**Burnt out teachers urgently need better working hours and more support to stop them leaving the profession, the Liberal Democrats say, as the new term approaches.**
Nearly half of the teachers surveyed by the party in England said they were planning to quit the classroom in the next five years, with many saying they felt overworked and stressed.
The Lib Dems are urging new Education Secretary Lucy Powell to fully fund teachers’ pay, rather than raiding school budgets to cover increases, and to bring in limits on overtime.
The Department for Education said last year saw the lowest rate of teachers leaving the profession since 2010 but acknowledged there was “more to do”.
The survey asked more than 900 teachers, headteachers and Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) across England how long they planned to stay in teaching.
Almost half of those in post said they were considering leaving teaching in the next five years, while one in ten were planning to spend less than a year in the job.
More than three quarters of those surveyed, which included former teachers, said they had felt “frequently or constantly burnt out” while at work.
Respondents cited high workloads on marking, lesson preparation and other tasks, which they said gave them less time in the classroom.
The Liberal Democrats’ schools spokesperson Caroline Voaden said this pointed to a government that is “not listening” to the profession.
“We rely on teachers to educate our children, the least we can do is make sure they want to come back after the summer,” she said.
Teacher retention is a challenge successive governments have had to grapple with.
The National Education Union (NEU) reported that **4 in 10 teachers were planning to quit** over “huge workloads and excessive accountability” in 2019.
This latest survey was also conducted with the help of the NEU, as well as the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).
“After over a decade of austerity and chronic underfunding in our schools the system is on its knees” said the NEU’s general secretary Daniel Kebede.
“The new academic year is the perfect time for Andy Burnham to signal a fresh start for our schools” he added.
“That means fully funding the pay award and properly funding all our schools and colleges to stem the recruitment and retention crisis and give children the education they deserve.”
“As Lucy Powell enters her first term as education secretary the Liberal Democrats are calling for her first act to be to introduce an emergency package of ‘back to school’ measures to face this crisis head on,” Voaden said.
Gonna get in early with the usual comments –
“Yeah but what about their long holidays?”
“They all finish work at three, don’t they?”
“Those who can do, those who can’t teach. I am very witty and original.”
“Mr Jones said I couldn’t submit my Harry Potter fanfic as coursework back in 2009, so now I think all teachers should suffer”
A society that consumes the vitality of its educators to sustain the illusion of a functioning system inevitably starves the very future it claims to nurture.
Need to bring back special schools, and expand spaces in PRUs for expelled students.
There are too many kids who cannot be in mainstream education but currently are, and it’s a huge strain on schools.
Until morons stop seeing teachers as glorified childminders who dare call their kids behaviour out nothing will change, and good teachers will continue leave the profession.
They need to introduce longevity bonuses as an incentive every five years.
Schools are unfortunately full of feral disobedient gremlins. Mainly due to poor parenting and a lack of discipline at home. No wonder teachers are giving up on the profession.
My partner is a secondary school maths teacher, and does more work than I in a private sector role, for half the pay
And the worst people I have to deal with are incompetent adults
Teachers are leaving the profession because behavior is out of control (this is a function of larger class sizes, having SEND students, and poor pupil behavior (which in turn cycles back to bad parenting)).
Labour is not going to fix any of that.  Â
The crazy thing to me, when there’s a real shortage of teachers, is that its still really difficult to get qualified as a teacher. The training courses are super selective, and then school leadership seem to think its their responsibility to weed out the weak during placements and your early career posts.
We don’t pay teachers well enough (or offer good enough conditions and benefits) to have a surplus of teachers – so we should, I would have thought, aim to reduce the shortage by getting more people qualified.
Why don’t they try hiring some of the ECT teachers fresh from uni who haven’t even been able to find a job yet? Apparently there’s a teacher shortage, and yet no teaching jobs available.
‘Emergency measures’ like giving them authority and support to deliver discipline and command respect from pupils or giving them the tools to teach without being bogged down with pointless administration.
Or emergency measures as in blocking the job search sites at the school firewall?
In the mid 2010’s, I went to uni to become a teacher. The course was specifically a teaching course and there were about 300 of us in my cohort.
I know about 3 people who are still teachers. Most didn’t finish the course after their 3rd year of placements, the rest dropped the profession after their NQT year.
The kids were never the issue, it was the adults. The pressure of nonsense like lesson plans, medium term plans, extra curricular demands, heads of year demands, ofsted. The pressure teachers get put under, for a shocking wage, and ultimately get treated like shit, is why there are no teachers.
I’ll always remember my first week and the head told me, “its not a job, its a lifestyle choice” he wasn’t wrong.
I know a lady who could fix our schools. She was proficient in the shot-put, hammer throw and javelin in her heyday. She was such a kind lady and a great educator, she gave one kid a full chocolate cake after he was caught stealing from the kitchens.
Teaching is a great job for many (I loved it) but it’s just highly inflexible. I think having a stronger culture of sabbaticals or time off during term time would benefit the profession massively – dare I say, make it a competitive desirable career again.
