On my first day working as a supply teacher in a medium-sized town in the north of England, a Year One child entered the classroom through an open window of the Year Five classroom where I was teaching, using the fire escape lever to let himself in. As I tried to establish who he was and how to get him back to his class, he turned out drawers, pulled displays off walls and hit a few of the children in the class.
I have no training in the physical handling of violent children (read – restraint), so I had to call for support. The same child later returned with a sidekick and suggested to him that they kick me, while he pulled my hair.
On day two, I was on the receiving end of a torrent of verbal abuse from a teenage girl when I asked if she could wait until break time before using the bathroom. “It’ll be your f—— fault if I bleed out everywhere because you won’t let me f—— go.” I (of course) let her go.
On my third day, when the students saw that it was a sub, they ignored the seating plan and spent the class throwing paper at each other, fixing fake eyelashes and chatting – totally ignoring my attempts to teach them.
On day four, a child purposefully set off the fire alarm. Day five: a child tried to self harm with classroom scissors. Day six: the class was so noisy I gave up trying to make myself heard. On day seven, a 10-year-old child told me to p— off. I sent him to the headteacher and he arrived back three minutes later. It turned out that there was a line out of the door of very similar children, many who are at risk of permanent exclusion by the time they’re 10 years old.
Most mornings, across many different schools, I see hungry children who aren’t fed properly at home being given toast at break time while clusters of other children clamour for a piece, since they’ve not had breakfast either.
And, at every school, I’ve sat in the staffroom and listened to a barrage of negativity from tired, frustrated, demoralised teachers and support staff grumbling about pointless meetings, changes to behaviour plans, unrealistic planning expectations and performance management. Every staffroom I’ve visited is peppered with posters advertising helplines for staff seeking support. One Facebook chat group I’ve found myself perusing, called Life after Teaching, is full of ex-teachers citing workload, mental ill-health, stress, depression and anxiety as the reason for their departure.
So I am entirely unsurprised by a recent survey showing that nearly half of school leaders in England sought support for their mental health or wellbeing in the past year. To say that teacher morale is low is an understatement. No one could properly function with this level of stress.
It is all a very different landscape from the schools in England I worked at 16 years ago when I first qualified as a teacher. And it’s thrown into ever sharper relief by school life abroad, which I know well after recently returning from teaching overseas for 12 years, as a head of year and assistant headteacher in British International schools.
I started supply teaching five months ago as a way to navigate my way back into the UK education system. But in just a few months, I have found myself demoralised, exhausted and seriously questioning whether I can do this any more.
Since my return, the most noticeable change, and the topic that is discussed most in staffrooms and online teacher discussion groups, is the change in pupil behaviour. Closely linked is the huge increase in the diagnosis of special educational needs. At every school I visit, there are so many more children wearing ear defenders, holding fidget toys or sensory cushions – and exhibiting a total lack of attention and an inability to concentrate for more than short bursts.
There are probably multiple reasons for these changes. Use of technology is an obvious contributing factor; smartphones and highly addictive games have eroded all of our concentration spans, but clearly the effects on the developing brain are profound. One result is that, unless teaching is delivered in a similarly high octane fast-moving way, children switch off. There has also been – for better or worse – a rise in psychiatric diagnoses, which adds additional pressure for teachers who are balancing multiple needs in the classroom.
But a huge change I have noticed is the sanctity of the working bond between parent and teacher, which was dealt a fatal blow by Covid. Attendance is a massive battle: schools across the country are struggling to contend with parent engagement. Advice is being disseminated in schools about how to approach families and parents “with sensitivity” about getting their children back into school. Reading at home is also something profoundly lacking. Various children have told me their parents are just too busy. Perhaps the information about early stories being shared and a love of reading at home being the primary predictors of academic success at GCSE level need reaffirming to families.
I’m influenced by my most recent posting, which was in Asia. There, post-pandemic parents returned to school in droves, keen and ready to attend workshops, find out how to parent their children towards academic success and, crucially, how to rebuild the home/school partnership that is key to educational success.
If I make suggestions to families here about the benefits of, for example, reading daily at home – let alone raise the topic of a child swearing – I fear I would be the subject of complaint rather than respect, which is fundamental among Asian parents when it comes to teachers’ knowledge and the educational institution.
Most days, whatever the school, disruptive behaviour, aggression and violence is the norm, as is swearing, racism, police and social worker visits, parent hostility, poor attendance and classes with such a wide spread of learning knowledge and ability that the best I can achieve is crowd control. Some days have been such a litany of disruptions and disharmony that I have been left feeling I’ve done little more than herd cats. I have returned home rejected, baffled and with low professional self-esteem, questioning whether I’m still cut out to be a teacher.
Did I use the word bleak yet? Because that’s the word that overwhelmingly describes my experience of teaching in the UK at the moment.
