop those bits of evidence in a folder but that folder stayed on a shelf gathering dust.