Oh crap, look at this graph of secondary teacher numbers

[noblegiraffe]

This isn’t good. What the hell is going to happen? Clearly urgent change is needed, but all that is happening is sticking plasters.

Blog about the figures here: www.nfer.ac.uk/news-events/nfer-blogs/latest-teacher-retention-statistics-paint-a-bleak-picture-for-teacher-supply-in-england/

It’s all doom and gloom: “10.4 per cent of secondary teachers left the workforce last year, compared to 9.4 per cent in 2010-11. The overall average also masks variation by subject: NFER and DfE research shows leaving rates are higher still among maths, science and modern foreign languages teachers”

“Fewer working-age teachers are being retained, while the number of teachers making it to retirement has more than halved”

How much worse can things get?

But Clavinova, we know how many pupil are headed to secondary school over the the next few years because they’re currently in primary school. Do you think the forecast increase in pupil numbers is inaccurate?

PGCE students should teach classes, mark books, attend parents' evenings, go on trips etc.

PGCE students aren’t paid is because when they teach classes there is a paid teacher supervising them and schools can’t afford to pay a teacher and a student to teach the same class.

Yup.

I did GTP, got paid £14k as unqualified and was teaching a 50% timetable by Christmas. It was ruddy hard as I had to do all my uni stuff in my own time, pretty much.

The salary is....ok. It's ok. It's not brilliant but once you get established not too bad. I do think there needs to be an uplift in pay.

But there's needs to be a big shift in accountability, away from teachers being the be all and end all. With similar shift in the arse covering paperwork.

Ofsted needs to be radically changed away from the data churning gods and back towards the old HMI 'critical friend' model where improvement was the focus, and not judgment.

Then we might see workload improve

noblegiraffe
Having briefly looked at the official report on your other thread for example - the headline grabbing figure of only 27 returning teachers in permanent posts teaching Ebacc subjects in Nov 2016 under the Return to Teaching Programme also mentions 25 teachers employed on fixed term contracts, a further 30 (who bothered to respond to a survey) with job applications pending, 14 waiting for the right position - 27 soon becomes 96 or more.

One of the main reasons cited for the ridiculously low success rate of the scheme was timing - some numpty at the DofE (who set their own targets) forgot that most teaching vacancies for September are advertised in April/May - which didn't give enough time for applicants signing up to the scheme in Feb/Mar/April/May to gain experience and find jobs in time to be counted in the stats. The final number of teachers who came through the scheme successfully could well be 200/300 - who knows?

I do think there needs to be an uplift in pay

Primary school teachers will want the same uplift though - but there isn't a shortage of primary school teachers in most areas.

Arthuritis I am also a parent of a DC who has just completed teacher training. He did a school based course but otherwise everything you say is familiar. Planning and teaching an 80% timetable, after school mentoring, lunchtime booster classes, parents evenings, staff meetings and on top of that no time allocated to doing the PGCE dissertations. I reckon he easily worked 80 hours a week and worked all the way through every holiday.
Half the cohort dropped out, those that stuck it out were the young new graduates with no life responsibilities.
In spit of this he loved it and remains hugely enthusiastic. I fear like you that will wane in a few years if he has a family.

Perhaps you could post that on the other thread, Clavinova for discussion?

Have you any reason to suspect that the projected secondary pupil numbers which are based on pupils currently in primary school, which we know from the school census, are inaccurate?

I have just finished reading The Teacher Gap which examines issues in retention in particular : especially of RQTs. It's very interesting. I recommend it.

That’s the Becky Allen one isn’t it? I love Becky Allen. What do they say about RQTs? No support once you finish NQT and you’re expected to be as good as someone who has been doing the job for years?

That's the gist. It is hard to summarise. they also write about training and issues you raise such as having a paid teacher assigned to a trainee's class. It's mainly about the lack of support and the thrown in at the deep end idea. I did love the bit about a teacher who discovered Twitter with all the debating teachers and the comment that these teachers are often silenced in actual schools (preach!) I'd like my head to read that page at the very least.

However, it does annoy me that there is this veritable boom in educational writing at the moment (with no real impact) and those very writers are those who no longer teach! I must admit they would have lost me to teaching years ago if I had seen that as a viable pathway for my own career.

And the parroting of US research.. and the belief that an excellent teacher is measurable by results. I'd liked them to have dug more into that myth.