One of the pressures schools are facing is the need to maximise budgets, so paying for expensive supply cover is often low on the list. Instead, “cover supervisors” are routinely used, especially in large secondary schools. This is often a non-qualified teacher, probably a teaching assistant used to working in schools. They move around the school during the week to cover teacher admin time and for staff absence. How much teaching and learning goes on during those classes is anyone’s guess.
Higher-level teaching assistants are also used to cover staff absence but schools with tight budgets join classes together for the day with one teacher and hopefully a teaching assistant. Imagine suddenly having 60 or so children to teach for the day; how can you possibly even get their attention or control the crowd, let alone teach, assess or manage the specific needs of such a large group? And, learning aside, does that sound like the kind of environment designed to promote good mental health?
Comparison to international schools
It’s all very much at odds with the international school sector, where there is a constant discussion around the importance of leaders looking after themselves. A bit like putting on your own seatbelt before you help others, it’s understood that if you’re not looking after your own emotional health, you can’t support someone else’s when they need it. This is discussed at conferences, money is set aside for training and most international senior leaders I know have access to a coach with whom to discuss ideas before making significant decisions that affect the lives of many young people in their care as well as staff and the wider school community.
Here in the UK there would be no time to be coached into thinking strategically, because the needs in the schools are so great that leaders are constantly operating at firefighter level. They simply would not have time to make strategic plans, to visit classes, to engage with reading, to see their coach or mentor in order to write a school development plan or to prepare for Ofsted.
Ah yes, we couldn’t discuss mental health without discussing the impact of Ofsted. Most teachers I know agree that Ofsted is not a support network aimed at helping schools to improve, but a system designed to trip teachers up. In a recent school I was in, an extremely capable, intelligent teacher was reduced to tears at the inspectors’ question about her subject which she didn’t even understand on account of it not being well phrased in plain, jargon-free English. She couldn’t even begin to do justice to the answer and discuss all the excellent things she is doing to further the teaching and learning of history in her school. A school with the behavioural issues I’ve seen over the past few months will be dealing with so many complex issues that it will only ever get the Ofsted status of “requires improvement”, regardless of the fantastic work they are doing on trying to maintain teaching and keep children safe.
A friend recently asked if I had encountered these issues in international schools. There are, of course, children with special educational needs, perhaps even at risk of suicide, in those institutions, neglected by families and caught between cultures. The fundamental difference is that there is money to work towards solutions. Here, education is simply not prioritised and funded accordingly and schools are picking up the tab. And thinking about the mental health crisis among school chiefs, can anyone really be surprised?
>I’m influenced by my most recent posting, which was in Asia. There, post-pandemic parents returned to school in droves, keen and ready to attend workshops, find out how to parent their children towards academic success
This is it. Yes, schools need more funding and teachers’ pay is an embarrassment; but in the end the discipline to and motivation to do well comes from the home environment. Teachers can not substitute for parents.
I’m also intrigued by her mention that children’s’ concentration spans have tanked since the pandemic. Wonder is there any research on that.
Correction: Headline should read: The bleak reality of being an Anything in the UK.
> Since my return, the most noticeable change, and the topic that is discussed most in staffrooms and online teacher discussion groups, is the change in pupil behaviour. Closely linked is the huge increase in the diagnosis of special educational needs. At every school I visit, there are so many more children wearing ear defenders, holding fidget toys or sensory cushions – and exhibiting a total lack of attention and an inability to concentrate for more than short bursts.
This generation of kids have been purposely failed by the ruling class, who’ve kept the funding for themselves.
My mum’s just retired as a teacher.
Some of the stories from the last 10 years are horrific. She had her own class but also an assistant head and was working as a Mentor for new teachers.
Never enough time in a day to do all that work.
She was working 24/7 during term times, the only time off she had was when she was sleeping. Even during School holidays a lot of time is taken either catching up or preparing for the next term.
Many new Teachers don’t make it past the first 2 years. It just isn’t worth the money working like that. Some (understandably) can’t take the workload and for many it gets to them mentally.
What they are doing is already difficult because it is difficult, But they start to believe they aren’t getting the help they should be getting. It’s such a shock to them, they simply can’t understand how much workload there is. So many blame their mentor/school for not helping them enough. The reality is life as a Teacher is f’ing brutal.
The problem is the system is fucked and underfunded.
My retired mother is doing 2 days a week work for her old school as a stand in. The Teacher she’s replacing walked out because of Mental health issues.
Just teach abroad. I teach (mostly) lovely kids and take home about 50k after tax. And I don’t have to interact with dickhead parents or take work home. Just had a month off but after 2 weeks of school I’ll be off until March.
There is a guy interviewing other teens and adults on the streets of London, asking them “Where is Jamaica?” Or “What continent is Jamaica part of?” Many ppl think either Jamaica is in Africa or that the Caribbean is the name of a Continent.
