Online lessons because schools can't recruit and retain teachers

[Hayliebells]

A school local to me has written to parents to explain that some science lessons will be via pre-recorded online learning, with students in computer rooms, as they haven't got enough Science teachers to teach all the timetabled lessons. This is where an inability to recruit and retain teachers leads, and it's shameful. We really are a two tier society now, with students in private schools in small classes, taught by specialist teachers, and students in state schools effectively teaching themselves at a computer. Pre-recorded lessons aren't even as good as many schools were offering for online learning during lockdown, it's the opposite of responsive teaching. Where's the opportunity to address misconceptions, to answer the students questions? This is not teaching, and only a minority of students can learn this way. Online lessons are standard in countries like Mexico, for families who cannot afford private schools. They have schools made up of computer suites, with students sat learning via online lessons all day, and staff just there to supervise. This is not just the future of schools in the UK if we carry on as we are, it's happening now. How anyone can think this is OK is beyond me. The government should be ashamed.

Nope - I disagree. Arts and humanities subjects teach skills that are just as important as sciences. Let's have a look at the degree subjects of the last few prime ministers: PPE, PPE, Classics, Geography, PPE, History, Law... You have to go back to Thatcher to find a scientist. Similarly, many of the non-scientists I was at university with have had the most successful careers. In an increasingly automated society, the softer skills are actually among the most valuable and least easy to automate.

As for teaching the least able (or most disadvantaged) children basic Maths and English - yes, of course that's important. But if you strip back the education system to focus on that, then not only do you massively limit your society, but you also reduce still further the incentive for talented graduates to enter teaching.

@Hayliebells
>But noone can actually be worse than this lot

Agree. Two more years :-(

They'll slash and burn in those two years as well, just wait. We'll see headline like the Covid PPE scandals over and over again, diverting money to their mates before the gravy train stops. I fear it's just going to get worse, before it gets better. But the next government will have one hell of a clean up job. It'll probably take decades to put us back to where we were 15 years ago, once this wrecking ball government have had their time.

So which European country has it right in your opinion? I don’t mean just generalised bla about the grass being greener, which actual country? The French have very similar problems in attracting and retaining teachers , so much so that there are comedy videos about getting animals to do the job. I believe that Germany is also facing teacher shortages ( although both these countries have a big difference in teacher numbers and retention between traditional areas and those with many ‘new citizens’) .

When I lived in France, I was struck by how regimented the education system and what was expected of pupils and teachers seemed to be in terms of academic rigour and application, compared to England. They seemed to try to drag the less able up to the level of the most able, but ultimately to cater more for the latter. But that would be impossible to impose in England, it would be against everyone’s ‘rights’.

BTW, many Labour and LibDems MPs send their children to private schools. DianeAbbott actually boasted about how this showed she ‘cared’. I hold no brief for this government, but I think that politicising this discussion is both naive and pointless. We need to examine the system without bias, and try to come up with non political suggestions.

I don’t expect you to agree.

@anunlikelyseahorse your post is spot on. I am never going to set foot in a State classroom again. I've done my time but I am simply not prepared to go to work to be threatened, insulted and unable to deliver lessons.

I am sending my children to private school at great personal sacrifice. I really resent hearing that it's fine for universities to discriminate, especially when friends choose to spend their money on houses, cars, holidays etc.

Finland

I think there is a huge difference between identifying an education system that works well in its country of origin and finding one that could provide a model in a different country.

Specific culture and values; the nature of the language; education and employment status of adults (including key sectors and historical and future trends); pay, conditions and status of teachers; immigration / emigration statistics, including proportion of children who have the ‘language of instruction’ as a second or third language; deprivation levels (and gap between poorest and richest); population density; presence and status of private schools; historical tolerance for innovation vs state control etc etc etc.

Having lived through the ‘Shanghai Maths’ craze (who knew that copying a model from a city where poorer children are excluded from the city’s schools; where Maths teachers only teach in the mornings; where after school coaching us so universal that every child can be assumed to have caught up the next day etc might not transfer perfectly into the English primary school setting??) I am sceptical that any single country can be taken as a model.

As a science Head of Department, this sadly does not surprise me.

My current school is fine but we are a new school which helps. That said, I had 6 applications recently, of which only 3 were shortlistable!

A school in our MAT - Ofsted outstanding and fantastic reputation locally are really struggling. They have no science HoD and need a Biology and a Physics teacher as well. Multiple ads but no luck.

Another local school - rated good, good reputation, also has no HoD and two science teachers down.

The school I worked in last year was shocking! In the whole year, I don't think I had a full team on a single day and I am not exaggerating! The timetable was chopped and changed so many times as I desperately tried to make sure every class had at least some lessons with a specialist. We also used our frees/doubled classes up etc. Multiple attempts.to recruit were fruitless.

I left in the end as I was burnt out. It's no better now from what people still there tell me 😔

Some people really don't understand how bad it is!

Pre-millenium I taught in FE as an unqualified and unexperienced teacher in my subject. My starting salary in 1997 was £25,000 (much less than I was earning in the profession at the time). I took the post as it was less stressful than my professional role and I was still breastfeeding so could fit my feeds around classroom hours (I lived close-by). Salaries have not really moved on in 25+ years!