Also make Ofsted pass-fail and treat it more like an audit than a career ending mistake. It becomes insanely stressful for everyone and tbh most parents don’t know the granular detail between a ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ school anymore than if we called it ‘semi-good, good, proper good, really good’…
The entire comprehensive system just needs an overhaul. Time to drop the idea that you can just cram a bunch of people of differing abilities and behaviours into one school and call it a day.
The school I went to was bottom 5% in the country. While some of it was the quality of teaching a large part of the problem was all the truly horrid kids they allowed to stay who just dragged everyone else down and monopolised a huge portion of teachers time. In fact probably part of the reason the teachers were crap was because no teacher worth their salt would want to work there and deal with shit kids all day when they could leave and go work at a better school (which the good teachers often ended up doing).
It was a nice idea to think that everyone is equal, but the whole ‘blank slate’ idea simply isn’t true in reality. Some kids just aren’t fit for academic learning and need to be taken out of it so they don’t drag other brighter kids down with them. I ended up basically having to do a huge chunk of my education all over again after leaving due to how bad the quality of learning was.
Comprehensives were better than secondary moderns sure, but clearly the reforms need to go further.
Simple.
Make the movies Scum and Scrubbers required viewing.
Bring back Borstal
They’ll soon behave!
There are several things that wohld make it so much easier.
1. Bring back more SEN schools.
2. Bring back more vocational schools and options.
3. Reduce class size to 15 students in a class.
4. Have a class secretary/PA who just does the marking, certificate issuing, paperwork, email answering, preping and organising things like student trips etc.
5. Give teachers more PPA time.
6. Remove after school meetings, training and Parents evenings during the normal week. They should be done on inset days.
7. All OfSTED inspectors should be ex teachers who still hold QTS.
8. Every class should have a perminant (not shared) HLTA.
9. Every child with diagnosed SEN should have the funding for a 1-2-1 TA.
I’ve taught for 10+ years and know loads of qualified teachers whom don’t teach.
The conditions are crap, pay even worse and there’s all the cuts which means main stream classes have high needs EHCP learners who should be in special schools. Then add working hours, all the resources which we need to buy ourselves and what’s probably going to make me leave is shite parents. Ain’t my fault your child was up gaming to 3am and now doesn’t attend, but sure, blame me and my lack of help.
Like paying them what they’re actually worth to society and funding schools like the investment in our future that it is?
Not just the teachers but support staff too. Support staff are often paid less than supermarket workers but expected to work with the most difficult children with little to no job progression or training. More support staff that are well paid to incentivise it as another career would also support teachers and schools.
21 comments
**Burnt out teachers urgently need better working hours and more support to stop them leaving the profession, the Liberal Democrats say, as the new term approaches.**
Nearly half of the teachers surveyed by the party in England said they were planning to quit the classroom in the next five years, with many saying they felt overworked and stressed.
The Lib Dems are urging new Education Secretary Lucy Powell to fully fund teachers’ pay, rather than raiding school budgets to cover increases, and to bring in limits on overtime.
The Department for Education said last year saw the lowest rate of teachers leaving the profession since 2010 but acknowledged there was “more to do”.
The survey asked more than 900 teachers, headteachers and Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) across England how long they planned to stay in teaching.
Almost half of those in post said they were considering leaving teaching in the next five years, while one in ten were planning to spend less than a year in the job.
More than three quarters of those surveyed, which included former teachers, said they had felt “frequently or constantly burnt out” while at work.
Respondents cited high workloads on marking, lesson preparation and other tasks, which they said gave them less time in the classroom.
The Liberal Democrats’ schools spokesperson Caroline Voaden said this pointed to a government that is “not listening” to the profession.
“We rely on teachers to educate our children, the least we can do is make sure they want to come back after the summer,” she said.
Teacher retention is a challenge successive governments have had to grapple with.
The National Education Union (NEU) reported that **4 in 10 teachers were planning to quit** over “huge workloads and excessive accountability” in 2019.
This latest survey was also conducted with the help of the NEU, as well as the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).
“After over a decade of austerity and chronic underfunding in our schools the system is on its knees” said the NEU’s general secretary Daniel Kebede.
“The new academic year is the perfect time for Andy Burnham to signal a fresh start for our schools” he added.
“That means fully funding the pay award and properly funding all our schools and colleges to stem the recruitment and retention crisis and give children the education they deserve.”
“As Lucy Powell enters her first term as education secretary the Liberal Democrats are calling for her first act to be to introduce an emergency package of ‘back to school’ measures to face this crisis head on,” Voaden said.
Gonna get in early with the usual comments –
“Yeah but what about their long holidays?”
“They all finish work at three, don’t they?”
“Those who can do, those who can’t teach. I am very witty and original.”
“Mr Jones said I couldn’t submit my Harry Potter fanfic as coursework back in 2009, so now I think all teachers should suffer”
A society that consumes the vitality of its educators to sustain the illusion of a functioning system inevitably starves the very future it claims to nurture.
Need to bring back special schools, and expand spaces in PRUs for expelled students.
There are too many kids who cannot be in mainstream education but currently are, and it’s a huge strain on schools.