Some kids who live in England are saying kids are approaching them asking that they admit they are from Africa.
Even thought there are many Jamaican immigrants, the kids of today, aren’t learning , they were brought over from Africa into slavery in the Caribbean and it’s closer to the USA.
Sad times. It seems social media has melted the parent’s minds and now there is no one to raise kids anymore. Im just glad i grew up with facebook, but before parents got on facebook. Is all i will say.
Yeah, it got wild in the last five years. I quit just before Xmas. Currently have no job. Will prob end up taking a significant pay cut but idgaf at this point.
Parental attitudes are a massive problem. Not just in the areas you might be led to expect. I worked in a state school in a very upper middle class area and the entitlement of the parents (which is even more heightened in the specific thing i did) was just increasingly entitled and unpleasant to deal with.
>– and exhibiting a total lack of attention and an inability to concentrate for more than short bursts.
Because far too many of the kids are fobbed off by shit parents with phones and tablets to keep them quiet, exposing them to brain-killing short form video content before they can walk or talk.
The term “iPad baby” hasn’t come out of nowhere. Trains, buses, cars, restaurants, parks, weddings, seen it absolutely bloody everywhere.
Even my own girlfriend, she makes sure he does real life activities and sports classes, and manages his screen time where possible, but her 11 year old is short-tempered, has an appalling attention span and spends his time either glued to TikTok or playing PC games WITH TikTok just burning through videos while he plays. And he’s one of the “better” ones.
I’ve even seen some of the older ones start entering the workforce in my previous job and they were genuinely useless. Incapable of listening, retaining information or focusing.
It’s hard not to blame them, but their parents utterly fucked life for them before they could ever hope to have any control. No funding can fix that.
Education is a pretty good index for how much a culture is failing and it seems almost impossible to pin it on any one issue, it’s just one part of a broad complex decline. You can’t suddenly buy or create a culture that reveres education, you can’t undo years of anti-intellectual media, you can’t reverse the one parent household problem, etc.
One sticky plaster would be to give schools and teachers far more power to just kick kids out of school and create some new law to protect teachers. Both the parents and children should be in fear of the school, not the other way around.
I entered teaching with a sense of idealism and the naivety that comes from being lucky enough to be educated at one of the best schools in the country.
I left after just over a year. I don’t know what the low point was. Stepping in front of a child that was violently swinging a stool at other kids? Feeling utterly bewildered that I was getting a dressing down from SLT because it is apparently my responsibility that a frequently absent pupil is not on track to pass their GCSE science?
I’m now work a far less stressful job for far better pay.
I would not recommend a teaching career to anyone who values their own wellbeing.
Just whack them with a board duster when they play up. Didn’t do us any harm.
My partner is a teacher at a secondary school here in Scotland. She loves it – or at least parts of it. She went into teaching with noble intentions and career goals in mind; things like get into the SQA marking team for her subject, develop a lovely teaching curriculum for her department, contribute to writing the exam papers, etc. And she has accomplished most of those (she abandoned the SQA stuff due to the leader of her subject exam board being a control freak who hated her with a passion because she dared raise concerns about a question in the exam – to the point that she was reduced to tears due to her treatment there), but it’s now got to the point where she can no longer manage much of the teaching parts. I hear stories every day; uncontrollably classes, an inability to adequately discipline troublesome and difficult kids, kids swearing at her, kids threatening her, etc. etc. etc… it’s endless. There are particular classes that are trouble in every department, and thus I can look at her timetable for the day and say “ah, she’s got that class today, she’ll be exhausted and annoyed once she’s home then”.
So no, I can perfectly believe this article. I wanted to go into teaching after university, but after knowing several people my age who did go into teaching (either at secondary, primary, or colleges) I have been, for lack of a better word, scared off from doing so.
It’s like this for non-supply too, this is quite standard across a lot of schools at the moment. It’s always been rubbish, it’s gotten so much worse since I left mainstream.
I left teaching after 2 years. I cried in my car multiple times a week after work. I had no time for much life outside of teaching and spent most evenings and Sundays working on a 19k salary. I had teenagers fighting each other in my class, I got called slut/ bitch/ racist/fat by teenagers who got away with it and parents would argue with me on the phone when I told them their son had called me a slag. I also taught some really lovely kids and had some really funny and heartwarming encounters, but unfortunately they didn’t make up for all the hard stuff. I was in a particularly bad school but I’m glad I left, at the same time sad about what has become of the profession and what effect the teacher retention crisis is going to have on society moving forwards.
I joined teaching in my mid-twenties. Bright eyed and hopeful, with two degrees and postgraduate teacher training, fluent in 3 languages and ready to share my enthusiasm for languages.
