The exodus continues

[Feenie]

timparamour.com/2016/03/07/the-story-of-the-teaching-crisis/

[Feenie]

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/dear-secondary-colleagues-when-i-send-my-teacher-assessment

[SuffolkNWhat]

I know Michael IRL and he's on the ball as always

[Cataline]

I agree Suffolk, Michael is always worth listening to!

[Feenie]

Is he the same guy trying to collate same tests results for everyone?

[Doowrah]

Rollon...I had the audacity to ask my jobshare teacher to do a reading assessment with them.Which both previous jobshare teachers had done no problem.She hit the roof and slagged off my professionalism to the Head who failed to ask for my version of events and waded into me.I pointed out that we work a 4:1 week...30 assessments...26:6 work share.I am not doing a full week and being paid for 4. The jobshare just didn't want to do it...the overworked deputy did it instead! I work with a teacher who is incapable of doing assessments apparently. Yes my Head is lovely if a little misguided on occasions.She's retiring in July Lord knows who we'll end up with.I am now to terrified to talk to my jobshare!Mindboggiling!

[Doowrah]

Sorry...retiring and too tired...I am knackered.

[EvilTwins]

I'm staying one more year because I promised my yr 12s last year, when they were my yr 11s, that I wouldn't leave before they did. I have genuine feelings of guilt about it. I would love to leave my current school but I can't do it to them. One more year, then I'm starting my own thing with a colleague. Still education but not in a school and (hopefully) free of some of the relentless shit.

[Feenie]

Good luck, eviltwins

Another decent teacher hounded out

So depressed re academies as well.

[roundtable]

Something has got to break sometime.

The situation has got unbearable. That's without looking at the issues of pupil behaviour and inclusion and the lack of manpower and money to implement it successfully in all schools.

To the teachers that moved abroad - do you have to pay for your children to be educated privately? Or is it part of the package? I have a child due to join reception and although I don't have too much of an issue with the reception model, I do from then on. I'm considering teaching abroad just to get then out of the English education system.

[MsFiremanSam]

Another one here. I'm HoD and an AST and have been teaching for nine years. For the first four years, I was single and lived by myself, so I threw myself enthusiastically into the job, planning, marking, laminating everything in sight, going in over holidays and loving it.
Over the last five years the job has changed beyond measure. Children are reduced to targets on a spreadsheet, SLTs install a culture of paranoia and fear, and the workload is utterly unmanageable. I have two children and I bitterly resent the sunny weekends and bedtime stories I've missed out on to just keep my head above water and complete paperwork which usually has no benefit to the children I teach.
I'm expecting my third baby this year and plan to use the time away to plan my escape. I will go back for the requisite time after maternity pay but then I'm out. Education is getting worse and I see no hope for it. I feel desperately sad because I love teaching - but it's no longer worth it. I have no idea what to do next - I just want my life back.

[NickiFury]

I home ed one of my children - significant additional needs. This week alone I have spoken to two parents who were training to be teachers who dropped out and immediately removed their own children from school to home ed. I was shocked tbh and it really made me think about what must he happening in the system for them to get a glimpse of the inside and then take those measures.

DD is is mainstream and doing well - staff turnover is low, apart from the HT who has only been in post for two years and handed her notice in after the first year. I am really concerned about that tbh and pretty apprehensive about September and the new HT.

I fully expect to be home educating DD in the future but we shall see.

[ravenAK]

roundtable - I pay nothing for eldest, 25% for dd1 & 50% for dd2. It works out about £700pm: because of the tax free status I still take more home than in the UK.

Another way of looking at it is that last year I was spending at least that on breakfast club, after school pt Nanny & school transport - none of which I have to pay now we all travel together .

Obviously childless &/or teacher couple colleagues are bloody coining it - two of my friends live very comfortably on one salary & are investing the other.

[clam]

Can't tell you how glad I am that my youngest child is in her last year of education. Wouldn't be happy to have a child starting the system nowadays.

For me, I'm 52 and very glad to be nearing the end of my career, as opposed to starting it. If it gets untenable, I shall walk early.

Our HT is getting very concerned about our staff's well-being. We have a fairly stable set-up, but a significant number of people (established, experienced, dedicated and successful teachers) are clearly wobbling with the workload/raised expectations. She's easing off as much as possible with any demands, and has asked us all what we would like her to do that will help. Her first pledge is to stop unnecessary meetings that can be covered by email. Second is to reduce expectations for report writing.

It's a step in the right direction.

[ZombieHunter]

roundtable

My DS will get free education, he is in year 2 at the moment. At his age other parents pay 24k at my new school, closer to sixth form it's 30k equivalent.

I only have one DS but when I applied for jobs, quite a few of them offered free education for up to two children and then similar model as raven describes.

After today's news, I feel even luckier to have secured this job abroad. I can't wait to escape just in time.

[Awholelottanosy]

This thread is so sad. I'm not a teacher but I think they do such a great job and I'm sad that it's become such a stressful profession to be in. No teacher goes into it for the money and although the holidays are a bonus,I'm sure they're massively needed. If we don't have happy, well resourced, good teachers we don't have much of a future as a society. I don't know what the answer is, the Gvt doesn't seem to care - I don't know what effect schools becoming academies will have but it seems like the system is at breaking point...

