Where are all the older teachers?

[MinnieMousse]

DH was telling me that his school has budget issues and wants to cut TLR posts. He's a bit worried that it would be hard for him to find another position (middle leader level) incase schools don't want to employ older teachers (he's only 48!).One of his colleagues was looking at early retirement. He is late 50s, middle leader, no financial dependents so it might be an option for him but I'm thinking it will be increasingly unlikely in the future.

I don't think I have ever had a teaching colleague over the age of 60. Until recently, I know it was fairly easy for teachers to retire around this age, but obviously this will change with the increased pension age. It also seems that in the current climate schools want to employ cheap, young teachers. I already faced the experience when my school joined a MAT of older, experienced expensive teachers being clearly undesirable. I seemed to be counted among these at the grand old age of 38. How difficult is it going to be for those of us who want/need to work into our late 60s? Are there any older teachers out there who are still happily teaching?

I was wondering this earlier too - am also ‘old’ and relatively expensive at 37 with 12 years experience. I’ll have no choice but to work up to retirement but what if I’m removed before that?!

No one older than 50 in my school or other local ones unless they’re in management

Capabilitied out. Legalised age discrimination. Because, as we all know, once you hit UPS and/ or become 40+ you suddenly become a dinosaur and unable to teach.

Our infant and junior school replaced them all with cheap nqtsor recently qualified teachers.

One of the MATs schools has 9 teachers and various heads. All 9 are under 30. Mostly early 20s I'd guess. 5 years ago it was a good mix of ages...

My school is quite unusual in that our head keeps older more experienced staff on. We have a good mix of ages and experience-only 2 staff left last year! Big comprehensive as well.

I started teaching ( mainly infants) in 1978 , semi retired from full time teaching at 58 and then did supply until last year aged 61.
Many of my teacher friends of a similar age are now finishing, despite not being to get their state pension until 66/67. Unfortunately we don’t have large teacher pensions either as women of our generation tended to be at home with children or working part time for several years.
We have stopped teaching because of all the nonsense ( reinventing the wheel and calling it something different sort of thing)
I noticed during my last 5 years or so, that older teachers were in the minority. By older I mean 40+. It appears that teachers are generally not staying in teaching for the whole of their working lives any more.
I think it is beneficial to students and staff to have a spread of ages on the teaching staff. Older more experienced teachers can pass on what they have learned to newer colleagues and vice versa.
What a shame if experience is driven out because of cost. Sadly 2 of my regular schools told me that they could no longer afford to employ me for cover due to my daily cost compared with a new teacher.

Capabilitied out. Legalised age discrimination. Because, as we all know, once you hit UPS and/ or become 40+ you suddenly become a dinosaur and unable to teach.

This is what worries me. I took a pay cut when I left the MAT, back to the main pay scale and don't see myself ever getting back through the threshold. I work part-time and was worried about finding a job. But if people are managed out, what do they do? I have kids who will need supporting for a good few years yet. DH is the main earner and we would be stuffed if he lost his job and couldn't get something else.

All my colleagues in my department are older than me. I’m 33. One of them has been teaching here for 30 years, the older for 25 and finally the other for 15.

We have a good mix in our school.

I am 48 and one of the oldest in my school. I feel as if I am being pushed out - the last three years I have been given gcse classes with the naughtiest and most under achieving kids in the year so I automatically fail my performance management

And we can't retire till 68.

A new head came into the school I used to teach at, 3 years ago. We had very low staff turnover, most of us between 35-50, a very friendly team. Of course most of us, being "old" and experienced, were near the top of the salary scale. He made it clear he thought we were all dinosaurs. He came from a school full of very young teachers, all keen and willing to work all hours and never question any decisions, and without kids. He started targeting us one by one, giving us negative performance assessments, bullying people into leaving. Unions were involved but it was a losing battle because it was such an unhappy atmosphere it was destroying people's MH to work there. So sad as it had been a lovely place to work. 3 years on we have all gone from there. There are no experienced teachers there now, he just runs it on a fast turnover of NQTs and supply teachers. I feel sorry for the kids but nothing makes me happier than knowing I will never have to see that man again.
Unfortunately this scenario is repeated nationwide. Get rid of those old, expensive teachers and replace them with cheap young teachers who will burn out in a few years and get replaced with other cheap young teachers.

Themad same here with our MAT. 4 schools - new head and old staff leave or are pushed out rto ve replaced by young childfree staff who work all hours and are cheap. Ideally trained up from within...