Over 3 years I had any enthusiasm slowly beaten out of me by the terrible behaviour of the students, rude attitudes of parents, and the contemptible gaslighting and abusive behaviour of school leaders.
I was previously a happy and confident person, but in my last year I kept driving past an old oak tree, and wondering if I should just steer into it, so I wouldn’t have to go back to the school the next day.
I ended up quitting mid-year. My job after teaching was an office job paying around the same money, but I could clock off at 5pm after a day sitting at a desk with minimal stress, and the ability to go to the toilet and make a cuppa when I wanted.
Teaching is a toxic profession that is reliant on abusing the good will of classroom teachers, in schools run by inept leaders with no management skills.
And they want to reduce the time kids have off school? So that teachers have to deal with this?
My gf was a counsellor in a schcool, Had to stay extra to fill in paperwork. Kids were so fucked up that she could not handle the workload and people were trying to contact her out of school hours for advice. Spamming the email inbox and tried to call her but they can’t get in touch.
It was a no life job. Low funding so no help. Was a mess. She cried all the time, but one time after work and I said you can’t live like this. she went in on her day off to fill in paperwork and they moved the office from the centre of the school to a small pokey closet room right across one side. Which she didn’t like for both security reasons and also it was too far away.
She left and has never been happier
I did 25 years at KS2, mostly leading Maths and Computing. I left when Covid started and I have no regrets.
I would find it difficult to recommend teaching as a career to anyone really – it’s sad to say this.
It staggers me that the government don’t understand that properly funding the education system would have a massive net positive to the whole of British society. Give children a decent, rich education with interesting experiences and good role models and then more of them will go on to live happy, productive lives.
My girlfriend qualified as an nqt 5 years ago.
In her small circle of teacher mates, two are quitting teaching this year and the other is splitting up with her partner because she’s having a mental breakdown due to workload that she’s unwilling to address.
The only reason my partner stays in teaching is because she works at an SEN school with small class sizes which means the workload is more manageable.
Education needs a huge overhall or the gulf between children in private education is just going to continue growing.
Not surprised, many including myself left teaching for toxic environments and children with complex needs.
After reading through what some of the teachers have said here, its clear we need corporal punishment back & severe fines for parents neglecting their children’s education. The way things are going, the UK wont be able to compete with Asian countries in the next 2-3 generations.
The school system is outdated and totally unfit for education and more geared towards crowd control. Best thing I ever did was take my kid out.
I’m not sure I’d be able to be a teacher in the UK. If I was being physically attacked by students on a regular basis, I’d be in prison a month later because I’m pretty sure I’d have lashed out.
I taught for 10 years before finally trying to kill myself. Students were awful. Management were awful. The job was my entire life. I woke up every day wanting to die. I feared sleeping at night because I knew the morning would come. Nobody cared.
Teaching was the worst thing I ever did, even though I know I helped improve the lives of young people, if I could go back and change any part of my life I would never have become a teacher.
After a few months off work struggling with acute depression I got a job as a software engineer and love is infinitely better than it used to be.
I retrained as a teacher in my mid 30’s. I got a job at an excellent school (nationally) so behaviour generally wasn’t an issue. The kids were academic and, on the whole, self motivated.
The worst part in terms of behaviour was moments where some sixth formers attempted to intimidate teaching staff. Pretty terrifying honestly when they’re 6’ something and you’re a lone female who isn’t.
Aside from that, and the reason I left, was that the workload was impossible and the pay was rubbish. I was lucky and started higher up the scale to reflect my industry experience. Even then I felt the amount I was working just didn’t make sense.
As a teacher you’re basically doing two jobs. One is teaching in the classroom and the other is doing all the admin, marking and planning. But you are only given about an hour and a bit a week to do that; it really could take a couple of days, so you end up doing it in your own time.
Also, when you’re in the classroom you have to be ‘on’. It’s as exhausting as a full day of meetings. Every day.
Another big problem was staff who move up to leadership. Some are great. Very few have management experience though, so they just treat staff the same way they treat pupils. It can lead to toxic environments. Staff are treated like children in so many ways. One school I was in the sixth formers could come and go as they wanted but staff had to ask permission from the head to go offsite even at lunch time.
I loved the job in some ways, but I’m much happier working a job where I do my hours, get paid more and I’m not having to deal with school politics.
Awful conditions, i have no idea why anybody would want to be a supply teacher, such a thankless job.
Weird that this was in the telegraph when that paper actively supports the government continuously increasing pressure on teachers while refusing to increase pay and working conditions.
But I listened to the Education Minister on the Leading podcast and she said our maths and English ranking has improved so everything’s ok.
But I listened to the Education Minister on the Leading podcast and she said our maths and English ranking has improved so everything’s ok.