[clam]

At what point is it considered broken, I wonder?

[RobotMenu]

Long ago...but the government papers over the cracks and hopes no one notices..

[roundtable]

Thanks Raven and Zombie.

One of my dc has a SN so I am going to see how reception goes and decide from there. I'm worried if we move abroad about his continuity of care and medical bills.

[ravenAK]

You'd definitely need to look carefully at the sen provision, roundtable.

My 3 dc are respectively dyspraxic, mildly autistic & deaf, & the support they've received has hugely outshone anything we received in the UK public sector tbh, where, being academically high achievers, they were the least of an over stretched system's worries!

It also helps that I'm rubbing shoulders with their teachers as colleagues daily (although as I'm sure you can imagine this has its downside also .)

From what I gather international schools vary immensely, from outstanding sen provision to virtually none. Where we are there is a definite stigma attached to any sort of learning difficulty that affects academic progress for example - parents would much rather throw money at tutors behind closed doors than make use of support in school, so our Sen dept have to be diplomatic geniuses...

[IoraRua]

Student teachers in my school (I am in Ireland) have told me of massive headhunting going on by UK teaching agencies. So that's a potential source of teachers for you I suppose, though I don't see them staying.
Good luck to you all over there, I wouldn't stay in your system.

[noblegiraffe]

I know a school whose maths department is a boatload of Irish NQTs who all go back home after a year or two. This constant turnover is not great for the school and creates a lot of work for the HOD.

[ravenAK]

Quite a few of them come over here - I'm off out this evening to a party hosted by our Celtic contingent!

If young teachers are planning to leave Ireland to teach, sunny & tax free probably compares very favourably with the UK.

[KinkyDorito]

Teenagers want to be teachers because many of us here are giving all of ourselves to teaching them in the current climate and they have no idea of the sacrifices we make. They will be inspired, we are doing excellent jobs - they don't see the cost of it.

13 years and been off sick LOTS this year. Worst ever. I'm absolutely done it with it all but I can't afford to leave. I still love teaching, still get excellent results and am still very highly regarded, but that is because there is never any let up to the 70 hour weeks. There are staff members who coast, but I can't bring myself to be like this. I would be upset by thinking I wasn't doing my job properly - which is why I am getting so burnt out as it is harder and harder to keep up. I know loads of people who are leaving, recruitment is very tough and some core departments are staffed wholly by NQTs and the turnover is vast. You tell SLT it is too much, they nod, and then ask you to do more. Salt is further rubbed in the wound by the culture of employing lots of APs who have very few teaching hours, if any, and big salaries, whose main job seems to be to monitor what teachers do and put more and more initiatives in place. Whoever said micromanagement is what is doing us in was spot on.

I am a data analyst and a hoop-jumper before I am a teacher nowadays. I spend more time marking (up to 16 hours for one set of more able books) than I do planning lessons and making my subject interesting.

HR tell me I must cut my workload. I tell them that if I do that, I will be put on capability as the hours I do cover the basics of what I am expected to do. If I do less, I will be flagged up. We are scrutinised weekly - work scrutinies, student voice, learning walks at any time (documented). We aren't supposed to do any of this stuff, but the union has given up as nobody will take action against it.

The state of education is terrifying for me and my mental health, but far more terrifying as a parent with a 7 year old going though school.

DH wants me to look abroad, but it's not great timing for DD who is going into Year 13, then uni, next year. Plus, will possibly be very restricted by health issues - she is nearly an adult, ASD and had cancer a few years ago. DS is 7. It would be lovely to move somewhere and feel like they had their mum back .

[phlebasconsidered]

Kinky, can you go part-time? I really feel for you. We downsized and I went to 3.5 days. It works for me, I get my weekends back. I spend my Monday planning and marking, and my Tuesday morning sorting the house, then work. I have also been lucky enough to land a job in a school that isn't crazy. My head is actually a human. There are still some about.

I was in your situation 3 years ago, in an academy where all older, expensive staff and all those who dared raise their heads above the parapet were hounded out. Data was manipulated, the head was a true sociopath and I left to do supply, which gave me my mojo and introduced me to the school i'm at now. Then a part-time position came up, and although I took a pay cut to get it, both moving down the scale and losing FT status, it was most definitely worth it. My kids are human again and so am I. I hadn't realised how little time I actually spent with my own kids! Their own behaviour has vastly improved from seeing a saner mum.

Or go supply, there's a lot of it about in some areas. I was never short of a job when I was doing it and you really get to suss out where you would like to work. I went from a staffroom where people were regularly weeping to one where the Head provides cakes on Fridays. And forces people to go home!

[KinkyDorito]

phlebas I've asked. It still makes me bloody cross that we have to go PT in order to manage a teaching job within the working week. They don't even bother to hide it now - after a half term the exec Head asked if everyone had managed to get caught up with their marking! SLT are actually much kinder than ones I've experienced before, but everyone is under pressure and nobody has the answers as to how to remove that. It is breaking people all around me.

Your new school sounds fab - any vacancies?