Teaching - what needs to change?

[Whinberry]

I am not a teacher but I keep hearing how stressful it is and how many teachers want to leave. What is it that is wrong and what needs to change? More money is always needed but apart from just 'more money' what do you think needs to happen?

More time for teachers to plan, mark and do the things that make the job important.

Less government involvement- huge curriculum and assessment changes introduced on the whim of a career politician with very little guidance given on how to implement them. Give the decision making for those kinds of things to professional bodies and organisations who have the experience and knowledge to implement them correctly.

More respect from others- not being made to feel like its a second class career that any old mug can do (because they went to school 25 years ago)

Have a look on the threads I need the staff room, there have been a couple of detailed ones in the last month alone.

Can’t c&p, but ‘What could be done to stop the teacher recruitment and retention crisis’ is one.

In Primary I think doubling the number of teachers would help. Not necessarily halving class sizes, although sometimes that could be done, but putting two teachers (and support staff) on each class. This would halve the amount of marking and admin each teacher had to do and dilute the stress of targets, behaviour management etc.

I also think there should be much more and a better range of specialist provision. Research shows that resource bases work really well (done properly) so put one in every school covering a whole range of specialisms.

I'm not a teacher either but i have a passing interest as my perception is that for at least the past two decades there has been so much meddling/upheaval/changes in the UK Education system that we must surely have generations of children who have suffered.

Now i left school in the 80's

I went to an "old school" grammar which was very highly rated. The sort of school you would feel privileged to send your child to. They had discipline and they had structure. Teaching methods were traditional, talk and chalk etc. It worked very well. It produced results. Why did we depart from these methodologies ?

Why depart from the ‘talk and chalk’ method? Because not everyone learns that way? Because we have moved on and know we need to recognise the needs of individual learners, not just see the class as some kind of homogenous whole? Because we want all children to make progress, not just some of them?

Better SLT. I’m a governor not a teacher. Our previous head was just shit. Hadn’t a clue how to manage staff, bullied, threatened, stuck plasters over the cracks. New head is like a breath of fresh air, trusts staff to be professional and do their job. Funnily enough our results are improving and our teachers aren’t leaving any more.

As in much of the UK, crap management is a serious problem.

Stop promoting very young people very early, before they've learned how to teach.
Stop dicking around with the exam syllabus every year.
Stop dicking around with grading systems and boundaries.
Stop punishing schools for using fixed term exclusions and then wondering why behaviour is such a problem.

Proper investment in SEND so those students don’t get lost.

Also, more TAs, better pay for TAs, stop people who aren’t qualified teachers doing whole class teaching.

And no to performance related pay.

• No more unnecessary curriculum changes.
• Less variation in exam marking
• At secondary level, teachers should have to be qualified in a subject to teach it.

A quirk in the timetable has resulted in me having one extra PPA this term. The difference it has made to my work life balance has been amazing, as well as supportive colleagues, rather than the micro managing of last year. The 'good' rating from Ofsted has done a lot too.

Abolish rigorous targets , smaller classes or more teachers per class , kick up the arse for kids and parents

Stop school leaders managing by email (ban weekend, holiday and evening emails) and make them actually speak to people.

More teachers and TAs per class would be lovely but this hasn't historically been the case so are not the cause of the 'problem'. Also class size isn't am issue everywhere so what makes it a problem here?

I do think SEN is appallingly unsupported though and agree with resource basis on schools to provide specialist teaching and space for children who may cope sometimes but at other times cannot work in the classroom. They do need adequate TA support too.

More teachers and TAs per class would be lovely but this hasn't historically been the case so are not the cause of the 'problem'.

Are you serious?! If you have 20 kids in your class instead of 30 you can do a miles better job with them because your marking reduces dramatically and you can spend more time planning. Also, if you’ve got kids with SEND in your class, having a TA to support them makes a massive difference to how well they get on. TAs can do a lot of the busy work (sticking, photocopying etc) that means you can spend more time on the planning/marking etc.

Also class size isn't am issue everywhere so what makes it a problem here?

What do you mean by this? Where isn’t class size a problem?

Its not attainable right now as there simply arent enough teachers.

But I think that if teachers had a reduced teaching time table (so possibly 2 class teachers per class 2.5 days teaching, 2.5 days 'admin'), they would have time to plan, assess and mark and allow creativity to flow.

Here's a link to the thread mentioned earlier. Lots of ideas!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/the_staffroom/3085036-What-could-be-done-to-stop-the-teacher-recruitment-and-retention-crisis

More money for SEND and alternative provision.

You use the term historically loosely there Whinberry as we have only been educating all children since 1870. Inclusion only really became a thing with Warnock in 1978. Corporal punishment in schools was only banned in 1986.

The current educational landscape is very new and basically untested in terms of valid research.

You have seen an old photo, perhaps, of 50 cowed children sitting in rows learning to read from a set text. You wonder why that doesn't work now, forgetting that the photo only contained children who could learn in that setting, or were too frightened not to sit there pretending they could. I'm also pretty sure the teacher in that photo didn't triple mark their writing or spend a hour every night thinking of questions across 6 different categories at 4 different levels to ask them about the single set text they learned by rote.

Well as a support member of staff in school I think marking is a lot more then it used to be when we where in school. Which puts pressure on the teachers.

The number of SEN children in main stream schools has increased. Which ours fine outfit they have enough TA support but they often don't.

Behaviour can be an issue, I would never have dared talk to my teachers like some of the kids in our school do. Bearing in mind I went to a very similar compressive school do I'm comparing like with like hear.

Most teachers work really hard but don't get treated as such. Lack of respect.

And that goes to show I shouldn't post when I have a migraine. Sorry my post is all wobbly.

Why has there been a continual rise is SENs?

Inclusion - a lot of special schools were closed down and a lot of those children are now educated in mainstream.