31 comments
On my first day working as a supply teacher in a medium-sized town in the north of England, a Year One child entered the classroom through an open window of the Year Five classroom where I was teaching, using the fire escape lever to let himself in. As I tried to establish who he was and how to get him back to his class, he turned out drawers, pulled displays off walls and hit a few of the children in the class.
I have no training in the physical handling of violent children (read – restraint), so I had to call for support. The same child later returned with a sidekick and suggested to him that they kick me, while he pulled my hair.
On day two, I was on the receiving end of a torrent of verbal abuse from a teenage girl when I asked if she could wait until break time before using the bathroom. “It’ll be your f—— fault if I bleed out everywhere because you won’t let me f—— go.” I (of course) let her go.
On my third day, when the students saw that it was a sub, they ignored the seating plan and spent the class throwing paper at each other, fixing fake eyelashes and chatting – totally ignoring my attempts to teach them.
On day four, a child purposefully set off the fire alarm. Day five: a child tried to self harm with classroom scissors. Day six: the class was so noisy I gave up trying to make myself heard. On day seven, a 10-year-old child told me to p— off. I sent him to the headteacher and he arrived back three minutes later. It turned out that there was a line out of the door of very similar children, many who are at risk of permanent exclusion by the time they’re 10 years old.
Most mornings, across many different schools, I see hungry children who aren’t fed properly at home being given toast at break time while clusters of other children clamour for a piece, since they’ve not had breakfast either.
And, at every school, I’ve sat in the staffroom and listened to a barrage of negativity from tired, frustrated, demoralised teachers and support staff grumbling about pointless meetings, changes to behaviour plans, unrealistic planning expectations and performance management. Every staffroom I’ve visited is peppered with posters advertising helplines for staff seeking support. One Facebook chat group I’ve found myself perusing, called Life after Teaching, is full of ex-teachers citing workload, mental ill-health, stress, depression and anxiety as the reason for their departure.
So I am entirely unsurprised by a recent survey showing that nearly half of school leaders in England sought support for their mental health or wellbeing in the past year. To say that teacher morale is low is an understatement. No one could properly function with this level of stress.
It is all a very different landscape from the schools in England I worked at 16 years ago when I first qualified as a teacher. And it’s thrown into ever sharper relief by school life abroad, which I know well after recently returning from teaching overseas for 12 years, as a head of year and assistant headteacher in British International schools.
I started supply teaching five months ago as a way to navigate my way back into the UK education system. But in just a few months, I have found myself demoralised, exhausted and seriously questioning whether I can do this any more.
Since my return, the most noticeable change, and the topic that is discussed most in staffrooms and online teacher discussion groups, is the change in pupil behaviour. Closely linked is the huge increase in the diagnosis of special educational needs. At every school I visit, there are so many more children wearing ear defenders, holding fidget toys or sensory cushions – and exhibiting a total lack of attention and an inability to concentrate for more than short bursts.
There are probably multiple reasons for these changes. Use of technology is an obvious contributing factor; smartphones and highly addictive games have eroded all of our concentration spans, but clearly the effects on the developing brain are profound. One result is that, unless teaching is delivered in a similarly high octane fast-moving way, children switch off. There has also been – for better or worse – a rise in psychiatric diagnoses, which adds additional pressure for teachers who are balancing multiple needs in the classroom.
But a huge change I have noticed is the sanctity of the working bond between parent and teacher, which was dealt a fatal blow by Covid. Attendance is a massive battle: schools across the country are struggling to contend with parent engagement. Advice is being disseminated in schools about how to approach families and parents “with sensitivity” about getting their children back into school. Reading at home is also something profoundly lacking. Various children have told me their parents are just too busy. Perhaps the information about early stories being shared and a love of reading at home being the primary predictors of academic success at GCSE level need reaffirming to families.
I’m influenced by my most recent posting, which was in Asia. There, post-pandemic parents returned to school in droves, keen and ready to attend workshops, find out how to parent their children towards academic success and, crucially, how to rebuild the home/school partnership that is key to educational success.
If I make suggestions to families here about the benefits of, for example, reading daily at home – let alone raise the topic of a child swearing – I fear I would be the subject of complaint rather than respect, which is fundamental among Asian parents when it comes to teachers’ knowledge and the educational institution.
Most days, whatever the school, disruptive behaviour, aggression and violence is the norm, as is swearing, racism, police and social worker visits, parent hostility, poor attendance and classes with such a wide spread of learning knowledge and ability that the best I can achieve is crowd control. Some days have been such a litany of disruptions and disharmony that I have been left feeling I’ve done little more than herd cats. I have returned home rejected, baffled and with low professional self-esteem, questioning whether I’m still cut out to be a teacher.
Did I use the word bleak yet? Because that’s the word that overwhelmingly describes my experience of teaching in the UK at the moment.
