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?

Less contact time would be ideal.
More staff with non-contact time in primaries.
My school has 150 pupils. Non-teaching Head but the sendco has a FT class commitment and the deputy is only out of class for 2 afternoons. 2 hours PPA so only 2 hours deputy time. There are far too many social, child protection, parent, SEND issues for this.

Less SLT would free up loads of money that could be spent to ease teachers workloads.
My DCs primary school has 1 head, 2 deputy heads, 2 assistant heads, a SENCO, a business manager and an IT manager. None have any classroom responsibilities or do any teaching or cover. Can't imagine how much non-contact time that could give the teachers who actually spend time with the children.

Wow Filga, that's a lot of non teachers! How big is the school? My DCs' infant school, 250 pupils, had a 0.4 teaching deputy head and a non teaching head, that's all.

It's a 4-form entry, so a big school, but when my oldest started only the head and one deputy were non class based, the SENCO worked with children in the morning. Old head left and new head took all his mates out of class. They keep sending out emails about lack of funding and asking us to give money, I work in primary education and refuse to fund that level of top heavy management.

If only leadership teams would trust teachers

If only there were no under-performing teachers. I think all workers in all industries/professions would love monitoring, reviews, regulations, etc to be scrapped and for them to be trusted! I'd certainly love to be able to just do my job and not have to undertake all manner of reporting virtually everything I do in case of review by regulators/insurers if a complaint is made. It's certainly not just restricted to teaching! All workers need to be subject to some form of metric to monitor their performance and weed out the poor staff. Sounds like teachers are over-controlled and that the metrics may not be appropriate, but the answer is more effective control that doesn't impinge on their teaching, not just to scrap all monitoring that would leave the flood gates open for poor practices to grow.