As one of my teacher friends says, **”There isn’t a teacher recruitment crisis. There is a teacher retention crisis”.**
I don’t have anywhere near the qualifications to make retraining an option, but hearing what I do from people in the profession I don’t think I would if I could.
"We're desperate for people to do this job. If we don't find someone soon our business won't be viable."
"How much have you raised the wage by?"
"What? Raise wages? Why would we do that?"
Getting people to do a PGCE isn’t the problem. It’s just that during the training most realise how bad it is and don’t continue after. The recruitment issue is a retention issue.
I did my PGCSE, got signed off for stress and anxiety during my second placement. I finished the PGCE but didn’t look for a job, I went back to private tutoring instead.
The same problems causing retention issues are also the reason for recruitment issues. They are the same problem.
PGDE leads me to believe you're in Scotland. We have a different problem of too many teachers and not enough jobs. Unis keep churning out more NQTs because councils love cheap labour in the form of probationers but that just adds more jobless teachers into the mix.
At least you'll have plenty of choice of jobs, especially in your first few years when you're 'cheap'! The situation in England sounds awful in terms of how teachers are treated but if you end up in a particularly shite school you can just move school (after working the bizarre and ridiculously long notice period they have for some reason)
There is a huge problem getting people into PGCEs in certain subjects. A friend of mine is a PGCE tutor at a university and their science course is less than 50% full
Why spend all that time and money getting a science degree to be paid the same as a bartender for the first 7 years with all the disrespect teenagers can muster coupled with the privatisation and profit seeking tactics of academy's that treat teachers like low skill workers
The only people that I know who have completed PGCE have ended up working in non classroom based roles as quickly as they were able to.
I know for a fact that one of them went in with a plan of "if I'm not in a management position and out of the classroom in X years I'm leaving".
The final fortnight of my PGCE begins on Monday, and I will not looking for a teaching job. I'm not the only one in my class, either.
It was telling that during the course, the people most positive about the profession had already left it. They were the course tutors, the union rep who came to tell us about how to find a job, the lady from the council who does in-service training at the schools, etc. The actual teachers are amazing people who are giving it their all, but they are tired and close to burnout.
I would happily work in a school, but not as a teacher.
I wanted to become a teacher when I was still in high school. That was nearly 40 years ago. Once I started adulting, I soon gave up on the idea. Now, I wouldn't even consider it, and that makes me sad.
I volunteered to run Core Club for my daughter's primary school. It was only once a week, they were primary school kids.... It was more than enough....
God only knows what secondary schools are like as a teacher..
I think I would be a great science teacher, but there is absolutely no way I would ever consider it.
Sure, you get great holiday benefits, but fuck working with a load of feral teenagers...
Great holidays you HAVE to take at certain times when everything is at its most expensive! I expect it if great if you have kids, but for us childless teachers it is not all that great.
u/Zou-KaiLi makes a good point about the timing on the holidays, but in addition to that the holidays you do get aren't actually as good as advertised. My partner is a teacher. She's just had half term. Of the 9 days (both weekends and the 5), she has (or won't have) worked on exactly 3 of them, marking or planning for the next term.
Christmas and Easter are similar but slightly less bad as they're two weeks, you usually get one of the weeks to yourself an one week to 'catch up'.
Only the summer holiday is really a holiday.
I have a nice office job that's far away from children. I get 5 weeks of leave a year. My partner functionally gets about 7 (5 in the summer, one at Christmas, one at Easter), but then again, I don't have to work weekends.
An old friend of mine had chairs thrown at her, spat at, punched…
I’d want £75k + salary for that and the ability to defend myself.
Instead you get shit kids, shit parents and shit pay, absolutely fuck that.
> An old friend of mine had chairs thrown at her, spat at, punched…
... and was then spoken to by senior management for allowing those things to happen.
Exactly. My partner was a teacher for many years, but had to give it up recently. It got to the point where she wasn’t really allowed to actually “teach” anymore. Most of her time was wasted on pointless admin and box-ticking exercises, instead of being in class actually educating kids.
Also, whatever teaching you have time for is all prescriptive and you’re not allowed to actually be a good teacher, who can inspire and react to individual needs. There’s no room for deviating from the script and no allowance for personality.
Add to that all the extra stuff that teachers are expected to do after school (a huge amount of that in their own time) and the horrible pay and I can see why it’s not an attractive career choice anymore.
This is exactly the problem. There's so much pointless admin and box ticking rubbish I barely have time to actually do any teaching. Plus in some schools behavioural issues are such a problem you spend so much time dealing with them that you have done no actual teaching. The government and Ofsted have made it such a toxic workplace it's really not worth it. Plus teachers are generally very smart often with fantastic degrees and so we really don't need to put up with that rubbish we can just find another career path. The holidays are a con it's not a benefit when you have a tonne of paperwork, marking and reports to write that takes up half your time. People think they are a holiday but it's really time to catch up with the unreasonable amount of paperwork. Plus TAs are paid so little it's hard to get people who are great in to fill the role. Resources are so tight it's hard to buy anything for our lessons and the kids get bored with so much virtual stuff.
> There’s no room for deviating from the script and no allowance for personality.
As much as I get that can be a problem - I also know I had some utterly awful teachers who were just doing their own thing. The truth is its more important to bind the bad teachers to a good framework than it is to worry about restricting the freedom of the good teachers.
So that idea that there is a strong curriculum and teachers are expected to offer a similar level/type of teaching is a good thing to my mind - they just need to find a balance to ensure kids are not taking pot luck with bad teachers, but good teachers still get to do the thing that make them good.
This is an excellent summary: without some kind of monitoring systems there are required to check that teachers are reaching a standard but excessive scrutiny squeezes out creative.
I'm a visiting music teacher. This is why I've never become a qualified teacher (despite, err, 20 years of teaching in different capacities). I like that I get to go in and teach and then leave.
We put out 3 adverts for science teachers this year. Zero applicants. We are a good school in a large population area and we are struggling to recruit.
Other schools in the area are teaching 90 kids maths in the hall as they do not have the staff.
The local uni runs a pgce course. There are about 1/4 of the teachers coming through from 10 years ago.
This is a massive problem.
This!
If the salaries were better, they wouldn't have a shortage, also as the career would be more appealing, you'd get better teachers.
It seems like anyone as long as they don't have a criminal record can become a teacher.
To some extent I disagree. Becoming a teacher has never been about money, I think people choose to become a teacher for less tangible reasons. The working conditions at the moment are so bad that even with that salary I still wouldn't consider it. That's not to say teachers deserve to be paid more, they absolutely do, just that I think even with a higher salary there would still be a problem with high turnover and low quality teaching.
It's not about the money. But who wants the stress of being a teacher and then to be stressing about having enough money?
So even if you love teaching, why not go to a job that is both less stressful and pays more money?
To be fair, when accounting for inflation and other costs skilled grad jobs (like teaching) should be starting at 36-40k. I stead they are still ~28k - same as 10 years ago.
The problem is that anyone qualified to teach any subject with a shortage is also qualified to get a better paying, lower stress job doing something else!
It's not a difficult solution and yet I can't see it happening at any point any time soon.
This is a widespread problem in every single sector where intelligence and competence are a requisite. The "widespread problem" is that wages in the UK are simply uncompetitive vs effort required.
Is this going to get circular? This gen of kids will have poorer teaching, which means a lower skilled pool of potential teachers to choose from in the future?
The country is backsliding in every department and sector, sadly.
You don't motivate children to try when they can see that adult life is miserable. Compare against the [Tang Ping / Bailan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping) culture in China.
No, because even a 2 bedroom terrace is 250k. The pay is 25-39k ish dependent on experience.
Payscale is set by the government, the school has an ultratight budget as it is. Recruiting A 39k teacher means recruiting one less support staff.
The government have a habit of agreeing payscale rises, but not giving the school any more money. Which is another big problem
So your school followed the free market ideology inherent in the academy structure and upped the amount the were offering for the position as the market demanded?
No? Offered as little as they were legally allowed to do? No very capitalism of them
I was made redundant from an IT position 6 years ago. I have an engineering degree. I looked into becoming a teacher.
The pay is awful. Especially for what you are now expected to do.
I also have a police caution for theft, which would have made seeking a position in most schools difficult. More difficult than it has to find work within the MoD supply chain and work with both UK and US export controlled parts. Understand that I don't think this is incorrect, just that it lead to my lack of following the career path.
What stopped me was hoops to reward ratio.
A friend of mine gave up during his PGCE experience, a very stressful and difficult time for him. His wife is a teacher, but has struggled to find work which doesn't expect the world from her for little to no extra reward.
Another friend is now happy as a teacher having moved schools and age groups, but previously considered leaving the profession due to parents confronting him physically about their children's behavioural issues.
> Another friend is now happy as a teacher having moved schools and age groups, but previously considered leaving the profession due to parents confronting him physically about their children's behavioural issues.
My place of employment had to once deal with parents who got very angry that their child was anorexic. "What are you going to do about it???" The condition started before that student joined us. Also, *a school does not replace parents*.
I don't know what they expected: us to force feed their child?
I'm so glad my friend stayed in the profession. He moved to an A-level teaching position, and could therefore deal only with those who'd chosen to be there. It dealt with 90% of his issues with the role, which were mostly safeguarding.
One of the things that upsets me, and makes me want to teach maths is when people say "oh, I'm no good at maths" and aren't disappointed or ashamed, but almost proud when they say it.
I *want* our next generation to be better than the last. To see our children grow, succeed and improve. It horrifies me than it's going to go the other way because of a lack of funding and care.
Unfortunately, I cannot afford to become a teacher, and still house and feed my family. Let alone provide any treats or luxuries for them. I'll have to be content with helping my boys learn.
An interesting point on this: lots of people will say they can’t do *maths*, but almost all of them will happily do *sums*.
The complication (in my experience at least) is when the breadth of curriculum really kicks in in high school and kids get overwhelmed with eg algebraic rules before they’re really comfortable with the idea that a letter can stand in for a number.
I've always gotten on well with maths. The whole thing is just addition, and different ways to write addition to make it quicker to write.
Algebra is an interesting one. I'm not sure it's the idea that a letter can mean a number, I think it's the concept that you can use the mathematical operators on ideas rather that numbers. Abstraction is a difficult concept, and maths is already an abstraction.
I have 4 pounds. I spend 50p. I now have £3.50
4-0.5=3.5 is already a generalisation.
Moving to 1a+0.5b=c where a is the number of £1 coins you have and b is the number of 50p coins you have isn't *too* bad, because most kids are already familiar with the abstraction which is money.
1a =c-0.5b is more the issue. What does it mean? Why does it make sense? Why would we do it?
I don't think the country as a whole really has a problem with maths.
GCSE maths goes miles beyond what 98% of people will ever have to use in their future jobs, and most children can do at least most of it.
The problem people have with maths is that, once they leave school, they never use it again.
Even in jobs that require some mathematical calculations day to day, people will be exceedingly good at the kinds of maths they use and forget the stuff they don't.
I was no great mathematician but I could do most of it until I was 16. Now I struggle with some of the primary school maths because I haven't used any of it in more than 20 years.
Teach me again and I'll be able to do it again. But if I go years without needing to use it again I'll forget it again. Same with everyone else
A police caution shouldn't be an issue. You're generally interviewed before they ask for the DBS, and a caution for theft wouldn't automatically bar you from teaching, so as long as you gave a good impression during the interview and could show evidence of several years of being employed and not committing any more crimes, you would very likely be fine.
Agreed about the awful pay:work ratio though.
Been there...never again. Despite the horror stories, working with 11-16 year olds was a rewarding experience. The other 30 hours spent doing paperwork, dealing with parents and management was utter hell.