One of the pressures schools are facing is the need to maximise budgets, so paying for expensive supply cover is often low on the list. Instead, “cover supervisors” are routinely used, especially in large secondary schools. This is often a non-qualified teacher, probably a teaching assistant used to working in schools. They move around the school during the week to cover teacher admin time and for staff absence. How much teaching and learning goes on during those classes is anyone’s guess.
Higher-level teaching assistants are also used to cover staff absence but schools with tight budgets join classes together for the day with one teacher and hopefully a teaching assistant. Imagine suddenly having 60 or so children to teach for the day; how can you possibly even get their attention or control the crowd, let alone teach, assess or manage the specific needs of such a large group? And, learning aside, does that sound like the kind of environment designed to promote good mental health?
Comparison to international schools
It’s all very much at odds with the international school sector, where there is a constant discussion around the importance of leaders looking after themselves. A bit like putting on your own seatbelt before you help others, it’s understood that if you’re not looking after your own emotional health, you can’t support someone else’s when they need it. This is discussed at conferences, money is set aside for training and most international senior leaders I know have access to a coach with whom to discuss ideas before making significant decisions that affect the lives of many young people in their care as well as staff and the wider school community.
Here in the UK there would be no time to be coached into thinking strategically, because the needs in the schools are so great that leaders are constantly operating at firefighter level. They simply would not have time to make strategic plans, to visit classes, to engage with reading, to see their coach or mentor in order to write a school development plan or to prepare for Ofsted.
Ah yes, we couldn’t discuss mental health without discussing the impact of Ofsted. Most teachers I know agree that Ofsted is not a support network aimed at helping schools to improve, but a system designed to trip teachers up. In a recent school I was in, an extremely capable, intelligent teacher was reduced to tears at the inspectors’ question about her subject which she didn’t even understand on account of it not being well phrased in plain, jargon-free English. She couldn’t even begin to do justice to the answer and discuss all the excellent things she is doing to further the teaching and learning of history in her school. A school with the behavioural issues I’ve seen over the past few months will be dealing with so many complex issues that it will only ever get the Ofsted status of “requires improvement”, regardless of the fantastic work they are doing on trying to maintain teaching and keep children safe.
A friend recently asked if I had encountered these issues in international schools. There are, of course, children with special educational needs, perhaps even at risk of suicide, in those institutions, neglected by families and caught between cultures. The fundamental difference is that there is money to work towards solutions. Here, education is simply not prioritised and funded accordingly and schools are picking up the tab. And thinking about the mental health crisis among school chiefs, can anyone really be surprised?
>I’m influenced by my most recent posting, which was in Asia. There, post-pandemic parents returned to school in droves, keen and ready to attend workshops, find out how to parent their children towards academic success
This is it. Yes, schools need more funding and teachers’ pay is an embarrassment; but in the end the discipline to and motivation to do well comes from the home environment. Teachers can not substitute for parents.
I’m also intrigued by her mention that children’s’ concentration spans have tanked since the pandemic. Wonder is there any research on that.
Correction: Headline should read: The bleak reality of being an Anything in the UK.
> Since my return, the most noticeable change, and the topic that is discussed most in staffrooms and online teacher discussion groups, is the change in pupil behaviour. Closely linked is the huge increase in the diagnosis of special educational needs. At every school I visit, there are so many more children wearing ear defenders, holding fidget toys or sensory cushions – and exhibiting a total lack of attention and an inability to concentrate for more than short bursts.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/chartimage?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthcharacteristicsinenglandandwales/2021/3f4b822e
https://www.verywellhealth.com/older-parents-and-autism-risk-for-child-5199211
Oops
This generation of kids have been purposely failed by the ruling class, who’ve kept the funding for themselves.
My mum’s just retired as a teacher.
Some of the stories from the last 10 years are horrific. She had her own class but also an assistant head and was working as a Mentor for new teachers.
Never enough time in a day to do all that work.
She was working 24/7 during term times, the only time off she had was when she was sleeping. Even during School holidays a lot of time is taken either catching up or preparing for the next term.
Many new Teachers don’t make it past the first 2 years. It just isn’t worth the money working like that. Some (understandably) can’t take the workload and for many it gets to them mentally.
What they are doing is already difficult because it is difficult, But they start to believe they aren’t getting the help they should be getting. It’s such a shock to them, they simply can’t understand how much workload there is. So many blame their mentor/school for not helping them enough. The reality is life as a Teacher is f’ing brutal.
The problem is the system is fucked and underfunded.
My retired mother is doing 2 days a week work for her old school as a stand in. The Teacher she’s replacing walked out because of Mental health issues.
Just teach abroad. I teach (mostly) lovely kids and take home about 50k after tax. And I don’t have to interact with dickhead parents or take work home. Just had a month off but after 2 weeks of school I’ll be off until March.