I think the big disadvantage of older staff is they come with family responsibilities and worse of all the ability to say NO. This makes us fantastic with diffucult teenagers put so easy for a young SMT with poorly thought out intiatives.... GROWTH MINDSET anyone 😂.

I have worked in a (state) grammar, a independent and the sixth form of a MAT. Only the MAT had a plethora of young, cheap, working all hours staff. I felt like a weirdo for having a young child. I was actually the only full time staff member with a primary or younger child.

However, I saw all three schools hire and train older staff on occasion because when schools have serious maths and science ambitions, for instance, they tend to be more open to older teachers because they actually need the subject knowledge and experience and it is scarcer due to the competition from finance and industry.

But I know the plural of anecdote is not data!

An independent. Tsk, you can tell I don't teach English!!

GROWTH MINDSET anyone 😂.

This made me chuckle. I have been teaching so long I have seen all the fads come and go several times over.

I raise you Foundations of Writing, North Lanarkshire Writing, integrated day, Critical Skills (so many others I can't remember) and our latest hobbyhorse - NURTURE

Littlewhistle you are giving yourself away there diacritical marking your thing then?

It's not as bad in Scotland tbf.

Plenty of older teachers at our place, just very very few in middle management. Lead practitioner roles recently went to nqts. Nobody else would touch them with a barge pole. Lots of us in the classroom and 3/5 at slt.

Interestingly a new head got rid of almost all of our older staff when she started several years ago (I clung on by my fingernails) she replaced them all with bright young NQTs. Staff turnover became very high as they all left for "better" positions after a year or two. Now the pendulum has swung back and the last few teachers hired have been 35-50 to stabilise the school.

I’ve seen some terrible things happen over the past 5 years when going to various schools on supply.
I have seen previous colleagues of mine, both teaching and support staff, who have had exemplary careers with glowing feedback from performance management, OFSTED etc, put on “ support” when a new head has arrived. All of these teachers were 45/50+.
One local school, a successful primary, lost a total of 50 staff over 2 years of a new headship. Teachers, support staff, pastoral staff, office staff and librarian. Again all “ older” members of staff. This particular school now is operated by a teaching staff of NQTs, teachers in their second and third years of teaching and unqualified teachers doing their training at school. There are no experienced teachers to mentor, the head of key stage 2 is in her second year of teaching.
But they are saving money and have no old fogies working there so all is fine.
Schools really do need a mix of new enthusiastic teachers and older more experienced enthusiastic teachers.
I learned most of all I know about teaching from more experienced older staff and have in turn passed it on to newer teachers.

@TheMadGardener thats exactly what happened at dds school.

Every member of staff near the top of the pay scale were managed out.

The new head has been in his position for just over 2 years now and he has managed to replace 75% of the teaching staff with newly qualified teachers. Only the SLT are over 40 from what I can see.

The budget was running out of control and employing cheaper staff has managed to claw back some money.

I feel for the staff and students, some of the best staff have gone and been replaced with inexperienced green young teaching staff. They really struggle with the students behaviour and there aren't any experienced staff around to advise them.

I know some staff are tutoring, I have 2 of them for dd because the new staff really aren't up to much at the moment. They lack that experience. One of the maths teachers has gone into accountancy and the drama teacher has just started her own kids drama school.

I’m doing supply, and I’ll keep doing it for a while yet. In my late 50s now, I was a ft class teacher for 30 years. I’ll just see how long I last and if it’s enjoyable.
I agree that older teachers are often performance-managed out of schools, and that it is usually unrelated to their ability, and directly related to the expense and critical thinking they do. Which younger heads and SLT seem to find difficult to handle.

I'm 39 with nearly 18 years class teaching experience behind me. I am UPS3 but in the past 4 years I have struggled to keep my job due to a bullying, narcissist HT who systematically tried to get rid of all UPS3 teachers, older teachers and those part time. She partially succeeded. That success stopped with me. She tried twice. The first time was down right bullying and discrimination and the next was a false allegation. She underestimated my fighting spirit.

She's gone now. I think she gave up.

My last school was academised and every single staff member over 35 plus all part timers were systematically bullied or capabilitied out. I left anyway and was replaced by an unqualified scitt trainee. They now have a staff made up entirely of scitt trainees, unqualified, nqt's or rqt 's. Lots of nice management positions though!

I am also the oldest in my current job, in my late 40s. I'm looking for a way out.

One silver lining to this though, is that when applying for jobs in other schools, any school that uses these types of tactics will just bin your application as soon as thy see you are UPS3, whereas nice schools who value experienced staff will interview and possibly take you on.