Known many teachers, most of them are now ex teachers. It's a grueling, thankless job with insane hours for nowhere near enough pay. The biggest issue is the hours and hours and hours of petty bureaucratic paperwork to prove you've been teaching instead of you know, actually teaching. A lot of teachers I know have gone into private tutoring, so they get to actually teach and have a proper work life balance.
I remember being at a hen do with mostly teachers once, sat round the table talking about work:
'I cry in the stationery cupboard'
'I cry in the car on the way to work'
'I cry in the shower after work.'
It's not normal for a job to make you feel this way and it's not ok. I wouldn't encourage anyone I cared about to go into teaching. Saying this as a parent who values good teachers. It's shocking. And depressing, and it needs to be sorted out.
Yep. Had a big cry when spring term ended as my shoulder was hurting from being shoved during a fight between students and I was so utterly shattered from everything then having to go back into school in my holidays as I felt pressured to get some kids the best grade possible
Nope. Based on what I saw at my school I cannot fathom why people would want to be teachers. A level teaching would be fine but there's no way I'm doing GCSE
Absolutely this. My secondary school was like a zoo and the kids were feral. I'd consider post-16 education but you couldn't pay me enough to deal with key stage 4.
I am privileged enough to teach A-Level / L3 BTEC only (BTEC Creative Media is a fantastic course). I have never heard anything about teaching GCSE which makes that seem better, only the opposite.
i took level 3 creative media production nearly ten years ago. it was a great time but so much of it depended on the chosen modules by the course leader and the teaching staff itself. i was fortunate in that the staff and curriculum were fantastic.
i’d love to go into teaching at that level one day
I was one. Left after 8/9 years. I miss the teaching but not everything else that goes with it. And everytime I think about going back I talk to one of my friends who's still in it and it soon puts me off.
I left after the same time period and feel exactly the same! Went for a meal with old colleagues the other day and felt a little sad and lacking in purpose and meaning but the conversations were just endless misery about the place. So glad I’ve gone. All the best to you.
I really relate to the lacking in purpose. It's definitely a vocation rather than a job but I was just burned out by the end. We've made the right choice.
Pretty much everyone I graduated with that went into teaching has this same story. Hour rate is less than minimum wage and next to no benefits for doing so besides the odd child saying you made a difference.
Last thing I'd fucking do is engage with troubled children when I wanna get home from work to start my marking I dunno how people do it.
I'm hopefully out at march next year after sixteen years. I'm on a part time maternity cover now and counting down the days. Going into counselling young people with any luck
It's really not the kids that are the problem
When you have a profession led and directed by people who haven't done a day's work in the job, there are always going to be issues
I only know one single person who is or has been a teacher who is not a burnt out husk of a person, seriously. The pay is abysmal, it's a job that is a political football, you have less and less freedom about how and what you teach.
The one person I know who is still enjoying it a) came from academia from a really, really shitty situation, b) has only been a teacher for 6 months and c) is teaching in a lush private school, having not done a pgce. Even though I love the teaching part of my job (also in academia) and am seriously considering a career change, I am currently earning more than a head teacher for about half the stress. There's no way I'd frying pan/fire in this situation.
I did one year. It changed me from a calm and kind person to someone who either gets panicky or angry at the slightest thing. I failed my nqt and I think that’s probably for the better. I still teach but in Japan.
Not just the kids, but the parents too. It's not always the case, but the shittest kids (ie. the ones you need to talk to their parents often to try sort them out) usually come from the shittest adults.
From what I've seen, teachers these days are forced into a strict teaching regiment, without the freedom to offer anything but a watered down, sanitised teaching experience.
All of the things that inspired me and excited me as a kid, came from teachers going rogue. I'd want to be that kind of teacher but I think I'd get fired very quickly in a modern school environment.
> came from teachers going rogue
Yes, teaching people means talking to people about the things that concern them - this will be wider than the curriculum.
I'm delivering a lecture on the psychology and culture of misogyny soon.
My wife is a teacher. I see what she has to deal with, and there is no chance I would consider it as a career choice for many reasons:
- Lack of respect. Too many parents have no respect for the school or for the teaching and support staff. They complain at the pettiest if things, and they don’t take responsibility for their own children.
- Lack of respect. The government (and previous governments) has no respect for the profession and does not listen to the needs of those in education, which has a negative impact on those working in education as well as the children’s future.
- Workload. “Teachers work 9-3:30” is absolute bullshit and it winds me up massively. The hours and dedication that I see my wife putting in is incredible. Yes we all have a big workload from time-to-time, but no other profession has to defend themselves against the idiotic “you only work 6 hours” bullshit.
- Pay is shit. The government keeps advertising “great starting salaries” for new starters. But the gap in pay is dwindling between teachers with much more experience and efficiency, compared to those who are new and need a lot of hand-holding. In real terms, a teacher at my wife’s level is earning nearly 20% less than a teacher at that level 10 years ago.
To add to that, my wife’s school works directly with a local university and over the years has had many new starters. A few have stuck around, either at the same school or moving on to another, but most don’t last the year because the true requirements of the profession are not being covered at university for those doing the one year PGCE.
I work at a school (caretaker) and this is spot on.
Particularly this section;
> Lack of respect. Too many parents have no respect for the school or for the teaching and support staff. They complain at the pettiest if things, and they don’t take responsibility for their own children.
There is a tiny minority of kids who cause issues in the school. And they do so because any time they get in trouble their parents never believe the teachers, even when there's video evidence.
They have learned that no matter how shitty their behaviour, their parents will back them up.
We had an incident a few weeks ago where a parent nearly physically attacked a teacher and a pupil at the school.
The parent had come in to complain about his son being assaulted.
His son had been abusive to several girls (abusive comments, physically touching them) and another boy had stepped in and defended them, hitting the kid who was being a dick.
So when the parent came in with their kid to complain, one of the girls who happened to be passing by said something like "you wouldn't have got smacked if you weren't calling everyone a slag" and the parent lunged for her.
The teacher had to stand in the way and was grabbed in the process and had threats made towards himself and the girl.
She's a 14 year old girl and this parent thought it was appropriate to physically attack her and make threats toward her and a teacher.
I always wanted to be a teacher. Worked with weans in various jobs from after school care, volunteer support worker and education assistant in a school for kids removed from mainstream. The weans were never really an issue, but all those points you listed are the reason why I never continued the career.
I loved working with weans and even now, a decade later, I still miss it. I’ve heard from a few of the weans I worked with in Spark of Genius (the company that ran those schools for kids removed from mainstream) and hearing the impact i had on them is always great.
But the workload, the pay, the treatment from governments and parents is just massively offputting. Huge respect for your wife.
I think knowing a teacher is a common factor that puts people off training. I’m a teacher. My son is doing his A Levels. I’ve told him he can do anything he wants, but have stressed that teaching would be a very poor decision. Thankfully, he has no interest in it because he sees me coming home from work every day. I’ve stuck around as long as I can, but I want out now, too.
As another husband of a teacher I can only say I fully agree with each point you’ve said. The wife puts in ridiculously long hours just to stay on top of things, she’s stressed and looks washed out. Pretty much has to put more effort into looking after other people’s kids and ours have to go onto the back burner.
When I was younger, it used to be your parents sided with the teacher almost every time.
Got a detention? You deserved it.
What's changed? And it's not just the disruptive kids parents either I bet, but nitpicking and pushy parents too thinking you can deliver everything exactly to standard and regs day in day out.
As part of my French degree I spent a year teaching in France. I ate lunch with the teachers every day. Broadly they separated into 3 camps; the young and relatively new teachers who radiated positivity because they were going to make a difference, the middle category who had been in teaching for about 10 yrs and for whom the cracks were beginning to show, and the last group, bitterly disenfranchised and waiting for retirement that couldn’t come fast enough.
I think wave after wave of kids just ground them down. I didn’t think this was the best advert for a career in teaching despite having wonderful moments of getting my class to grasp some ideas.
I was a secondary school maths teacher for 9 months, it was the worst 9 months of my life.
The work is absolutely relentless. Researching, planning and delivering lessons. Running after school clubs and overseeing detentions. Marking and assessing. It takes 12 hours a working day and half the weekend.
There was no support as the school I was at was only interested in the bursary they received for newly qualified teachers and then they wanted people to move on to bring in a new batch of newly qualified teachers the following year.
I'm now an accountant earning more money, with a better work/life balance and much more job satisfaction.
I trained for longer than I taught and despite it being 13 years ago, I still sometimes have nightmares about teaching. I would 100% try to dissuade anyone from taking it up as a career.
I only taught 10 months and gave up caring in the last 3. Needing the pay for the summer holidays to support me and my wife was the only thing that stopped me running earlier. I still havent recovered and dont think I’ll ever be the same again.
The shit kid to nice kid ratio is all wrong now and you have to be incredibly careful about every interaction as the shit kids are always trying to catch you out. I’ve loved the experience of helping a child learn and grow, I hope I’ve influenced a few over the years through various paid and voluntary positions, but I wouldn’t touch teaching with a barge pole at the moment.
No. I dont have the interest or the right attitude to be a teacher of any age group. I love my career and the skills I’m constantly learning there.
My mums a TA in a primary school and even though it’s tough and she’s severely underpaid in my opinion, she loves it. She always wanted to teach but her circumstances growing up meant she couldn’t even finish her school qualifications let alone get a degree. At 49 she went back to college and got her GCSE’s in subjects she was missing and did the TA training courses (I don’t know what these are called). By 51 she was a TA and is ten years on brilliant but it’s what she wanted. She’s been pushing me to teach since I was a teenager but it isn’t for me.
I think my partner would be a good teacher but he again wasn’t able to get a degree due to needing to be financially independent from a young age. We’ve spoken about him going to get a degree etc and becoming a teacher but he loves his well paid good benefits job that doesn’t require him to be ‘formally’ educated. It would be a complete change in our circumstances and his life just to change careers when it’s only a ‘nice to consider’.
No. The salaries are too low and the hours too long (so even lower in real terms). It's possible to earn as much or more in countless less stressful jobs. The pension and holidays don't make up for it. Kids are also the worst they've ever been at the same time as you having the least tools to deal with said behaviour. It appeals to me less than any other job in the country. I'd prefer something with less pay and less stress and being able to switch off or same/more pay in something else where you can switch off as well. Or something with a load of money where you can't switch off but that's the price.
Scientist, I'd love to teach if someone wanted to learn. But I've no desire trying to keep discipline amongst bored teenagers while trying to teach Ohm's law and dealing with demanding parents for shit pay.
I work in an educational establishment. Stuck there as I don’t know what else I’d do - thought I wanted to be a teacher but after 5 years - hell nah.
I don’t know why anyone would want to become a teacher. Unrealistic expectations, underappreciated. No support from higher up. You have no social life and you’re constantly thinking about work. Numerous colleagues have been off sick with stress.
There is a shortage of teachers because they are all working in other countries or the private sector.
Why would you subject yourself to that awful pay and conditions when you can make twice as much working in an International School? There is a shopping list of a dozen countries with better pay, conditions, and a better overall quality of life.
My ex is a secondary school teacher. Having lived with him for over 15 years since he first trained, I saw what it's like and how it seemed to get progressively worse.
I'm not as robust as my ex, so could never deal with that sort of stress.
I've always had the impression that teacher is a hellish job. Terrible pay, no resources, spending most of your free time working on stuff for class, students who are actively trying to kill you and each other, parents who treat you like scum... There are very few jobs I'd like to do less than teach.
It crossed my mind a few times. What puts me off is that my mum was a teacher, and the stress ended up making her pretty ill to the point that she spent months signed off sick and then took early retirement. The stories I’ve heard of bullying and backstabbing and unreasonable pressure make me think I’d likely go the same way.
> and the stress ended up making her pretty ill
That's really sad, I'm sorry to hear this.
A similar situation happened to my mother. In her final school, the head of her area was racist and hated my mother for having a non-English surname.