There is a guy interviewing other teens and adults on the streets of London, asking them “Where is Jamaica?” Or “What continent is Jamaica part of?” Many ppl think either Jamaica is in Africa or that the Caribbean is the name of a Continent.
Some kids who live in England are saying kids are approaching them asking that they admit they are from Africa.
Even thought there are many Jamaican immigrants, the kids of today, aren’t learning , they were brought over from Africa into slavery in the Caribbean and it’s closer to the USA.
Sad times. It seems social media has melted the parent’s minds and now there is no one to raise kids anymore. Im just glad i grew up with facebook, but before parents got on facebook. Is all i will say.
Yeah, it got wild in the last five years. I quit just before Xmas. Currently have no job. Will prob end up taking a significant pay cut but idgaf at this point.
Parental attitudes are a massive problem. Not just in the areas you might be led to expect. I worked in a state school in a very upper middle class area and the entitlement of the parents (which is even more heightened in the specific thing i did) was just increasingly entitled and unpleasant to deal with.
>– and exhibiting a total lack of attention and an inability to concentrate for more than short bursts.
Because far too many of the kids are fobbed off by shit parents with phones and tablets to keep them quiet, exposing them to brain-killing short form video content before they can walk or talk.
The term “iPad baby” hasn’t come out of nowhere. Trains, buses, cars, restaurants, parks, weddings, seen it absolutely bloody everywhere.
Even my own girlfriend, she makes sure he does real life activities and sports classes, and manages his screen time where possible, but her 11 year old is short-tempered, has an appalling attention span and spends his time either glued to TikTok or playing PC games WITH TikTok just burning through videos while he plays. And he’s one of the “better” ones.
I’ve even seen some of the older ones start entering the workforce in my previous job and they were genuinely useless. Incapable of listening, retaining information or focusing.
It’s hard not to blame them, but their parents utterly fucked life for them before they could ever hope to have any control. No funding can fix that.
Education is a pretty good index for how much a culture is failing and it seems almost impossible to pin it on any one issue, it’s just one part of a broad complex decline. You can’t suddenly buy or create a culture that reveres education, you can’t undo years of anti-intellectual media, you can’t reverse the one parent household problem, etc.
One sticky plaster would be to give schools and teachers far more power to just kick kids out of school and create some new law to protect teachers. Both the parents and children should be in fear of the school, not the other way around.
I entered teaching with a sense of idealism and the naivety that comes from being lucky enough to be educated at one of the best schools in the country.
I left after just over a year. I don’t know what the low point was. Stepping in front of a child that was violently swinging a stool at other kids? Feeling utterly bewildered that I was getting a dressing down from SLT because it is apparently my responsibility that a frequently absent pupil is not on track to pass their GCSE science?
I’m now work a far less stressful job for far better pay.
I would not recommend a teaching career to anyone who values their own wellbeing.
Just whack them with a board duster when they play up. Didn’t do us any harm.
My partner is a teacher at a secondary school here in Scotland. She loves it – or at least parts of it. She went into teaching with noble intentions and career goals in mind; things like get into the SQA marking team for her subject, develop a lovely teaching curriculum for her department, contribute to writing the exam papers, etc. And she has accomplished most of those (she abandoned the SQA stuff due to the leader of her subject exam board being a control freak who hated her with a passion because she dared raise concerns about a question in the exam – to the point that she was reduced to tears due to her treatment there), but it’s now got to the point where she can no longer manage much of the teaching parts. I hear stories every day; uncontrollably classes, an inability to adequately discipline troublesome and difficult kids, kids swearing at her, kids threatening her, etc. etc. etc… it’s endless. There are particular classes that are trouble in every department, and thus I can look at her timetable for the day and say “ah, she’s got that class today, she’ll be exhausted and annoyed once she’s home then”.
So no, I can perfectly believe this article. I wanted to go into teaching after university, but after knowing several people my age who did go into teaching (either at secondary, primary, or colleges) I have been, for lack of a better word, scared off from doing so.
It’s like this for non-supply too, this is quite standard across a lot of schools at the moment. It’s always been rubbish, it’s gotten so much worse since I left mainstream.
I left teaching after 2 years. I cried in my car multiple times a week after work. I had no time for much life outside of teaching and spent most evenings and Sundays working on a 19k salary. I had teenagers fighting each other in my class, I got called slut/ bitch/ racist/fat by teenagers who got away with it and parents would argue with me on the phone when I told them their son had called me a slag. I also taught some really lovely kids and had some really funny and heartwarming encounters, but unfortunately they didn’t make up for all the hard stuff. I was in a particularly bad school but I’m glad I left, at the same time sad about what has become of the profession and what effect the teacher retention crisis is going to have on society moving forwards.
I joined teaching in my mid-twenties. Bright eyed and hopeful, with two degrees and postgraduate teacher training, fluent in 3 languages and ready to share my enthusiasm for languages.