Until morons stop seeing teachers as glorified childminders who dare call their kids behaviour out nothing will change, and good teachers will continue leave the profession.
They need to introduce longevity bonuses as an incentive every five years.
Schools are unfortunately full of feral disobedient gremlins. Mainly due to poor parenting and a lack of discipline at home. No wonder teachers are giving up on the profession.
My partner is a secondary school maths teacher, and does more work than I in a private sector role, for half the pay
And the worst people I have to deal with are incompetent adults
Teachers are leaving the profession because behavior is out of control (this is a function of larger class sizes, having SEND students, and poor pupil behavior (which in turn cycles back to bad parenting)).
Labour is not going to fix any of that.  Â
The crazy thing to me, when there’s a real shortage of teachers, is that its still really difficult to get qualified as a teacher. The training courses are super selective, and then school leadership seem to think its their responsibility to weed out the weak during placements and your early career posts.
We don’t pay teachers well enough (or offer good enough conditions and benefits) to have a surplus of teachers – so we should, I would have thought, aim to reduce the shortage by getting more people qualified.
Why don’t they try hiring some of the ECT teachers fresh from uni who haven’t even been able to find a job yet? Apparently there’s a teacher shortage, and yet no teaching jobs available.
‘Emergency measures’ like giving them authority and support to deliver discipline and command respect from pupils or giving them the tools to teach without being bogged down with pointless administration.
Or emergency measures as in blocking the job search sites at the school firewall?
In the mid 2010’s, I went to uni to become a teacher. The course was specifically a teaching course and there were about 300 of us in my cohort.
I know about 3 people who are still teachers. Most didn’t finish the course after their 3rd year of placements, the rest dropped the profession after their NQT year.
The kids were never the issue, it was the adults. The pressure of nonsense like lesson plans, medium term plans, extra curricular demands, heads of year demands, ofsted. The pressure teachers get put under, for a shocking wage, and ultimately get treated like shit, is why there are no teachers.
I’ll always remember my first week and the head told me, “its not a job, its a lifestyle choice” he wasn’t wrong.
I know a lady who could fix our schools. She was proficient in the shot-put, hammer throw and javelin in her heyday. She was such a kind lady and a great educator, she gave one kid a full chocolate cake after he was caught stealing from the kitchens.
Teaching is a great job for many (I loved it) but it’s just highly inflexible. I think having a stronger culture of sabbaticals or time off during term time would benefit the profession massively – dare I say, make it a competitive desirable career again.
Also make Ofsted pass-fail and treat it more like an audit than a career ending mistake. It becomes insanely stressful for everyone and tbh most parents don’t know the granular detail between a ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ school anymore than if we called it ‘semi-good, good, proper good, really good’…
The entire comprehensive system just needs an overhaul. Time to drop the idea that you can just cram a bunch of people of differing abilities and behaviours into one school and call it a day.
The school I went to was bottom 5% in the country. While some of it was the quality of teaching a large part of the problem was all the truly horrid kids they allowed to stay who just dragged everyone else down and monopolised a huge portion of teachers time. In fact probably part of the reason the teachers were crap was because no teacher worth their salt would want to work there and deal with shit kids all day when they could leave and go work at a better school (which the good teachers often ended up doing).
It was a nice idea to think that everyone is equal, but the whole ‘blank slate’ idea simply isn’t true in reality. Some kids just aren’t fit for academic learning and need to be taken out of it so they don’t drag other brighter kids down with them. I ended up basically having to do a huge chunk of my education all over again after leaving due to how bad the quality of learning was.
Comprehensives were better than secondary moderns sure, but clearly the reforms need to go further.
Simple.
Make the movies Scum and Scrubbers required viewing.
Bring back Borstal
They’ll soon behave!
There are several things that wohld make it so much easier.
1. Bring back more SEN schools.
2. Bring back more vocational schools and options.
3. Reduce class size to 15 students in a class.
4. Have a class secretary/PA who just does the marking, certificate issuing, paperwork, email answering, preping and organising things like student trips etc.
5. Give teachers more PPA time.
6. Remove after school meetings, training and Parents evenings during the normal week. They should be done on inset days.
7. All OfSTED inspectors should be ex teachers who still hold QTS.
8. Every class should have a perminant (not shared) HLTA.
9. Every child with diagnosed SEN should have the funding for a 1-2-1 TA.
I’ve taught for 10+ years and know loads of qualified teachers whom don’t teach.
The conditions are crap, pay even worse and there’s all the cuts which means main stream classes have high needs EHCP learners who should be in special schools. Then add working hours, all the resources which we need to buy ourselves and what’s probably going to make me leave is shite parents. Ain’t my fault your child was up gaming to 3am and now doesn’t attend, but sure, blame me and my lack of help.
Like paying them what they’re actually worth to society and funding schools like the investment in our future that it is?
Not just the teachers but support staff too. Support staff are often paid less than supermarket workers but expected to work with the most difficult children with little to no job progression or training. More support staff that are well paid to incentivise it as another career would also support teachers and schools.