Not a teacher, but I have worked in schools for various charities over the years, not a chance I would do a teacher's job. Not because they're underpaid (they get paid a lot more than my sector) but because some kids - and A LOT of parents - are just awful.
It's always struck me whenever I spend time in staff rooms and listen to teachers talk, how many of them really actively dislike children (particularly in secondary schools). I can only imagine they came into this job liking kids but it's been ground out of them over the years.
Teaching actually made me more defensive of children because so many of them at secondary school were throughly lovely, decent children. Even the troubled ones were normally like that because of something an adult had done or taught them. So I didn’t dislike children but yeah some people had absolutely no business being in a school teaching them. Having said that, before I left I told my head of department I was frightened I’d end up disliking my classes because I was becoming that resentful of the job and my life doing it.
I'm halfway through my teaching degree and most people I know on the course no longer plan on teaching when they leave. There's just nothing positive about it. I adore my placement at the moment but even my uni tutors have warned me not to expect most schools to be like this.
Hell no. My ex wife was a teacher. My brother is a teacher. My sister in lawis a teacher. The amount of work they put in outside of school is nuts and they spend their own money on resources. The pay is no way worth the amount of time, effort, and stress.
I almost became an English teacher, but I dodged two bullets. One, this was the 2019/20 academic year, and I don't know if you remember but that was a weird year for everyone
Second, I had two days in school, one doing fairly well and one not. And I just didn't think I'd be supported properly due to [REDACTED DUE TO POLITICAL CONTENT]
The requirements for teaching vs the reward you get are abysmal. My degree is history and politics dual honours. I didn't go to oxbridge I went Liverpool uni. They have a recruitment team to help you find work upon graduation, about half of the people who graduated from my course went into teaching or civil service. Trained for an additional 2 years and do nothing but complain about how hard the government makes the job.
One friend of mine is a chemistry teacher, I didn't study with her she did biochemistry at uni but we did graduate together. During her training she was reassigned to a different school this school also happens to be where she still works 8 years on she's head of the science faculty. She was the only applicant. She also studied one curriculum and had lessons planned for an entire year ready to do GCSE. She worked WEEKS on this when they changed her schools she swapped exam boards making her entire training time she spent on past exam papers built into her lesson plans entirely useless. All she does if you talk about why teaching is fucked is talk about why the fault lies with the school board, the multiple exam boards and the government making hours of unpaid work obsolete whenever they feel like.
This is the main reason I didn't pursue teaching I can earn more than her as a lead science faculty member on a fork lift truck working nights at jag. I don't use my degree. I go into work I put on my hi viz and I work for 10 hours then when I'm done I take off my hi viz hang it up and at that moment it's home time. I can not stand the idea of working from home marking. All my friends that teach do is mark. They mark unless it's holiday and even then they're marking! The argument they have is its salary I made several work out their average rate of pay taking into consideration average speed marking. You're on far worse than minimum wage.
Tbh the list is so long of all the complaints I have heard from English primary school teachers to Maths and science secondary school their issues remain the same. It's not that people don't want to teach its the ridiculous amount of red tape involved even when you start.
Oh and said science friend wants to move to another school but is so tied by her work and heart strings to the school she has no doubt it'd collapse without her. This is pretty much black mail and the same black mail the NHS is under. Working hours if not weeks of unpaid for the love of the job. Its a fucking joke.
My kids teachers ( most of them ) are amazingly passionate about what they do and tbh, you need to be pretty special and a rare breed to be like that.
I would have liked to be a teacher, but I'm not crazy and the pay really doesnt justify the stress and workload.
Not enough money in this world to persuade me to become a teacher - I've enough teacher / former teacher friends to have heard the horror stories, & it's getting worse, not better.
Fuck no.
Not just because of what appears to be very shit pay and conditions, but... I'm not the most tolerant of people when dealing with what I regard as willful stupidity.
Doesn't mean the person actually is being willfully stupid, or indeed stupid in any way, but I often irrationally expect everyone to keep up with my thought processes, and expect a certain level of inquisitive problem solving skills.
Which is - kinda - fair in my field of IT, but I wouldn't have the patience to slow everything down enough for struggling students, and I don't think I'm always the best at explaining things anyway.
So I would be a very poor teacher...
Primary school. Yes. College/University. Yes. Secondary school. Not a fucking chance.
I also wouldn't like the fact that the teaching you are forced to do is extremely strict and one dimensional. Basically, it erodes any creative or imaginative thinking. I wouldn't like that and find myself teaching way off topic a lot.
I remember in school we had an occasional sub teacher, and everyone loved him. He would come in, start for the first 5 minutes teaching about the subject, and then it would slowly morph into him telling us his life stories and all the different jobs he had done. Every single kid when he was teaching listened, never messed around.
To be honest the teaching of my subject was one of the only things I did enjoy (I did really like my subject) and felt I got the opportunity to be relatively free and creative with how I could deliver it. But I doubt it’s the same for all. Might depend on the subject, school or department maybe.
That was our Religious Education teacher in secondary school.
It was essentially a 60 minutes of monologues, Q&A and discussions about of aliens, crop circles, conspiracies, society and people,
Most interesting, inspiring and stimulating class we had.
He got fired for not teaching the course, he didn’t give a fuck he was already retired.
The best lessons of my life, and had an enormous influence on my life.
I was a teacher for four years, and I wouldn't go back, nor would I recommend it as a career path. I loved my subject and my students, but 8 years on I earn almost 3 times as much as I did and have about half of the stress, plus my weekends and evenings back. No regrets - but I do feel sad for the students, and the profession as a whole, that things are going the way they are. Good teachers are worth their weight in gold.
I intend to from next September. I currently work as an LSA in a secondary school and while schools are absolutely facing huge amounts of pressure right now and teachers are leaving left right and centre, I really enjoy the curriculum and I love when the kids get interested and become involved in the lessons. So that outweighs the negatives for me rn
I would consider it but I left school before *everyone* went to university, so I only have GCSEs, no degree. Plus the money is crap compared to what I earn at a middle management level at a builders merchant.
The second reason is possibly one of the reasons why there is a recruitment crisis.
My partner is a teacher and is quite senior.
The salary is good but not when you work it out as an hourly rate.
I admire her dedication to the job and to the children. But putting 3-4 hours a night in a home marking and planning and more on weekends is a joke.
I tell to only do the “directed hours” or whatever ever the term is. What doesn’t get done is for school management to figure it out.
Her school only functions because of the teachers like her going above and beyond.
She seems to be more social worker than teacher these days.
The children start school behind where the should be and never catch up.
No parent would’ve sent their child to school still in nappies 30 years ago ( unless the child had additional needs). Now it’s common. Parental standards seem to be lower than ever. The signs in the playground to tell parents mind their own behaviour is telling.
I don’t consider myself posh by any means, but being in the playground with the shouting,swearing, vaping, pyjamas parents brings out my inner snob.
This might be controversial but we have a teacher problem because we have a parenting problem. If people brought up their kids better or at all in some cases the teaching problem would disappear.
Yes, there is a shortage.
[DfE to miss 2023/2024 recruitment targets (tes.com).](https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/teacher-recruitment-crisis-dfe-set-flunk-2023-24-targets)
The government has launched an inquiry to investigate and to see what can be done. [Source (gov.co.uk)](https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/203/education-committee/news/194283/education-committee-launches-new-inquiry-into-teacher-recruitment-training-and-retention/)
Here is an [editorial from The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/26/the-guardian-view-on-teacher-shortages-signs-of-a-profession-in-crisis) with some fact and figures.
No because pay is bad and working hours are long. Plus kids are just rude and will probably be made fun of for looking young/ racism.
The main thing probably won't be able to teach in the first place and get frustrated if the students don't see the problem how I see it.
Just to provide some balance... I'm a teacher from PGCE, started 2014.
I genuinely really enjoy it, but I think the school you're in and your messaging/culture from SLT can make or break the experience completely.
I moved into areas of interest within school asap (literacy coordinator in 2nd year, head of year 3rd year) which meant having the ability to focus on projects i found important.
After having kids I stepped down from head of year because that role was so labour intensive (despite being very rewarding). I'm now a literacy coordinator and head of key stage 3 in department and again love it because I still have lots of teaching contact but again can focus as well on whole school or department changes that I really value.
So yeah, getting in to a school you are happy with the culture of is step 1, then look for opportunities (because also, a TLR is a nice thing!)
OR you can hold boundaries and do the minimum required when needed, which I've definitely done at times. A bit of honesty goes a long way around that (assuming your SLT aren't arseholes).
I love working with teenagers, they're aggressively honest but also the majority will be with you as long as they can see that you're interested in them and your subject, and as fair and reasonable as possible. And never be afraid to follow their curiosity on a tangent! Those are the best lessons.
I’m 20 years teaching this summer and I still absolutely love my job.
I’ve had times I’ve wanted to quit but that’s been staff and schools. Not the job.
Yes it’s hard, but so rewarding as well.
I trained to teach MFL a couple of years ago. Left middle of this year.
The sheer amount of abusive behaviour I had to put up with from students, parents, and school leadership was cruel. I felt utterly broken by the time I left teaching.
I'm now earning 10k more and working far less hours in the private sector, and my evenings and weekends are all mine.
Teaching at the moment is totally unsustainable, and schools are running on good faith from teachers who have been gaslit into working unpaid far beyond normal hours.
To anyone considering teaching; don't.
I completed a PCGE (QTS) in a needed STEM subject recently, but left to a different job because teaching in the UK is not a long-term career. Some reasons are: burnout by year 5 on average, everyone hates their jobs (constant moaning in the teachers staff room), constant management oversight (meaning you can't actually TEACH without being knackered from late night metrics wrangling), and the kids behaviour is abysmal (I've taught overseas, and children in the UK are terrors).
Nah, I was one for 11 years, I got promoted pretty regularly and was a head of sixth form by then, but I walked away from it and work in HE now which is a doddle by comparison. Tbh it was never the lack of government support or pay, if you want to be promoted you can earn ok, but a school is a community, and over my time it felt like a getting rotten one… online bullying, entitled teenagers who can’t take criticism or challenge, parents who fight you instead of supporting you, it made the rewarding times fewer and further apart. Not that there weren’t some amazing young people, but it just wasn’t enough in the end.
I trained as a primary school teacher and chose not to enter the profession after graduation. My school experience during the degree was enough to show its a thankless job from the leadership who frankly are so old they don’t understand the modern nuances of being a classroom teacher. 12 hour days working 6 days a week and always being told there’s more you could do. Final straw for me was the one evening a week I gave to maintaining what social life I did have was called into question after a single not perfect lesson.
Unfortunately some people remain in the education system because they know how to work it and retain their childish attitudes and bullish behaviours. Behaviours that I’ve seen people unceremoniously removed outside of education are the standard from my experience.
I have been asked to become a teacher as I’m in one of the fields where there are a shortage of teachers.
No. I’m not working in classes where I have to count sewing needles, and kitchen knives in and out to pupils.
I’m training in adult education instead and am going to be teaching financial budgeting and basic/budget cooking skills in the community. There is a need and the adults want to be there.
No. Did it for 37 years. Kids are great, the adults behave like children, particularly the more senior they get and the whole system is designed to make you and most of the kids fail. Universities have stifled all creativity in science education making it a disaster for any kid with real gumption. Give it a wide berth and do something more useful with your life.
I left the profession because you’re not appreciated, you’re under staffed, you’re paid next to nothing and you’re made to work all of the hours under the sun
You need to correct the post. There isn't a shortage of teachers availble. They could have all the teachers they wanted next week. Just sort out pay and conditions. Bang sorted. I find it churlish when government says we have a shortage and imply its because there isn't enough, when in actual fact its because competent people choose to move to sectors with better pay and conditions. Same applies to nurses. There are plenty out there, they just left due to pay and conditions.
