Where do you see teaching heading in the next 5/10/15 years?

[rollonthesummer]

I thought about this a few years ago and half wondered if there would be less teachers in the future but instead, more LSAs 'delivering' the curriculum which would be designed by a few senior teachers as there seemed to be lots of talk of 'delivery' rather than 'teaching'. Our school seems to have decided that TAs fail to improve standards though and want to get rid of them all, so I guess I was wrong on that score.

I can see teaching becoming a very 'young' profession with whizz-kids drafted in straight from university and either sidestepping quick out of the classroom into management or leaving as it's horrible. I can see older teachers being hounded out for being old and useless as well. All the teachers in their 50s at my school are utterly miserable and can't wait to leave. I don't see how we can keep going until 67!? Where do we all go though...!?

Management seem to jump on any bandwagon going as they know they'll get lynched by Ofsted/LEA/HMI if they don't and will be arbitrarily forced to become an academy or put into special measures with no way of refusing. I don't think one measure that has been implemented in the last ten years has helped improve standards-they have just created more paperwork, leaving less time to plan good lessons!

I think I'd like a career as a teacher in the 1970s instead, please! Has anyone got a spare Time Turner? ;)

Where can you see things heading?

Education being privitised.

I believe we already have a new two tier system. Academies and free school who have no curriculum, no need to employ qualified teachers, a easier oftsed and more money and traditional state schools.

Short career of up to 5 years.
Job shares, ST contracts.
Far less of a profession with the children's welfare and education at the heart of a teacher's mindset and far more disengagement with the individuals.
It will become a high-pressure job with no heart, as it is for many at the top of the mountain already, and most teachers will be just passing through.

What I would like to see is teaching becoming a very highly regarded profession as in some other European Countries. Only the best in their year at university are allowed to become teachers and undertake rigorous intensive training over several years (not a one year teacher training course). Those who come through this successfully have the knowledge, skills and passion to teach and are then paid accordingly.

In my dreams.

I worry about what it will become. Since I left, it just seems to have got worse! I wonder what things will be like by the time my son goes to school - and I wonder if I want to put him into that environment. Too many targets, too much stress for the teachers, too much paperwork - what will it be like for the children?