They do diss PRP though, you will be delighted to hear!

@noblegiraffe I'll explain further. My dp trained in secondary ICT in England and got paid that year for training because of the subject he was training in.

He then qualified and came back to Ireland and couldn't find a secondary job in ICT this year at all and the ones that did pop up wanted years of
Experience so he ended up getting a sub position in a primary school. The primary school had a vacancy and he applied and got the job so he now teaches primary.

So that's what I mean by people can train for secondary but then struggle to get a job in that area so may migrate to primary but could end up being in primary so long they just stay there.

That wouldn’t be the case at all in England, pury, ICT has now gone but if he taught computer science he would have no trouble at all getting a job.

I think Ireland is very different, my friend’s school hire a lot of their shortage subject teachers via Skype from Ireland because they don’t get any applicants locally. Ireland seem to have loads spare.

He trained in computer science but I just say ICT or IT as it's easier. No there's no loads of jobs here in Ireland for NQT teachers in that subject as o said a lot require years of experience of which he doesn't have as he's newly qualified.

He trained in England last year but we live in Ireland so he can't back here to work. He was offered a position in England but couldn't take it up

I doubt any secondary computer science teacher would struggle to get a job in UK. I know plenty of schools where it is taught by non-specialists or unqualified teachers.

There isn't a shortage of primary teachers in the UK in general, and I know many secondary teachers who would like to move to primary but can't, because there are plenty of primary ones to go around.

If you are maths trained in the UK you could walk into a job. If you are good, it's like printing your own money. And yet there is still a shortage

I'm also the parent of a newly minted history teacher. I'm am extraordinarily proud of her achievements but she has worked bloody hard to get where she is.

She has a job which starts in July as the school would otherwise need to employ a supply teacher and I assume the cost of paying her for July and over the summer is comparable to paying for supply for 3 weeks. Her very slight advantage is that she has been able to live at home and will be able to continue to do so in her first job if she wants to. I have the greatest of respect for people who deal with that workload and have to juggle domestic responsibilities too.

She had a £4K bursary. She may also be expected to teach ethics and geography. The geographers on her PGCE received a much more substantial bursary - I think it was £26k. They don't have to teach other humanities subjects.

If you are good, it's like printing your own money. How does that work when teachers pay scales are fixed?

They’re not, Garcia, Gove binned all that. Academies can pay what they like.

@GarciaFlynn teacher's salaries aren't fixed. Each individual school gets to set its own pay scales. Academies can do what they like with pay. There is recruitment and retention payments. You could may a second year maths teacher the school equivalent of m6 or ups1. Or give them a TLR.

My DH left teaching last year after 15 years. It broke him and nearly the family. He was SLT and graded an outstanding teacher and leader.

He went round all the employment agencies and got on their books and told them he didn’t want to return to teaching. He took a job through an agency that was supposed to last a couple of months maximum but has now slid past the year mark. The company he is working for keeps finding new projects for him to do and we are now hoping if some things slot into place he will be head hunted into another firm on a decent wage equivalent to what he was earning while teaching but obviously for less hours than teaching. It hasn’t been an easy year and he’s had three jobs so we can make ends meet and we are so close to going under it’s ridiculous but he and the family are so much happier.

But during all this every week he’s had emails or phone calls asking if he’d please consider one teaching job or another as he is a Science and Computer Studies teacher/SL. He could have been earning big bucks but just will not consider it ever again.

Education is loosing so much in resources and knowledge as experienced teachers are leaving.

Behaviour is awful.
A kid pood in the corridor. It is a secondary school.

And whilst scales aren't rigid any more, I'm yet to find a teacher who has got a radically pay rate to near these.

Sheesh Cityteacher that's horrendous.

I doubt any secondary computer science teacher would struggle to get a job in UK. I know plenty of schools where it is taught by non-specialists or unqualified teachers.

The problem is that those non-specialists are not budging from their jobs as there is nowhere else for them to move on from, so there is not the movement there used to be in this subject. Instead, those non-specialists are working very hard to upskill in order to keep their jobs.
We take on PGCErs from a London uni and only about half of their cohort have managed to secure jobs this year (and a couple quit the course). Thankfully, both our trainees this year secured jobs but a long distance from where they live and in schools they were not sure about. I wish them the very best in luck.