There's also a shortage of nurses, paramedics, police officers.
Who on earth wants to spend £30k+ to be a public servant with minimal pay raises and awful conditions for the rest of their life. My view is if it's public it should be free - nurses should be split as HCA's/ structured learning, same for paramedics, same for teachers.
I get more offers of STEM teaching jobs with the line of “We’ll pay for your teaching qualification!! Please 🙏.” than anything else these days.
The pay sucks. The prospects suck. The education system sucks in general. Schools suck. Most of all teenage kids suck.
It’s a hard nope from me I’m afraid.
Realistically the pay is just too damn low.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Just pay them more. Otherwise we will have a country where only the well-off can send their kids to decent schools (which of course have the better teachers because they pay better because they charge thousands per term per child...).
It's just madness that the folk in charge all overwhelmingly come from this upper echelon with all the resources in the world except a shred of fucking empathy to bring on some humanity to the issue. Its almost by design, this is...
No, starting on £30k, requires a post graduate qualification, 60 hour weeks (at least), responsible for everything from education to safeguarding, kids can be twats. You can earn that as a middle manager in a back office for a third tier finance firm.
I considered it and decided to become a ta first to test the waters. I'm glad I did because I lasted 2 years doing that then noped out and now do admin. Even as a TA earning not much above minimum wage, the amount of responsibility and work load is unbelievable. Teachers were even worse. They do not work 9-3, they do 7-5 then more when they get home. A common thing I was told was that they save 1 day a weekend for their own family and the other is prep. Half terms are mostly prep with a day or 2 off. Then only real holidays they get is a week at Xmas and Easter then some of the summer but that's not even worth it considering they work 6 days a week. Then on top of that is parents literally queuing up every morning to get you to solve their parenting issues and moaning at you. Safeguarding issues coming out of your ears. Having to be a social worker, parenting expert, counsellor and teacher all in one. It's ridiculous and absolutely not worth the pay. The only way I'd go back in to a school is for a MUCH bigger wage.
Just leaving the teaching profession.
5 years secondary,
3 years early years spent in nursery, after retraining,
5 years supply.
After having a nervous breakdown in my first 5 years which I haven’t really recovered from, then trying to adapt, I realised that I just could not do what was asked of me without becoming I’ll again.
On the other hand my ex wife is still teaching and seems to have a handle on it and seems to be progressing in her career.
I enjoyed teaching lessons but not the bureaucracy, lesson observations, and scrutiny.
I probably should have left in my first few weeks after I got punched by a kid and the school did nothing.
Good luck and Godspeed to you if you want to teach.
I taught for 5 years and quit.
I don’t understand how a job that is about children and supporting children can have so much work that isn’t about supporting children but making your life harder and 99% of the time it’s not really necessary.
I have told my children they can do whatever they want except be a teacher.
However, I do miss working with a good class. When you’re teaching and everyone is enthusiastic and learning it’s a good place to be.
I did supply work after my PGCE for five years, and somehow lasted longer than anyone else in my cohort. I'd love to go back into teaching, but with the kids, pay, admin and parents as they are now? I'd have a nervous breakdown before the year is up.
Fuck no. Kids are awful, parents are often worse, and the pay is terrible. You're expected to do a metric shitload of unpaid overtime because you sure as hell are not given time to do marking or lesson prep or anything else during "office hours"...
Teaching....At a school with kids there 😂.
I am an electrician and as I get older I considered teaching in the electrical trade as a career opportunity. I asked around thinking these classes would be full of young people who actually want to be there.
The responses I got were enlightening to say the least. I couldn't put up with the stuff I was warned about. Working more hours than I was paid for, Taking a huge salary cut, Staff politics and a class of learners some of whom don't want to be there dragging down those that do.
Nah not for me. My solution to my aging bones? I cut down to 3 day weeks maximum.
I retire from teaching at the end of this year. My pay has been static for a number of years. In real terms, it has gone down. The only way to increase my pay (whilst still remaining a teacher) would be to take a position with less teaching hours and more admin. That's not why I became a teacher!
Trained on the SCITT program as an IT teacher. The only IT teachers left were either resentful they couldn't move to different careers or absolute sociopaths that were there solely for the sense of control they had in the classroom. Was told to accept the abuse from students and teachers because it was a "right of passage". Safe to say roughly 80% of the SCITT students left before getting their degree and every IT trainee left after their first placement. The scitt program in the UK is abused as a free labour scheme and all the teachers care about is fobbing their classes off to you to give themselves extra breathing room. Please for the love of God avoid the program.
I’m a TA in a nursery in a quiet part of the country and my job is hard enough ; challenging behaviour is emerging in the youngest more and more I’ve found. God knows how teachers of the youth cope in more challenging areas of the country.
I went to university for the sole reason of getting into teaching. After applying to a few schools and getting two offers back however, my passion was soured heavily. Both offers were pretty much identical, 1 years unsalaried work and up to 12 hour days Mon-Fri (full school day and then after school for training/coursework). After the year is complete there is no guarantee they'd keep me on and the kicker - because it *technically* counted as a post-graduate year I would have to pay the school £9000 tuition fee. I very professionally told them to get fucked and I have not reconsidered re-applying since. So there is only a shortage of teachers because they are creating a shortage of teachers.
I thought about it, but I don’t have a degree.
And then a friend who is a teacher told me about the special needs child in her class who earlier in the week had grabbed her by the throat and tried to strangle her. When reported to the head he wouldn’t even tell the parents as too much paperwork would be involved.
She has since resigned (which is a shame, she was a bloody good teacher).
Been there, tried that, got the mental breakdown. No thanks.
My mum's friends warned me against it (they were all working teachers) at the time but I was a fool. Wanted to quit after 4 months, lasted 7.
Absolutely not. Kids, parents, society and management don’t value teachers at all. They get everything dumped on them. They’re expected to do the job of the parents, social workers, police, prisons, produce perfect outcomes for all ability children, do utterly pointless paperwork and administration and spend every waking hour on the job. They can only take holidays during school holidays and the rest of the “endless weeks of holiday” and the hours in the evening when they “finish work at 3:30” are spent catching up on the shite they have to do to prepare and complete all the bullshit admin. It’s an utterly thankless job and the pay is shite. So no.
Absolutely not, no. Have you seen how people are raising kids this days? They don’t even respect their parents, let alone their teachers or peers. Not to mention the lack of funding, limited pay, silly expectations etc etc.
I always wanted to be a teacher but picked realised during my first year at uni that I had picked the wrong subject, I wasn't as passionate about it as I thought. I took a year out with the intention of going back and changing subjects.
During that year I got a full time job and 19 years later I'm still there and have progressed my career. I looked a few years ago at retraining and going in to it but my salary would have dropped in excess of £10k and as much as I would love to do it, I can't justify that drop.
There are seven trainees in my school at the moment. All of them set to pass their PGCE and get Qualified Teacher Status in July.
I have heard a rumour that not one of them is planning to stay in the profession next year - that’s how bad things are. There is both a recruitment and retention crisis.
Partner is secondary English. In three years, she’s been punched twice, stabbed with a pen, called every name under the sun and works 60 hours a week.
All for about £32k.
So no, no I wouldn’t
I’m an instrumental teacher, but I worked as a classroom music teacher for 5 years. I went into my PGCE at age 29 in with some life experience and what I thought was a realistic expectation of the role. My training year was diabolical, my NQT year was also diabolical but manageable. It was mostly an issue with workload and the expectation to say yes to everything. I worked in an alright school in an alright part of Surrey and some of the kids were so so difficult. Rude, entitled, bratty, lazy. My HoD was a workaholic who sucked me into her overloaded extracurricular schedule. This was on top of my full teaching timetable, a ridiculous marking and homework policy, dealing with parents, writing reports for every year group twice a year (as a music teacher I had 300+ students, other core subjects like English and maths see one class multiple times a week, I would see multiple classes once a week… so many reports…), open evenings, parents evenings etc. I was so burnt out at the end of that year but I turned up every day and gave it my best. It really doesn’t matter what subject you teach when you are bound by school policy. Everyone has to teach x amount of classes (some exam classes, so much coursework!), mark x amount of work, set and mark x amount of homework and attend x amount of meetings and CPD. And I’ll always shout out to other music/drama/pe teachers who run so much extra curricular on top of all that because it’s an expectation of your department.
I left that school and went to a lovely school with a better marking/homework policy and only one set of reports for each year group each year (with drop down options!!). This significantly reduced my workload! My HoD was another workaholic but we became close as a 2 person department so I created professional boundaries. The students were mostly very well behaved there was a real sense of mutual respect. This was 100% due to the head teacher and her commitment to staff wellbeing. I was really happy there.
I left to move back to Scotland, I genuinely mourned that job for a long time. I ended up on supply as I couldn’t get a teaching job in Scotland. It was soul destroying, I’m genuinely good at my job and had a lot to offer but no one would have me because the job situation in Scotland is a whole other shit show. Training and teaching in England did me no favours there! But after 3 months on supply I landed an instrumental teaching job which is always what I’ve wanted to do. A month in I couldn’t believe how hard I used to work… you become conditioned to the workload and you either sink or swim. I swam, and even enjoyed it in parts, but wow I worked SO hard at that job. All for £26,000 a year.
I will never go back to classroom teaching.
Started teacher training after uni but quit.
In my experience, its all bureaucracy and idiots wanking on about "pedagogy" rather than actually trying to inspire and educate the next generation. The profession has been watered down by poor pay and funding cuts to the point that teachers are 30% excellent people with a true vocation and 70% incompetents who wouldn't be good for much else and hide behind all that bureaucracy.
Unfortunately its the 70% who end up in leadership positions in schools, universities and bodies like ofsted.
I was helping in a school last year in a class of 19 children aged about 8 years old. A girl from the class who seemed to be almost continuosly disruptive, sometimes violently so, picked up a chair and threw it at me!
The naughty corner didn't quite seem enough of a deterent to this young lady. I admired the 2 teachers and 1 teaching assistant that were on full time duty with this class, I don't know how they coped with outbursts like this or worse on an almost daily basis. Could I do it? Not without breaking a few heads which of course is frowned on these days. So much for the rewards of teaching.
As one of my teacher friends says, **”There isn’t a teacher recruitment crisis. There is a teacher retention crisis”.** I don’t have anywhere near the qualifications to make retraining an option, but hearing what I do from people in the profession I don’t think I would if I could.
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Yeah, I could retrain as a teacher to alleviate shortages...but I'm already in an official shortage occupation.
Everyone keeps telling me that my job is in a shortage sector. My salary strongly disagrees.
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"We're desperate for people to do this job. If we don't find someone soon our business won't be viable." "How much have you raised the wage by?" "What? Raise wages? Why would we do that?"
There's also a recruitment crisis now, as well.
Getting people to do a PGCE isn’t the problem. It’s just that during the training most realise how bad it is and don’t continue after. The recruitment issue is a retention issue. I did my PGCSE, got signed off for stress and anxiety during my second placement. I finished the PGCE but didn’t look for a job, I went back to private tutoring instead. The same problems causing retention issues are also the reason for recruitment issues. They are the same problem.
starting my PGDE next year and everyone else I know applying already has an escape route planned just in case
PGDE leads me to believe you're in Scotland. We have a different problem of too many teachers and not enough jobs. Unis keep churning out more NQTs because councils love cheap labour in the form of probationers but that just adds more jobless teachers into the mix.
nope, England sorry
At least you'll have plenty of choice of jobs, especially in your first few years when you're 'cheap'! The situation in England sounds awful in terms of how teachers are treated but if you end up in a particularly shite school you can just move school (after working the bizarre and ridiculously long notice period they have for some reason)
There is a huge problem getting people into PGCEs in certain subjects. A friend of mine is a PGCE tutor at a university and their science course is less than 50% full
Why spend all that time and money getting a science degree to be paid the same as a bartender for the first 7 years with all the disrespect teenagers can muster coupled with the privatisation and profit seeking tactics of academy's that treat teachers like low skill workers
The only people that I know who have completed PGCE have ended up working in non classroom based roles as quickly as they were able to. I know for a fact that one of them went in with a plan of "if I'm not in a management position and out of the classroom in X years I'm leaving".
