Why Is It So Difficult To Get Teachers These Days?

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-45341734

[Rockrose]

Its a whole series of factors, the pay, pension, the children, the lack of parents involvement and many many more reasons.

[dannyk13]

Here:-
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/10/lesson-battle-why-teachers-lining-up-leave

[jim360]

And yet it's such a cushy job, apparently :/

[New Judge]

I think the main problem is that a large majority of schools have a number of pupils who don't want to learn. Their parents are not particularly fussed whether they learn or not and tend to side with their children in any dispute with the teacher and/or the school (regardless of the facts). So teachers face a situation where a proportion of their pupils are disruptive to a greater or lesser degree, they have no effective sanctions over that proportion (who jeopardise the education of all their classmates) and so the job becomes a nightmare.

[fiction-factory]

If we add exessive workloads I agree with that list Rockrose- except from the pensions. It's one of the better schemes around (as are all public sector schemes- far better than the DC type scheme most private sector employees get)

[jim360]

What NJ says might be a contributing factor -- what about the squeeze on wages that's been hitting starting salaries recently? In The Times it was suggested that there has been an effective real-terms cut of around 10%, which is clearly substantial.

[fiction-factory]

Good points from NJ too. The OFSTED regime and unachievable targets of making silk purses from sows' ears certainly don't help either

[Rockrose]

FF the pension has taken a battering in recent years and is no where near as good as it was - despite what the private sector will tell you about it being a gold lined purse.

[fiction-factory]

Pay is certainly an issue jim- but I think it might need a lot more than another 10% to make a real difference. I wouldn't go back to full time permanent teaching even if the pay were increased by 50%. I much prefer to do short term cover and work when I want to at the schools I like, together with one to one tuition/GCSE revision classes, even though the overall package is much lower, in order to get the work/life balance that is sensible.

[jim360]

As I'm sort of half-planning on becoming a teacher, obviously I have a great deal of interest in why others are being put off. Hope it doesn't bode ill for me in the future...

[fiction-factory]

Rockrose- I recall you work in the public sector. I have worked in private and public. I worked in Finance too and know quite a lot about pensions. I know the contribution rates went up quite a lot but that happened in my private sector job too. But the Teacher Pension scheme is still a DB scheme based on final/average salary with a large employer contribution. Very few private companies offer a DB scheme now to members- many offer the basic minimum workplace pension of around 3%. I also know that most long standing teachers don't realise how good the scheme is and complain about it, not realising how private schemes have been severely cut back

[fiction-factory]

Do try it, jim. I don't regret doing it at all. It pays less than a third of what I earned 10 years ago in business but I could afford to make the change and wanted to try it. It can be very rewarding in non-financial ways. If money is the main factor for someone with your science background I'd say the prospects were far better outside teaching. But if you enjoy it and find the right school you could easily be head of science withn a few years

[jim360]

Many thanks ff :)

[Old_Geezer]

Inability to instill discipline on a class of unruly kids who know they have rights and no one can touch them ? Would you volunteer to take that on as a job ?

[andy-hughes]

spath - // I hear the holidays and hours are decent //

So the myth would have you believe.

Out of the famous 'six weeks holiday' - most teachers finish up all the jobs they haven't managed during term time which can take up to two weeks, and they are back in preparation in advance of the new term, so that tends to leave them the same holiday as everyone else has. If you factor in the extra hours that teachers spend in non-contact time, if they were salaried per hour, most teachers would have worked their salaried hours by about a third of the way through any term, and could then down tools and go home.

My wife has spent over thirty years in education as a primary teacher, deputy head, head, and Ofsted and ISI Inspector and she knows exactly why they can't recruit and keep teachers.

As well as the factors listed above, we have successive governments and media who constantly tell teachers that they are not good enough, falling short, and generally failing 'our children' - can you remember the last time you heard a politician talking about education who didn't refer to pupils as 'our children'? So unsurprisingly, teachers are starting to believe them.

So a teacher looks around and sees what other graduates are earning, the lack of pressure, the amount of respect, the absence of daily grinding against the system, and they walk away, and who on earth could blame them.

[Kromovaracun]

They're paid significantly less than they used to be.

Plus, contrary perhaps to popular belief, it is an extremely demanding job even when factoring in long holidays. A friend of mine who now works in finance attempted to work as a primary teacher for about 18 months and couldn't stomach it - he found that the work had a habit of bleeding into his spare time and was far more exhausting and draining than his current job. My sister works as a teaching assistant in a primary school and enjoys it considerably more, but says much the same. Why would anyone except the most committed be interested in a profession like that when the pay is worse than their other options?