The situation has deteriorated very quickly since the pandemic. I am in an independent and at the minute it is like the football transfer window, with vacancies everywhere and people desperate to hand in their notice by Easter.

Online learning is a joke. We had all fancy live lessons that SLT raved about, and my Y11 have since confessed that they didn't pay any attention and were usually playing computer games. I'm now desperately trying to re-teach topics where they have massive knowledge gaps.

The move towards technology in education is being pushed because the government have no intention of resolving the teacher crisis. It's easier just to stick a kid in front of a laptop and hope for the best. What a sad state of affairs.

I agree that while I cannot STAND the current government it is utterly naive to think a Labour government will solve this deep-rooted issue. It’s cultural that teaching is not a respected profession. It’s really bloody shoc

Shocking!

We know what doesn't work:

1. Ofsted
2. Government treating the profession with contempt (including over pay, but also in just day-to-day interactions as well as in the press)
3. Insane workload caused by too high a teaching allocation
4. Endless things dumped on schools that aren't actually to do with education from propping up a lack of mental health services to preventing terrorism
5. Starving schools of funding

So if Labour do anything to tackle any of the above that would be a good start.

Had a long chat with our Head of Physics the other day about recruitment and similar. It is indeed hard to recruit Physics teachers, but he also asked how we coped with our huge workload in mock periods (English has 4 papers all consisting of long answers - these take a lot longer to mark than Physics!). There are different issues in different subjects.
English recruitment is increasingly difficult as it happens. This is repeated across the country. I've been teaching since 2002. The number of suitable applicants for roles across all departments has dropped significantly.

That is really sad. I don't knownif the new generation are different, but I personally learn more in person. I don't seem to absorb it the same online. Quite a tragedy.

"Finland". I am not up to date on what Finland is doing now, but during the period of its greatest success, and at least until relatively recently, the Finnish approach to SEN was having a separate SEN nurture-type classroom with qualified special needs teachers, rather than expecting full integration into standard classrooms. Would this approach be acceptable in UK schools?

It was also very traditional in its educational approach, with textbooks, little to no group work, desks facing from the front, etc from age 8. This again goes against how most uk schools are run.

With regard to Mercia School - the ad was for an assistant head. This is a very different job from a classroom teacher. For one thing, SLT [senior leadership team] are usually paid more, but more importantly, we need probably 50 times more secondary teachers than we do SLT. It should be the role of SLT to protect classroom teachers by taking on the burden of setting up and running a high quality discipline system, dealing with abusive parents, etc etc, leaving teachers free to concentrate on teaching, which if done effectively, boosts teacher retention.

Would like a bit more elaboration on Finland - lots of studies out there to suggest it isn't as perfect as it may appear.

It's still a hell of a lot better than what we have got, especially in terms of funding, payment for and status and professionalism of teachers, PISA outcomes, wellbeing measures for young people.

I can recommend a book called Cleverlands by Lucy Crehan which explores other systems, amongst them Finland , Canada and Japan.

It was also very traditional in its educational approach, with textbooks, little to no group work, desks facing from the front, etc from age 8. This again goes against how most uk schools are run.

Traditional, however, doesn't equal completely mixed ability and no terminal exams.

Kesstrel is correct re Finland. During the period that produced the PISA winning cohorts, it was a pretty traditional system with desks in rows and a textbook for every subject (even quite recently, Finland was shown to have the highest textbook usage rate in the OECD - 93% of lessons were based on textbooks). There was a special ed stream for kids who could not fit into the regular curriculum, because teachers taught to the whole class with very little differentiation. It's true that Finland was not a high-pressure, tutor-mad country like South Korea, but it absolutely was not child-led "beanbag school" or anything like it.

Something Finland has done very well and which continues to this day is that it makes it very hard to qualify as a teacher, but then largely trusts teachers and lets them get on with the job (they have to follow the standard curriculum and textbooks, but there is very little in the way of accountability, paperwork, box-ticking, league tables and so on). This approach is only possible in cultures that make it hard to qualify to teach in the first place, though, so not sure how the UK could shift towards this model when we currently face shortages.... Also, Finnish culture strongly respects education and teachers, for deeply felt historical reasons.

Traditional, however, doesn't equal completely mixed ability and no terminal exams.

Sorry, not clear what you mean.... you mean Finland is/was "completely mixed ability and no terminal exams"?

Finland definitely does separate students into tracks after a certain age, and they have a lot of very high-stakes terminal exams at the end of their education, which last week.

I grew up with having lessons remotely. It did hold me back and it affected my MH more than anything.

My DC are science mad. Both want science careers. So this is heartbreaking....

They don't have anything like the same obsession with assessing and tracking.

Can you find me the evidence tat they aren't mixed ability because that contradicts what I read. They start formal schooling later, too.

But, anyway, no point in arguing about what other countries do. We aren't going to change our whole education system. This would require money, organisation, consultation and deep thought - all of which our government does not exhibit.

What is certainly true is that teachers are paid more highly, have fewer classroom hours, greater status and higher entry requirements into the profession in almost every European country and many others across the developed world.

Also, Finnish culture strongly respects education and teachers, for deeply felt historical reasons.

I'd argue we used to. So what has changed?

Most cultures respect teachers, to be fair. Periodically surveys are done of 'most respected /trusted etc professionals' and teachers always come very near the top. In reality the public respect teachers- the problems lie in government. And possibly Capitalism.