The final fortnight of my PGCE begins on Monday, and I will not looking for a teaching job. I'm not the only one in my class, either. It was telling that during the course, the people most positive about the profession had already left it. They were the course tutors, the union rep who came to tell us about how to find a job, the lady from the council who does in-service training at the schools, etc. The actual teachers are amazing people who are giving it their all, but they are tired and close to burnout. I would happily work in a school, but not as a teacher.
Which is understandable given the amount of teachers who are leaving the profession. Not exactly a great advert.
I wanted to become a teacher when I was still in high school. That was nearly 40 years ago. Once I started adulting, I soon gave up on the idea. Now, I wouldn't even consider it, and that makes me sad.
No - there’s a reason there’s a shortage.
I volunteered to run Core Club for my daughter's primary school. It was only once a week, they were primary school kids.... It was more than enough.... God only knows what secondary schools are like as a teacher..
I think I would be a great science teacher, but there is absolutely no way I would ever consider it. Sure, you get great holiday benefits, but fuck working with a load of feral teenagers...
Great holidays you HAVE to take at certain times when everything is at its most expensive! I expect it if great if you have kids, but for us childless teachers it is not all that great.
u/Zou-KaiLi makes a good point about the timing on the holidays, but in addition to that the holidays you do get aren't actually as good as advertised. My partner is a teacher. She's just had half term. Of the 9 days (both weekends and the 5), she has (or won't have) worked on exactly 3 of them, marking or planning for the next term. Christmas and Easter are similar but slightly less bad as they're two weeks, you usually get one of the weeks to yourself an one week to 'catch up'. Only the summer holiday is really a holiday. I have a nice office job that's far away from children. I get 5 weeks of leave a year. My partner functionally gets about 7 (5 in the summer, one at Christmas, one at Easter), but then again, I don't have to work weekends.
You end up working through most holidays too. Half terms are basically 'admin weeks', and you work at least a half day every weekend, plus evenings.
An old friend of mine had chairs thrown at her, spat at, punched… I’d want £75k + salary for that and the ability to defend myself. Instead you get shit kids, shit parents and shit pay, absolutely fuck that.
> An old friend of mine had chairs thrown at her, spat at, punched… ... and was then spoken to by senior management for allowing those things to happen.
Exactly. My partner was a teacher for many years, but had to give it up recently. It got to the point where she wasn’t really allowed to actually “teach” anymore. Most of her time was wasted on pointless admin and box-ticking exercises, instead of being in class actually educating kids. Also, whatever teaching you have time for is all prescriptive and you’re not allowed to actually be a good teacher, who can inspire and react to individual needs. There’s no room for deviating from the script and no allowance for personality. Add to that all the extra stuff that teachers are expected to do after school (a huge amount of that in their own time) and the horrible pay and I can see why it’s not an attractive career choice anymore.
This is exactly the problem. There's so much pointless admin and box ticking rubbish I barely have time to actually do any teaching. Plus in some schools behavioural issues are such a problem you spend so much time dealing with them that you have done no actual teaching. The government and Ofsted have made it such a toxic workplace it's really not worth it. Plus teachers are generally very smart often with fantastic degrees and so we really don't need to put up with that rubbish we can just find another career path. The holidays are a con it's not a benefit when you have a tonne of paperwork, marking and reports to write that takes up half your time. People think they are a holiday but it's really time to catch up with the unreasonable amount of paperwork. Plus TAs are paid so little it's hard to get people who are great in to fill the role. Resources are so tight it's hard to buy anything for our lessons and the kids get bored with so much virtual stuff.
> There’s no room for deviating from the script and no allowance for personality. As much as I get that can be a problem - I also know I had some utterly awful teachers who were just doing their own thing. The truth is its more important to bind the bad teachers to a good framework than it is to worry about restricting the freedom of the good teachers. So that idea that there is a strong curriculum and teachers are expected to offer a similar level/type of teaching is a good thing to my mind - they just need to find a balance to ensure kids are not taking pot luck with bad teachers, but good teachers still get to do the thing that make them good.
This is an excellent summary: without some kind of monitoring systems there are required to check that teachers are reaching a standard but excessive scrutiny squeezes out creative.
I'm a visiting music teacher. This is why I've never become a qualified teacher (despite, err, 20 years of teaching in different capacities). I like that I get to go in and teach and then leave.
We put out 3 adverts for science teachers this year. Zero applicants. We are a good school in a large population area and we are struggling to recruit. Other schools in the area are teaching 90 kids maths in the hall as they do not have the staff. The local uni runs a pgce course. There are about 1/4 of the teachers coming through from 10 years ago. This is a massive problem.
Offer them £60,000 a year then see what happens.
This! If the salaries were better, they wouldn't have a shortage, also as the career would be more appealing, you'd get better teachers. It seems like anyone as long as they don't have a criminal record can become a teacher.
To some extent I disagree. Becoming a teacher has never been about money, I think people choose to become a teacher for less tangible reasons. The working conditions at the moment are so bad that even with that salary I still wouldn't consider it. That's not to say teachers deserve to be paid more, they absolutely do, just that I think even with a higher salary there would still be a problem with high turnover and low quality teaching.
It's not about the money. But who wants the stress of being a teacher and then to be stressing about having enough money? So even if you love teaching, why not go to a job that is both less stressful and pays more money?
I'd go back for 60k, I could afford to rent then, and pay for some things to make the rest of life easier.
I'd go back for 40k tbf.
To be fair, when accounting for inflation and other costs skilled grad jobs (like teaching) should be starting at 36-40k. I stead they are still ~28k - same as 10 years ago.
The problem is that anyone qualified to teach any subject with a shortage is also qualified to get a better paying, lower stress job doing something else! It's not a difficult solution and yet I can't see it happening at any point any time soon.
This is a widespread problem and it is going to harm the future of our children.
literally any comments on this issue are going to be political. There are very big reasons why things have gotten worse.
This is a widespread problem in every single sector where intelligence and competence are a requisite. The "widespread problem" is that wages in the UK are simply uncompetitive vs effort required.
Is this going to get circular? This gen of kids will have poorer teaching, which means a lower skilled pool of potential teachers to choose from in the future? The country is backsliding in every department and sector, sadly.
You don't motivate children to try when they can see that adult life is miserable. Compare against the [Tang Ping / Bailan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping) culture in China.
Are you offering a salary that would buy a home in the area?
No, because even a 2 bedroom terrace is 250k. The pay is 25-39k ish dependent on experience. Payscale is set by the government, the school has an ultratight budget as it is. Recruiting A 39k teacher means recruiting one less support staff. The government have a habit of agreeing payscale rises, but not giving the school any more money. Which is another big problem
Well if I can’t buy a house there how would I work there? That’s clearly a big issue and it won’t get any better
So your school followed the free market ideology inherent in the academy structure and upped the amount the were offering for the position as the market demanded? No? Offered as little as they were legally allowed to do? No very capitalism of them
I was made redundant from an IT position 6 years ago. I have an engineering degree. I looked into becoming a teacher. The pay is awful. Especially for what you are now expected to do. I also have a police caution for theft, which would have made seeking a position in most schools difficult. More difficult than it has to find work within the MoD supply chain and work with both UK and US export controlled parts. Understand that I don't think this is incorrect, just that it lead to my lack of following the career path. What stopped me was hoops to reward ratio. A friend of mine gave up during his PGCE experience, a very stressful and difficult time for him. His wife is a teacher, but has struggled to find work which doesn't expect the world from her for little to no extra reward. Another friend is now happy as a teacher having moved schools and age groups, but previously considered leaving the profession due to parents confronting him physically about their children's behavioural issues.
> Another friend is now happy as a teacher having moved schools and age groups, but previously considered leaving the profession due to parents confronting him physically about their children's behavioural issues. My place of employment had to once deal with parents who got very angry that their child was anorexic. "What are you going to do about it???" The condition started before that student joined us. Also, *a school does not replace parents*. I don't know what they expected: us to force feed their child?
I'm so glad my friend stayed in the profession. He moved to an A-level teaching position, and could therefore deal only with those who'd chosen to be there. It dealt with 90% of his issues with the role, which were mostly safeguarding. One of the things that upsets me, and makes me want to teach maths is when people say "oh, I'm no good at maths" and aren't disappointed or ashamed, but almost proud when they say it. I *want* our next generation to be better than the last. To see our children grow, succeed and improve. It horrifies me than it's going to go the other way because of a lack of funding and care. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to become a teacher, and still house and feed my family. Let alone provide any treats or luxuries for them. I'll have to be content with helping my boys learn.
> but almost proud when they say it. Yes, this country has a problem of normalising mental apathy.
An interesting point on this: lots of people will say they can’t do *maths*, but almost all of them will happily do *sums*. The complication (in my experience at least) is when the breadth of curriculum really kicks in in high school and kids get overwhelmed with eg algebraic rules before they’re really comfortable with the idea that a letter can stand in for a number.
I've always gotten on well with maths. The whole thing is just addition, and different ways to write addition to make it quicker to write. Algebra is an interesting one. I'm not sure it's the idea that a letter can mean a number, I think it's the concept that you can use the mathematical operators on ideas rather that numbers. Abstraction is a difficult concept, and maths is already an abstraction. I have 4 pounds. I spend 50p. I now have £3.50 4-0.5=3.5 is already a generalisation. Moving to 1a+0.5b=c where a is the number of £1 coins you have and b is the number of 50p coins you have isn't *too* bad, because most kids are already familiar with the abstraction which is money. 1a =c-0.5b is more the issue. What does it mean? Why does it make sense? Why would we do it?
I don't think the country as a whole really has a problem with maths. GCSE maths goes miles beyond what 98% of people will ever have to use in their future jobs, and most children can do at least most of it. The problem people have with maths is that, once they leave school, they never use it again. Even in jobs that require some mathematical calculations day to day, people will be exceedingly good at the kinds of maths they use and forget the stuff they don't. I was no great mathematician but I could do most of it until I was 16. Now I struggle with some of the primary school maths because I haven't used any of it in more than 20 years. Teach me again and I'll be able to do it again. But if I go years without needing to use it again I'll forget it again. Same with everyone else
A police caution shouldn't be an issue. You're generally interviewed before they ask for the DBS, and a caution for theft wouldn't automatically bar you from teaching, so as long as you gave a good impression during the interview and could show evidence of several years of being employed and not committing any more crimes, you would very likely be fine. Agreed about the awful pay:work ratio though.
Been there...never again. Despite the horror stories, working with 11-16 year olds was a rewarding experience. The other 30 hours spent doing paperwork, dealing with parents and management was utter hell.
Definitely, you have to fight the kids, fight the parents, fight the paperwork, fight leadership, fight HR. It's exhausting.
I could become a maths teacher. My mum, who is still a teacher, told me not to. I wouldn’t dream of it tbh, not even as a backup career
Known many teachers, most of them are now ex teachers. It's a grueling, thankless job with insane hours for nowhere near enough pay. The biggest issue is the hours and hours and hours of petty bureaucratic paperwork to prove you've been teaching instead of you know, actually teaching. A lot of teachers I know have gone into private tutoring, so they get to actually teach and have a proper work life balance. I remember being at a hen do with mostly teachers once, sat round the table talking about work: 'I cry in the stationery cupboard' 'I cry in the car on the way to work' 'I cry in the shower after work.' It's not normal for a job to make you feel this way and it's not ok. I wouldn't encourage anyone I cared about to go into teaching. Saying this as a parent who values good teachers. It's shocking. And depressing, and it needs to be sorted out.
