Teacher vacancies in England more than double over three years, figures show
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/england-dfe-teachers-government-department-for-education-b1162696.html
Posted by BestButtons
Teacher vacancies in England more than double over three years, figures show
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/england-dfe-teachers-government-department-for-education-b1162696.html
Posted by BestButtons
18 Comments
Not a shocker. Mate of mine spent the best part of a decade at uni because he wanted to teach. Think he’s been doing it a year or something now and he wants out already. Too stressful, kids are shits, parents are worse. he’s working way more hours than he’s actually contracted for. All for about 30k. You can make that easily just with a forklift licence.
There’s just no incentive to be a teacher at a public school. They start on like 30k? To have to deal with shithead kids for hours on end. We have to accept that mass education is not achievable. The mass cannot be effectively educated.
School should be a place kids can go during the day so both of their parents work. There’s hundreds of thousands of Rashids and Muhammed’s that will supervise those kids for £15k a year.
Easy peasey.
Edit: hey guys thanks for all the great replies. I think we can all agree we’ve had a good time. I’m off out to dinner now.
I’ve been MemorialGangbang and you’ve all been wonderful.
Have a good one x
Friend of mine taught for years in Hong Kong.
She moved to England and was traumatised by how bad the school system is. Students are bad and parents are worse and administrators fail to support teachers. Misbehaving students face zero discipline and as such class rooms are disrupted and the job is impossible.
Well I was coming back from Canada as a teacher but the government just told me teachers don’t make enough to sponsor my canada wife anymore so I’m stuck here 🤷♂️…. I’m Ottawa alone, I know a couple other British teachers in similar positions. If they need teachers so badly, they should target all of us who left the country (I know a lot)
Whilst behaviour and pay may be part of it, as a teacher myself I’d say it’s more about how *other* jobs have changed.
Teaching is a graduate profession. The alternative to being a teacher is not stacking shelves (I mean no disrespect there); the alternative is other *graduate* jobs.
And expectations of graduate jobs have changed.
When I commuted in to central London 14 years ago, *everyone* was wearing a suit and everyone was in at 9 and out at 5/6 every day. Sure, full wfh might be over for many. But there is now an *expectation* that there will at least be *some* hybrid working, that there will be some flexibility with hours. And the day of the full suit is dying. Many graduate jobs have become more flexible and more casual.
Teaching, however, has gone the opposite way. In my last school, for example, I was ‘told off’ for wearing a navy sweater in the middle of winter because it covered the top of my tie. Sure there are perks to the job but there’s no flexibility at all. If you’ve got someone coming round to fix the boiler, you’re stuck. If you need to pop your car in the garage in the morning and have to arrive 15 minutes late, you just can’t.
Many teachers are looking at their partners, their friends, family members and seeing them get an extra hour in bed some days, seeing that they can sometimes work from home and get a bit of hoovering done, or decide to go in a bit later one day.
The pay is quite good in teaching when you’ve been in the job a while, but it’s nothing you can’t get elsewhere. And most teachers are qualified enough, and presentable and professional enough, to be able to get many other graduate jobs.
The profession will need to find a way to manage this, but if anything, the profession is becoming forever more rigid and more strict with its staff.
**TLDR: teaching is out of step with other graduate jobs and the move towards more flexibility; this is what is really causing the retention crisis**
Who is surprised? Salaries are not competitive, teachers can’t punish students or feel safe in certain schools. Who’d be gunning for that job?
When I was a kid I wanted to be a teacher. Three of my friends became teachers and not one lasted three years, all that training time and money wasted. The behaviour of kids, and teachers lack of power to do anything put me off forever. I earn more per hour as a phone answering grunt than a teacher does, and then people wonder why everything sucks.
Years of below inflation pay rises, infantilisation of teaching staff (I am lucky in my school but hear right horror stories through union activity of SLT in other schools) and being used as a sponge to absorb some of the massive societal issues we are facing will tend to do that.
Edit – we are an amazing school and offer a very very cushy state school package but still struggled to recruit – even for head of department roles we have struggled to get applicants – even in subjects like English which didn’t tend to have large issues previously.
Awww jez, why on earth isn’t this underpaid, high criticised and sometimes dangerous job pulling in anyone? Hmm, n0 one WaNtS tO work anYm0rE
I work in a school and it’s a nice one in a good area and we need teachers. It’s got so bad some classes have been combined and have lessons in the main hall. It’s a shame.
With our declining birth rate we won’t need any schools soon anyway.
I’ve been teaching a decade, if it wasn’t for the sunk cost fallacy I’d be out by now. I just don’t know what else I’d do.
We’ve advertised for a Science role in our school twice now. Literally zero applicants.
Had a parents evening where the teacher, soon to quit, apologised several times for not being able to teach my child to the level required because of the poor behaviour of the class. You could tell they wanted to teach the kids that were ready to learn but they just couldn’t while doing crowd control.
It’s hard not to get all Daily Mail about tearaway teens but some kids only seem to live to bring everybody down to their level. You’ve got to feel sad for them and the missed opportunities they represent.
You have no way to deal with appalling behaviour.
Special needs are poorly supported, often leading to more appalling behaviour as kids with unmet needs will act out.
The higher levels are built on shaky foundations, because we try and cram too much into EYFS and KS1, it doesn’t stick, and when you try and advance, the foundations aren’t there. So you’re trying to teach trig to kids who can barely multiply.
TikTok attention spans. Trying to keep a class’ attention when they can’t manage anything over two minutes is hard and dispiriting.
Ah man, if the demand is that high then the salaries must be really competitive, right?.. Right?
In my opinion (first year teacher after career switch) it’s the behaviour that is the thing I’d change. My nice classes (not necessarily my academic kids) are a dream to teach, it’s just the behaviour of what used to be 5% feels like now it’s 20%
I’m a teacher and this isn’t a shock. Ofsted has made teaching very prescriptive and fostered a culture of micro management. Workload has become untenable. Senior leaders have to evidence everything which had led to them trying to catch staff out. Lots of teachers being bullied out. Profession has gone.
Teaching is truly an awful job. I really wanted to do it as well but I just remember the point when I was dealing with so many behaviour issues and then had to sit down and plan 5 lessons for the next day as well, when I thought what’s the point? The students don’t want me to be here, I don’t want to be here, I’m stressing myself out for a terrible pay and super inflexible working conditions. So I quit and my classes burnt through so many supply teachers by just being awful to them and learnt nothing that year.
I felt so bad for leaving but I can’t just destroy my entire self for students who at their best behaved will begrudgingly tolerate my presence.