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.

Urgh, just read this comment on twitter:

"My course has instructed us to provide at least 3 pieces of evidence for every sub-standard in order to stand a chance of being graded outstanding. A huge task, on top of essays and weekly assignments, not to mention planning and marking for lessons."

Burning out students with ridiculous paperwork is not the way to improve recruitment!

Noble - that's exactly that I had to do... back then it was 42(?) standards??

At my training provider (I did a hpt, as it was then) really made the point that I was there as a monkey in front of the kids. It wasn't about training me. My mentor told me 'just fuck off and plan it' when I asked him how to plan my first lesson.

I think the variability and inconsistency in training and training opportunities is a bit of an issue...

Oh yes, I had to provide 3 per standard too. I did a GTP in 2008.

I did as well but fortunately as some of my previous jobs involved producing fundraising applications I quickly figured out they wanted to see an impressive quantity of stuff so I well all out on volume. I ended up with two massive folders and as my final assessment took place just before I went on maternity leave I had to ask one of the caretakers to bring the folders from the car

There are a lot of specifically odd/weird things about teaching imo but the paperwork fetish is not exactly unique to this part of the public sector.

Piggy I think you slightly misunderstood me. I didn't mean it isn't enjoyable or desirable for teachers to write their own teaching material, just that it's no bad thing to use the material of others to begin with when they are struggling with other aspects of the job. I can spend hours and hours writing stuff from scratch but there have been times when that simply wasn't an option: I went into teaching just before I turned 40 and I need an adequate amount of sleep or I risk crashing the car on the way to work!

I started out with whatever I could find, begged, borrowed and bought and have gradually made it into my style or completely rewritten it as necessary.

I won't say my subject but it is one where you can certainly be creative but not with the theoretical core that you need to teach: so it's helpful when you're starting if you can source diagrams, tables and summaries of theory written clearly by others.