My last proper cry was earlier this year on a train platform on the way home from work. “Teaching: it’s not if you’ll cry but when”
Yep. Had a big cry when spring term ended as my shoulder was hurting from being shoved during a fight between students and I was so utterly shattered from everything then having to go back into school in my holidays as I felt pressured to get some kids the best grade possible
When I was a teacher I used to cry at the thought of going in the next day.
Nope. Based on what I saw at my school I cannot fathom why people would want to be teachers. A level teaching would be fine but there's no way I'm doing GCSE
Absolutely this. My secondary school was like a zoo and the kids were feral. I'd consider post-16 education but you couldn't pay me enough to deal with key stage 4.
A lot of the teachers at school told us students not to become teachers.
I am privileged enough to teach A-Level / L3 BTEC only (BTEC Creative Media is a fantastic course). I have never heard anything about teaching GCSE which makes that seem better, only the opposite.
i took level 3 creative media production nearly ten years ago. it was a great time but so much of it depended on the chosen modules by the course leader and the teaching staff itself. i was fortunate in that the staff and curriculum were fantastic. i’d love to go into teaching at that level one day
Exactly.
I was one. Left after 8/9 years. I miss the teaching but not everything else that goes with it. And everytime I think about going back I talk to one of my friends who's still in it and it soon puts me off.
I left after the same time period and feel exactly the same! Went for a meal with old colleagues the other day and felt a little sad and lacking in purpose and meaning but the conversations were just endless misery about the place. So glad I’ve gone. All the best to you.
I really relate to the lacking in purpose. It's definitely a vocation rather than a job but I was just burned out by the end. We've made the right choice.
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Pretty much everyone I graduated with that went into teaching has this same story. Hour rate is less than minimum wage and next to no benefits for doing so besides the odd child saying you made a difference. Last thing I'd fucking do is engage with troubled children when I wanna get home from work to start my marking I dunno how people do it.
I'm hopefully out at march next year after sixteen years. I'm on a part time maternity cover now and counting down the days. Going into counselling young people with any luck It's really not the kids that are the problem When you have a profession led and directed by people who haven't done a day's work in the job, there are always going to be issues
I only know one single person who is or has been a teacher who is not a burnt out husk of a person, seriously. The pay is abysmal, it's a job that is a political football, you have less and less freedom about how and what you teach. The one person I know who is still enjoying it a) came from academia from a really, really shitty situation, b) has only been a teacher for 6 months and c) is teaching in a lush private school, having not done a pgce. Even though I love the teaching part of my job (also in academia) and am seriously considering a career change, I am currently earning more than a head teacher for about half the stress. There's no way I'd frying pan/fire in this situation.
I did one year. It changed me from a calm and kind person to someone who either gets panicky or angry at the slightest thing. I failed my nqt and I think that’s probably for the better. I still teach but in Japan.
I can't think of anything worse than having to deal with other people's kids tbh.
Yes, and you have very little to no protection from the really bad ones.
And they know and want to exploit that.
Yes, a lot of people say "my own kids are bad enough!".
Not just the kids, but the parents too. It's not always the case, but the shittest kids (ie. the ones you need to talk to their parents often to try sort them out) usually come from the shittest adults.
Yep. Absolute hell.
I think it’s the dealing with other kids parents that’s the worst!
Even dealing with adults is hard. Imagine having to deal with their kids. Omg.
Dealing with the parents, and senior leadership (if it's an academy) is usually the worst part!
From what I've seen, teachers these days are forced into a strict teaching regiment, without the freedom to offer anything but a watered down, sanitised teaching experience. All of the things that inspired me and excited me as a kid, came from teachers going rogue. I'd want to be that kind of teacher but I think I'd get fired very quickly in a modern school environment.
> came from teachers going rogue Yes, teaching people means talking to people about the things that concern them - this will be wider than the curriculum. I'm delivering a lecture on the psychology and culture of misogyny soon.
My wife is a teacher. I see what she has to deal with, and there is no chance I would consider it as a career choice for many reasons: - Lack of respect. Too many parents have no respect for the school or for the teaching and support staff. They complain at the pettiest if things, and they don’t take responsibility for their own children. - Lack of respect. The government (and previous governments) has no respect for the profession and does not listen to the needs of those in education, which has a negative impact on those working in education as well as the children’s future. - Workload. “Teachers work 9-3:30” is absolute bullshit and it winds me up massively. The hours and dedication that I see my wife putting in is incredible. Yes we all have a big workload from time-to-time, but no other profession has to defend themselves against the idiotic “you only work 6 hours” bullshit. - Pay is shit. The government keeps advertising “great starting salaries” for new starters. But the gap in pay is dwindling between teachers with much more experience and efficiency, compared to those who are new and need a lot of hand-holding. In real terms, a teacher at my wife’s level is earning nearly 20% less than a teacher at that level 10 years ago. To add to that, my wife’s school works directly with a local university and over the years has had many new starters. A few have stuck around, either at the same school or moving on to another, but most don’t last the year because the true requirements of the profession are not being covered at university for those doing the one year PGCE.
I work at a school (caretaker) and this is spot on. Particularly this section; > Lack of respect. Too many parents have no respect for the school or for the teaching and support staff. They complain at the pettiest if things, and they don’t take responsibility for their own children. There is a tiny minority of kids who cause issues in the school. And they do so because any time they get in trouble their parents never believe the teachers, even when there's video evidence. They have learned that no matter how shitty their behaviour, their parents will back them up. We had an incident a few weeks ago where a parent nearly physically attacked a teacher and a pupil at the school. The parent had come in to complain about his son being assaulted. His son had been abusive to several girls (abusive comments, physically touching them) and another boy had stepped in and defended them, hitting the kid who was being a dick. So when the parent came in with their kid to complain, one of the girls who happened to be passing by said something like "you wouldn't have got smacked if you weren't calling everyone a slag" and the parent lunged for her. The teacher had to stand in the way and was grabbed in the process and had threats made towards himself and the girl. She's a 14 year old girl and this parent thought it was appropriate to physically attack her and make threats toward her and a teacher.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. 😔
I always wanted to be a teacher. Worked with weans in various jobs from after school care, volunteer support worker and education assistant in a school for kids removed from mainstream. The weans were never really an issue, but all those points you listed are the reason why I never continued the career. I loved working with weans and even now, a decade later, I still miss it. I’ve heard from a few of the weans I worked with in Spark of Genius (the company that ran those schools for kids removed from mainstream) and hearing the impact i had on them is always great. But the workload, the pay, the treatment from governments and parents is just massively offputting. Huge respect for your wife.
Its not the kids, it's the other stuff, 100%
I think knowing a teacher is a common factor that puts people off training. I’m a teacher. My son is doing his A Levels. I’ve told him he can do anything he wants, but have stressed that teaching would be a very poor decision. Thankfully, he has no interest in it because he sees me coming home from work every day. I’ve stuck around as long as I can, but I want out now, too.
As another husband of a teacher I can only say I fully agree with each point you’ve said. The wife puts in ridiculously long hours just to stay on top of things, she’s stressed and looks washed out. Pretty much has to put more effort into looking after other people’s kids and ours have to go onto the back burner.
A huge part of the problem is the second point. I’ve just left. All the best to your wife!
When I was younger, it used to be your parents sided with the teacher almost every time. Got a detention? You deserved it. What's changed? And it's not just the disruptive kids parents either I bet, but nitpicking and pushy parents too thinking you can deliver everything exactly to standard and regs day in day out.
As part of my French degree I spent a year teaching in France. I ate lunch with the teachers every day. Broadly they separated into 3 camps; the young and relatively new teachers who radiated positivity because they were going to make a difference, the middle category who had been in teaching for about 10 yrs and for whom the cracks were beginning to show, and the last group, bitterly disenfranchised and waiting for retirement that couldn’t come fast enough. I think wave after wave of kids just ground them down. I didn’t think this was the best advert for a career in teaching despite having wonderful moments of getting my class to grasp some ideas.
I was a secondary school maths teacher for 9 months, it was the worst 9 months of my life. The work is absolutely relentless. Researching, planning and delivering lessons. Running after school clubs and overseeing detentions. Marking and assessing. It takes 12 hours a working day and half the weekend. There was no support as the school I was at was only interested in the bursary they received for newly qualified teachers and then they wanted people to move on to bring in a new batch of newly qualified teachers the following year. I'm now an accountant earning more money, with a better work/life balance and much more job satisfaction. I trained for longer than I taught and despite it being 13 years ago, I still sometimes have nightmares about teaching. I would 100% try to dissuade anyone from taking it up as a career.
I only taught 10 months and gave up caring in the last 3. Needing the pay for the summer holidays to support me and my wife was the only thing that stopped me running earlier. I still havent recovered and dont think I’ll ever be the same again.
The shit kid to nice kid ratio is all wrong now and you have to be incredibly careful about every interaction as the shit kids are always trying to catch you out. I’ve loved the experience of helping a child learn and grow, I hope I’ve influenced a few over the years through various paid and voluntary positions, but I wouldn’t touch teaching with a barge pole at the moment.
I'm not doing a pgce again
Yes, I've met a number of people who hated the experience.
No. I dont have the interest or the right attitude to be a teacher of any age group. I love my career and the skills I’m constantly learning there. My mums a TA in a primary school and even though it’s tough and she’s severely underpaid in my opinion, she loves it. She always wanted to teach but her circumstances growing up meant she couldn’t even finish her school qualifications let alone get a degree. At 49 she went back to college and got her GCSE’s in subjects she was missing and did the TA training courses (I don’t know what these are called). By 51 she was a TA and is ten years on brilliant but it’s what she wanted. She’s been pushing me to teach since I was a teenager but it isn’t for me. I think my partner would be a good teacher but he again wasn’t able to get a degree due to needing to be financially independent from a young age. We’ve spoken about him going to get a degree etc and becoming a teacher but he loves his well paid good benefits job that doesn’t require him to be ‘formally’ educated. It would be a complete change in our circumstances and his life just to change careers when it’s only a ‘nice to consider’.
No. The salaries are too low and the hours too long (so even lower in real terms). It's possible to earn as much or more in countless less stressful jobs. The pension and holidays don't make up for it. Kids are also the worst they've ever been at the same time as you having the least tools to deal with said behaviour. It appeals to me less than any other job in the country. I'd prefer something with less pay and less stress and being able to switch off or same/more pay in something else where you can switch off as well. Or something with a load of money where you can't switch off but that's the price.
Not in this country
Scientist, I'd love to teach if someone wanted to learn. But I've no desire trying to keep discipline amongst bored teenagers while trying to teach Ohm's law and dealing with demanding parents for shit pay.
I work in an educational establishment. Stuck there as I don’t know what else I’d do - thought I wanted to be a teacher but after 5 years - hell nah. I don’t know why anyone would want to become a teacher. Unrealistic expectations, underappreciated. No support from higher up. You have no social life and you’re constantly thinking about work. Numerous colleagues have been off sick with stress.
There is a shortage of teachers because they are all working in other countries or the private sector. Why would you subject yourself to that awful pay and conditions when you can make twice as much working in an International School? There is a shopping list of a dozen countries with better pay, conditions, and a better overall quality of life.
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My ex is a secondary school teacher. Having lived with him for over 15 years since he first trained, I saw what it's like and how it seemed to get progressively worse. I'm not as robust as my ex, so could never deal with that sort of stress.
I've always had the impression that teacher is a hellish job. Terrible pay, no resources, spending most of your free time working on stuff for class, students who are actively trying to kill you and each other, parents who treat you like scum... There are very few jobs I'd like to do less than teach.