Over 3 years I had any enthusiasm slowly beaten out of me by the terrible behaviour of the students, rude attitudes of parents, and the contemptible gaslighting and abusive behaviour of school leaders.
I was previously a happy and confident person, but in my last year I kept driving past an old oak tree, and wondering if I should just steer into it, so I wouldn’t have to go back to the school the next day.
I ended up quitting mid-year. My job after teaching was an office job paying around the same money, but I could clock off at 5pm after a day sitting at a desk with minimal stress, and the ability to go to the toilet and make a cuppa when I wanted.
Teaching is a toxic profession that is reliant on abusing the good will of classroom teachers, in schools run by inept leaders with no management skills.
And they want to reduce the time kids have off school? So that teachers have to deal with this?
My gf was a counsellor in a schcool, Had to stay extra to fill in paperwork. Kids were so fucked up that she could not handle the workload and people were trying to contact her out of school hours for advice. Spamming the email inbox and tried to call her but they can’t get in touch.
It was a no life job. Low funding so no help. Was a mess. She cried all the time, but one time after work and I said you can’t live like this. she went in on her day off to fill in paperwork and they moved the office from the centre of the school to a small pokey closet room right across one side. Which she didn’t like for both security reasons and also it was too far away.
She left and has never been happier
I did 25 years at KS2, mostly leading Maths and Computing. I left when Covid started and I have no regrets.
I would find it difficult to recommend teaching as a career to anyone really – it’s sad to say this.
It staggers me that the government don’t understand that properly funding the education system would have a massive net positive to the whole of British society. Give children a decent, rich education with interesting experiences and good role models and then more of them will go on to live happy, productive lives.
My girlfriend qualified as an nqt 5 years ago.
In her small circle of teacher mates, two are quitting teaching this year and the other is splitting up with her partner because she’s having a mental breakdown due to workload that she’s unwilling to address.
The only reason my partner stays in teaching is because she works at an SEN school with small class sizes which means the workload is more manageable.
Education needs a huge overhall or the gulf between children in private education is just going to continue growing.
Not surprised, many including myself left teaching for toxic environments and children with complex needs.
After reading through what some of the teachers have said here, its clear we need corporal punishment back & severe fines for parents neglecting their children’s education. The way things are going, the UK wont be able to compete with Asian countries in the next 2-3 generations.
The school system is outdated and totally unfit for education and more geared towards crowd control. Best thing I ever did was take my kid out.
I’m not sure I’d be able to be a teacher in the UK. If I was being physically attacked by students on a regular basis, I’d be in prison a month later because I’m pretty sure I’d have lashed out.
I taught for 10 years before finally trying to kill myself. Students were awful. Management were awful. The job was my entire life. I woke up every day wanting to die. I feared sleeping at night because I knew the morning would come. Nobody cared.
Teaching was the worst thing I ever did, even though I know I helped improve the lives of young people, if I could go back and change any part of my life I would never have become a teacher.
After a few months off work struggling with acute depression I got a job as a software engineer and love is infinitely better than it used to be.
I retrained as a teacher in my mid 30’s. I got a job at an excellent school (nationally) so behaviour generally wasn’t an issue. The kids were academic and, on the whole, self motivated.
The worst part in terms of behaviour was moments where some sixth formers attempted to intimidate teaching staff. Pretty terrifying honestly when they’re 6’ something and you’re a lone female who isn’t.
Aside from that, and the reason I left, was that the workload was impossible and the pay was rubbish. I was lucky and started higher up the scale to reflect my industry experience. Even then I felt the amount I was working just didn’t make sense.
As a teacher you’re basically doing two jobs. One is teaching in the classroom and the other is doing all the admin, marking and planning. But you are only given about an hour and a bit a week to do that; it really could take a couple of days, so you end up doing it in your own time.
Also, when you’re in the classroom you have to be ‘on’. It’s as exhausting as a full day of meetings. Every day.
Another big problem was staff who move up to leadership. Some are great. Very few have management experience though, so they just treat staff the same way they treat pupils. It can lead to toxic environments. Staff are treated like children in so many ways. One school I was in the sixth formers could come and go as they wanted but staff had to ask permission from the head to go offsite even at lunch time.
I loved the job in some ways, but I’m much happier working a job where I do my hours, get paid more and I’m not having to deal with school politics.
Awful conditions, i have no idea why anybody would want to be a supply teacher, such a thankless job.
Weird that this was in the telegraph when that paper actively supports the government continuously increasing pressure on teachers while refusing to increase pay and working conditions.
But I listened to the Education Minister on the Leading podcast and she said our maths and English ranking has improved so everything’s ok.
But I listened to the Education Minister on the Leading podcast and she said our maths and English ranking has improved so everything’s ok.