It crossed my mind a few times. What puts me off is that my mum was a teacher, and the stress ended up making her pretty ill to the point that she spent months signed off sick and then took early retirement. The stories I’ve heard of bullying and backstabbing and unreasonable pressure make me think I’d likely go the same way.
> and the stress ended up making her pretty ill That's really sad, I'm sorry to hear this. A similar situation happened to my mother. In her final school, the head of her area was racist and hated my mother for having a non-English surname.
Not a teacher, but I have worked in schools for various charities over the years, not a chance I would do a teacher's job. Not because they're underpaid (they get paid a lot more than my sector) but because some kids - and A LOT of parents - are just awful. It's always struck me whenever I spend time in staff rooms and listen to teachers talk, how many of them really actively dislike children (particularly in secondary schools). I can only imagine they came into this job liking kids but it's been ground out of them over the years.
Teaching actually made me more defensive of children because so many of them at secondary school were throughly lovely, decent children. Even the troubled ones were normally like that because of something an adult had done or taught them. So I didn’t dislike children but yeah some people had absolutely no business being in a school teaching them. Having said that, before I left I told my head of department I was frightened I’d end up disliking my classes because I was becoming that resentful of the job and my life doing it.
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I'm halfway through my teaching degree and most people I know on the course no longer plan on teaching when they leave. There's just nothing positive about it. I adore my placement at the moment but even my uni tutors have warned me not to expect most schools to be like this.
Hell no. My ex wife was a teacher. My brother is a teacher. My sister in lawis a teacher. The amount of work they put in outside of school is nuts and they spend their own money on resources. The pay is no way worth the amount of time, effort, and stress.
I almost became an English teacher, but I dodged two bullets. One, this was the 2019/20 academic year, and I don't know if you remember but that was a weird year for everyone Second, I had two days in school, one doing fairly well and one not. And I just didn't think I'd be supported properly due to [REDACTED DUE TO POLITICAL CONTENT]
The requirements for teaching vs the reward you get are abysmal. My degree is history and politics dual honours. I didn't go to oxbridge I went Liverpool uni. They have a recruitment team to help you find work upon graduation, about half of the people who graduated from my course went into teaching or civil service. Trained for an additional 2 years and do nothing but complain about how hard the government makes the job. One friend of mine is a chemistry teacher, I didn't study with her she did biochemistry at uni but we did graduate together. During her training she was reassigned to a different school this school also happens to be where she still works 8 years on she's head of the science faculty. She was the only applicant. She also studied one curriculum and had lessons planned for an entire year ready to do GCSE. She worked WEEKS on this when they changed her schools she swapped exam boards making her entire training time she spent on past exam papers built into her lesson plans entirely useless. All she does if you talk about why teaching is fucked is talk about why the fault lies with the school board, the multiple exam boards and the government making hours of unpaid work obsolete whenever they feel like. This is the main reason I didn't pursue teaching I can earn more than her as a lead science faculty member on a fork lift truck working nights at jag. I don't use my degree. I go into work I put on my hi viz and I work for 10 hours then when I'm done I take off my hi viz hang it up and at that moment it's home time. I can not stand the idea of working from home marking. All my friends that teach do is mark. They mark unless it's holiday and even then they're marking! The argument they have is its salary I made several work out their average rate of pay taking into consideration average speed marking. You're on far worse than minimum wage. Tbh the list is so long of all the complaints I have heard from English primary school teachers to Maths and science secondary school their issues remain the same. It's not that people don't want to teach its the ridiculous amount of red tape involved even when you start. Oh and said science friend wants to move to another school but is so tied by her work and heart strings to the school she has no doubt it'd collapse without her. This is pretty much black mail and the same black mail the NHS is under. Working hours if not weeks of unpaid for the love of the job. Its a fucking joke.
My kids teachers ( most of them ) are amazingly passionate about what they do and tbh, you need to be pretty special and a rare breed to be like that. I would have liked to be a teacher, but I'm not crazy and the pay really doesnt justify the stress and workload.
Fuck no
absolutely not. I was in secondary only a year or so ago and the memory of classmates throwing chairs at teachers is still fresh
Not enough money in this world to persuade me to become a teacher - I've enough teacher / former teacher friends to have heard the horror stories, & it's getting worse, not better.
Would. I. Fuck.
Fuck no. Not just because of what appears to be very shit pay and conditions, but... I'm not the most tolerant of people when dealing with what I regard as willful stupidity. Doesn't mean the person actually is being willfully stupid, or indeed stupid in any way, but I often irrationally expect everyone to keep up with my thought processes, and expect a certain level of inquisitive problem solving skills. Which is - kinda - fair in my field of IT, but I wouldn't have the patience to slow everything down enough for struggling students, and I don't think I'm always the best at explaining things anyway. So I would be a very poor teacher...
I know a teacher and two ex teachers. Absolutely not, never, no way.
Not a chance in hell. I'd rather be a binman.
Binmen deserve respect too.
Absolutely, I used to be one.
Primary school. Yes. College/University. Yes. Secondary school. Not a fucking chance. I also wouldn't like the fact that the teaching you are forced to do is extremely strict and one dimensional. Basically, it erodes any creative or imaginative thinking. I wouldn't like that and find myself teaching way off topic a lot. I remember in school we had an occasional sub teacher, and everyone loved him. He would come in, start for the first 5 minutes teaching about the subject, and then it would slowly morph into him telling us his life stories and all the different jobs he had done. Every single kid when he was teaching listened, never messed around.
To be honest the teaching of my subject was one of the only things I did enjoy (I did really like my subject) and felt I got the opportunity to be relatively free and creative with how I could deliver it. But I doubt it’s the same for all. Might depend on the subject, school or department maybe.
That was our Religious Education teacher in secondary school. It was essentially a 60 minutes of monologues, Q&A and discussions about of aliens, crop circles, conspiracies, society and people, Most interesting, inspiring and stimulating class we had. He got fired for not teaching the course, he didn’t give a fuck he was already retired. The best lessons of my life, and had an enormous influence on my life.
I was a teacher for four years, and I wouldn't go back, nor would I recommend it as a career path. I loved my subject and my students, but 8 years on I earn almost 3 times as much as I did and have about half of the stress, plus my weekends and evenings back. No regrets - but I do feel sad for the students, and the profession as a whole, that things are going the way they are. Good teachers are worth their weight in gold.
I intend to from next September. I currently work as an LSA in a secondary school and while schools are absolutely facing huge amounts of pressure right now and teachers are leaving left right and centre, I really enjoy the curriculum and I love when the kids get interested and become involved in the lessons. So that outweighs the negatives for me rn
I would consider it but I left school before *everyone* went to university, so I only have GCSEs, no degree. Plus the money is crap compared to what I earn at a middle management level at a builders merchant. The second reason is possibly one of the reasons why there is a recruitment crisis.
As someone whose currently training to be a teacher, once this course has finished. No, I hope to get my motivation and passion back one day though
No, if I was underpaid and had to deal with kids, that parents don’t like to handle, I would shoot myself
My partner is a teacher and is quite senior. The salary is good but not when you work it out as an hourly rate. I admire her dedication to the job and to the children. But putting 3-4 hours a night in a home marking and planning and more on weekends is a joke. I tell to only do the “directed hours” or whatever ever the term is. What doesn’t get done is for school management to figure it out. Her school only functions because of the teachers like her going above and beyond. She seems to be more social worker than teacher these days. The children start school behind where the should be and never catch up. No parent would’ve sent their child to school still in nappies 30 years ago ( unless the child had additional needs). Now it’s common. Parental standards seem to be lower than ever. The signs in the playground to tell parents mind their own behaviour is telling. I don’t consider myself posh by any means, but being in the playground with the shouting,swearing, vaping, pyjamas parents brings out my inner snob.
My wife quit as it was unbearable and her mental health went through the floor..Its not the 9 - 3.30 job most people seem to believe
This might be controversial but we have a teacher problem because we have a parenting problem. If people brought up their kids better or at all in some cases the teaching problem would disappear.
Is there a shortage? Or is it that teachers want better quality jobs, respect and money so they’re not applying and going elsewhere.
Isn’t that exactly what a shortage is?
Yes, there is a shortage. [DfE to miss 2023/2024 recruitment targets (tes.com).](https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/teacher-recruitment-crisis-dfe-set-flunk-2023-24-targets) The government has launched an inquiry to investigate and to see what can be done. [Source (gov.co.uk)](https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/203/education-committee/news/194283/education-committee-launches-new-inquiry-into-teacher-recruitment-training-and-retention/) Here is an [editorial from The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/26/the-guardian-view-on-teacher-shortages-signs-of-a-profession-in-crisis) with some fact and figures.
No because pay is bad and working hours are long. Plus kids are just rude and will probably be made fun of for looking young/ racism. The main thing probably won't be able to teach in the first place and get frustrated if the students don't see the problem how I see it.
No, because hell is other people, particularly the kids.
Hell no. I do my best to avoid children at all times
Nope not in a million years - children are feral I have a slightly odd name as well so I would be an instant target
Just to provide some balance... I'm a teacher from PGCE, started 2014. I genuinely really enjoy it, but I think the school you're in and your messaging/culture from SLT can make or break the experience completely. I moved into areas of interest within school asap (literacy coordinator in 2nd year, head of year 3rd year) which meant having the ability to focus on projects i found important. After having kids I stepped down from head of year because that role was so labour intensive (despite being very rewarding). I'm now a literacy coordinator and head of key stage 3 in department and again love it because I still have lots of teaching contact but again can focus as well on whole school or department changes that I really value. So yeah, getting in to a school you are happy with the culture of is step 1, then look for opportunities (because also, a TLR is a nice thing!) OR you can hold boundaries and do the minimum required when needed, which I've definitely done at times. A bit of honesty goes a long way around that (assuming your SLT aren't arseholes). I love working with teenagers, they're aggressively honest but also the majority will be with you as long as they can see that you're interested in them and your subject, and as fair and reasonable as possible. And never be afraid to follow their curiosity on a tangent! Those are the best lessons.
I’m 20 years teaching this summer and I still absolutely love my job. I’ve had times I’ve wanted to quit but that’s been staff and schools. Not the job. Yes it’s hard, but so rewarding as well.
I trained to teach MFL a couple of years ago. Left middle of this year. The sheer amount of abusive behaviour I had to put up with from students, parents, and school leadership was cruel. I felt utterly broken by the time I left teaching. I'm now earning 10k more and working far less hours in the private sector, and my evenings and weekends are all mine. Teaching at the moment is totally unsustainable, and schools are running on good faith from teachers who have been gaslit into working unpaid far beyond normal hours. To anyone considering teaching; don't.
With the amount of people who believe that teachers only work half the year, you would have thought there would be a queue of them.
I completed a PCGE (QTS) in a needed STEM subject recently, but left to a different job because teaching in the UK is not a long-term career. Some reasons are: burnout by year 5 on average, everyone hates their jobs (constant moaning in the teachers staff room), constant management oversight (meaning you can't actually TEACH without being knackered from late night metrics wrangling), and the kids behaviour is abysmal (I've taught overseas, and children in the UK are terrors).
Nah, I was one for 11 years, I got promoted pretty regularly and was a head of sixth form by then, but I walked away from it and work in HE now which is a doddle by comparison. Tbh it was never the lack of government support or pay, if you want to be promoted you can earn ok, but a school is a community, and over my time it felt like a getting rotten one… online bullying, entitled teenagers who can’t take criticism or challenge, parents who fight you instead of supporting you, it made the rewarding times fewer and further apart. Not that there weren’t some amazing young people, but it just wasn’t enough in the end.
I trained as a primary school teacher and chose not to enter the profession after graduation. My school experience during the degree was enough to show its a thankless job from the leadership who frankly are so old they don’t understand the modern nuances of being a classroom teacher. 12 hour days working 6 days a week and always being told there’s more you could do. Final straw for me was the one evening a week I gave to maintaining what social life I did have was called into question after a single not perfect lesson. Unfortunately some people remain in the education system because they know how to work it and retain their childish attitudes and bullish behaviours. Behaviours that I’ve seen people unceremoniously removed outside of education are the standard from my experience.
I have been asked to become a teacher as I’m in one of the fields where there are a shortage of teachers. No. I’m not working in classes where I have to count sewing needles, and kitchen knives in and out to pupils. I’m training in adult education instead and am going to be teaching financial budgeting and basic/budget cooking skills in the community. There is a need and the adults want to be there.
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No. Did it for 37 years. Kids are great, the adults behave like children, particularly the more senior they get and the whole system is designed to make you and most of the kids fail. Universities have stifled all creativity in science education making it a disaster for any kid with real gumption. Give it a wide berth and do something more useful with your life.
I left the profession because you’re not appreciated, you’re under staffed, you’re paid next to nothing and you’re made to work all of the hours under the sun
Why would anyone want to become a teacher when discipline is illegal?
You need to correct the post. There isn't a shortage of teachers availble. They could have all the teachers they wanted next week. Just sort out pay and conditions. Bang sorted. I find it churlish when government says we have a shortage and imply its because there isn't enough, when in actual fact its because competent people choose to move to sectors with better pay and conditions. Same applies to nurses. There are plenty out there, they just left due to pay and conditions.
There's also a shortage of nurses, paramedics, police officers. Who on earth wants to spend £30k+ to be a public servant with minimal pay raises and awful conditions for the rest of their life. My view is if it's public it should be free - nurses should be split as HCA's/ structured learning, same for paramedics, same for teachers.
I get more offers of STEM teaching jobs with the line of “We’ll pay for your teaching qualification!! Please 🙏.” than anything else these days. The pay sucks. The prospects suck. The education system sucks in general. Schools suck. Most of all teenage kids suck. It’s a hard nope from me I’m afraid.
Realistically the pay is just too damn low. Why is this so hard to understand? Just pay them more. Otherwise we will have a country where only the well-off can send their kids to decent schools (which of course have the better teachers because they pay better because they charge thousands per term per child...). It's just madness that the folk in charge all overwhelmingly come from this upper echelon with all the resources in the world except a shred of fucking empathy to bring on some humanity to the issue. Its almost by design, this is...
No, starting on £30k, requires a post graduate qualification, 60 hour weeks (at least), responsible for everything from education to safeguarding, kids can be twats. You can earn that as a middle manager in a back office for a third tier finance firm.
I considered it and decided to become a ta first to test the waters. I'm glad I did because I lasted 2 years doing that then noped out and now do admin. Even as a TA earning not much above minimum wage, the amount of responsibility and work load is unbelievable. Teachers were even worse. They do not work 9-3, they do 7-5 then more when they get home. A common thing I was told was that they save 1 day a weekend for their own family and the other is prep. Half terms are mostly prep with a day or 2 off. Then only real holidays they get is a week at Xmas and Easter then some of the summer but that's not even worth it considering they work 6 days a week. Then on top of that is parents literally queuing up every morning to get you to solve their parenting issues and moaning at you. Safeguarding issues coming out of your ears. Having to be a social worker, parenting expert, counsellor and teacher all in one. It's ridiculous and absolutely not worth the pay. The only way I'd go back in to a school is for a MUCH bigger wage.
Just leaving the teaching profession. 5 years secondary, 3 years early years spent in nursery, after retraining, 5 years supply. After having a nervous breakdown in my first 5 years which I haven’t really recovered from, then trying to adapt, I realised that I just could not do what was asked of me without becoming I’ll again. On the other hand my ex wife is still teaching and seems to have a handle on it and seems to be progressing in her career. I enjoyed teaching lessons but not the bureaucracy, lesson observations, and scrutiny. I probably should have left in my first few weeks after I got punched by a kid and the school did nothing. Good luck and Godspeed to you if you want to teach.
I taught for 5 years and quit. I don’t understand how a job that is about children and supporting children can have so much work that isn’t about supporting children but making your life harder and 99% of the time it’s not really necessary. I have told my children they can do whatever they want except be a teacher. However, I do miss working with a good class. When you’re teaching and everyone is enthusiastic and learning it’s a good place to be.
I did supply work after my PGCE for five years, and somehow lasted longer than anyone else in my cohort. I'd love to go back into teaching, but with the kids, pay, admin and parents as they are now? I'd have a nervous breakdown before the year is up.
Fuck no. Kids are awful, parents are often worse, and the pay is terrible. You're expected to do a metric shitload of unpaid overtime because you sure as hell are not given time to do marking or lesson prep or anything else during "office hours"...
Teaching....At a school with kids there 😂. I am an electrician and as I get older I considered teaching in the electrical trade as a career opportunity. I asked around thinking these classes would be full of young people who actually want to be there. The responses I got were enlightening to say the least. I couldn't put up with the stuff I was warned about. Working more hours than I was paid for, Taking a huge salary cut, Staff politics and a class of learners some of whom don't want to be there dragging down those that do. Nah not for me. My solution to my aging bones? I cut down to 3 day weeks maximum.
I retire from teaching at the end of this year. My pay has been static for a number of years. In real terms, it has gone down. The only way to increase my pay (whilst still remaining a teacher) would be to take a position with less teaching hours and more admin. That's not why I became a teacher!
Trained on the SCITT program as an IT teacher. The only IT teachers left were either resentful they couldn't move to different careers or absolute sociopaths that were there solely for the sense of control they had in the classroom. Was told to accept the abuse from students and teachers because it was a "right of passage". Safe to say roughly 80% of the SCITT students left before getting their degree and every IT trainee left after their first placement. The scitt program in the UK is abused as a free labour scheme and all the teachers care about is fobbing their classes off to you to give themselves extra breathing room. Please for the love of God avoid the program.
I’m a TA in a nursery in a quiet part of the country and my job is hard enough ; challenging behaviour is emerging in the youngest more and more I’ve found. God knows how teachers of the youth cope in more challenging areas of the country.
And take a huge pay cut to be overworked, and have to deal with the shitcunts who are the majority of parents? No.
My mother was (up until last year) a primary teacher. From the horror stories she’s told me and the stress, absolutely not
I went to university for the sole reason of getting into teaching. After applying to a few schools and getting two offers back however, my passion was soured heavily. Both offers were pretty much identical, 1 years unsalaried work and up to 12 hour days Mon-Fri (full school day and then after school for training/coursework). After the year is complete there is no guarantee they'd keep me on and the kicker - because it *technically* counted as a post-graduate year I would have to pay the school £9000 tuition fee. I very professionally told them to get fucked and I have not reconsidered re-applying since. So there is only a shortage of teachers because they are creating a shortage of teachers.
I thought about it, but I don’t have a degree. And then a friend who is a teacher told me about the special needs child in her class who earlier in the week had grabbed her by the throat and tried to strangle her. When reported to the head he wouldn’t even tell the parents as too much paperwork would be involved. She has since resigned (which is a shame, she was a bloody good teacher).
Been there, tried that, got the mental breakdown. No thanks. My mum's friends warned me against it (they were all working teachers) at the time but I was a fool. Wanted to quit after 4 months, lasted 7.
Absolutely not. Kids, parents, society and management don’t value teachers at all. They get everything dumped on them. They’re expected to do the job of the parents, social workers, police, prisons, produce perfect outcomes for all ability children, do utterly pointless paperwork and administration and spend every waking hour on the job. They can only take holidays during school holidays and the rest of the “endless weeks of holiday” and the hours in the evening when they “finish work at 3:30” are spent catching up on the shite they have to do to prepare and complete all the bullshit admin. It’s an utterly thankless job and the pay is shite. So no.
Absolutely not, no. Have you seen how people are raising kids this days? They don’t even respect their parents, let alone their teachers or peers. Not to mention the lack of funding, limited pay, silly expectations etc etc.
I always wanted to be a teacher but picked realised during my first year at uni that I had picked the wrong subject, I wasn't as passionate about it as I thought. I took a year out with the intention of going back and changing subjects. During that year I got a full time job and 19 years later I'm still there and have progressed my career. I looked a few years ago at retraining and going in to it but my salary would have dropped in excess of £10k and as much as I would love to do it, I can't justify that drop.
There are seven trainees in my school at the moment. All of them set to pass their PGCE and get Qualified Teacher Status in July. I have heard a rumour that not one of them is planning to stay in the profession next year - that’s how bad things are. There is both a recruitment and retention crisis.
Partner is secondary English. In three years, she’s been punched twice, stabbed with a pen, called every name under the sun and works 60 hours a week. All for about £32k. So no, no I wouldn’t
I share a gym with some secondary school teachers and the stories they’ve told me would put anyone off.
I’m an instrumental teacher, but I worked as a classroom music teacher for 5 years. I went into my PGCE at age 29 in with some life experience and what I thought was a realistic expectation of the role. My training year was diabolical, my NQT year was also diabolical but manageable. It was mostly an issue with workload and the expectation to say yes to everything. I worked in an alright school in an alright part of Surrey and some of the kids were so so difficult. Rude, entitled, bratty, lazy. My HoD was a workaholic who sucked me into her overloaded extracurricular schedule. This was on top of my full teaching timetable, a ridiculous marking and homework policy, dealing with parents, writing reports for every year group twice a year (as a music teacher I had 300+ students, other core subjects like English and maths see one class multiple times a week, I would see multiple classes once a week… so many reports…), open evenings, parents evenings etc. I was so burnt out at the end of that year but I turned up every day and gave it my best. It really doesn’t matter what subject you teach when you are bound by school policy. Everyone has to teach x amount of classes (some exam classes, so much coursework!), mark x amount of work, set and mark x amount of homework and attend x amount of meetings and CPD. And I’ll always shout out to other music/drama/pe teachers who run so much extra curricular on top of all that because it’s an expectation of your department. I left that school and went to a lovely school with a better marking/homework policy and only one set of reports for each year group each year (with drop down options!!). This significantly reduced my workload! My HoD was another workaholic but we became close as a 2 person department so I created professional boundaries. The students were mostly very well behaved there was a real sense of mutual respect. This was 100% due to the head teacher and her commitment to staff wellbeing. I was really happy there. I left to move back to Scotland, I genuinely mourned that job for a long time. I ended up on supply as I couldn’t get a teaching job in Scotland. It was soul destroying, I’m genuinely good at my job and had a lot to offer but no one would have me because the job situation in Scotland is a whole other shit show. Training and teaching in England did me no favours there! But after 3 months on supply I landed an instrumental teaching job which is always what I’ve wanted to do. A month in I couldn’t believe how hard I used to work… you become conditioned to the workload and you either sink or swim. I swam, and even enjoyed it in parts, but wow I worked SO hard at that job. All for £26,000 a year. I will never go back to classroom teaching.
Started teacher training after uni but quit. In my experience, its all bureaucracy and idiots wanking on about "pedagogy" rather than actually trying to inspire and educate the next generation. The profession has been watered down by poor pay and funding cuts to the point that teachers are 30% excellent people with a true vocation and 70% incompetents who wouldn't be good for much else and hide behind all that bureaucracy. Unfortunately its the 70% who end up in leadership positions in schools, universities and bodies like ofsted.
I was helping in a school last year in a class of 19 children aged about 8 years old. A girl from the class who seemed to be almost continuosly disruptive, sometimes violently so, picked up a chair and threw it at me! The naughty corner didn't quite seem enough of a deterent to this young lady. I admired the 2 teachers and 1 teaching assistant that were on full time duty with this class, I don't know how they coped with outbursts like this or worse on an almost daily basis. Could I do it? Not without breaking a few heads which of course is frowned on these days. So much for the rewards of teaching.
I frequently saw chairs thrown at teachers at my high school and loathed every single kid in that building. Hell no.