To think too much is expected of teachers these days

Oh yes, far too much expected this is nothing new.
I remember years ago, 1970’s, when friends and I used to attend music festivals. Maggie was a teacher, and she was always the last to be picked up for the journey. Many times she was in her front room marking piles of student’s books and we would be hollering for her to hurry up.

In the 70s, the secondary school were I started teaching had a full-time matron and part-shares in an EWO (Educational Welfare Officer, a retired police officer who came in at least once a week to review the registers) who brought kids back into school when he saw them in town, and knew them all by name, and plenty of their parents too because he'd go round to the homes. If no-one was home, he'd go back later. Quite a lot of pastoral care was done by those 2.
Nowadays an admin assistant rings home.

A friend who was a TA in a sex ed lesson for year 7 said when told that at age 16 sexual intercourse was “legal” looked v upset. It transpired that she thought legal meant compulsory and she didn’t think she would want to!

Ellieanne your comments about working late, doing above and beyond are a joy to hear but sadly not all teachers are as conscientious or dedicated

I worked in secondary schools for a while and saw the sheer slog that some teachers put into their working day, supporting, caring, helping with homework etc. but unfortunately if they are not backed by a good Head Teacher the ones who have stopped caring can slide out early, take full holidays and do the minimum required to take home the same wage. I suppose it is the same in many types of employment.

The model in Stage One & Two schools is by far the most thorough but somehow all the good work done gets lost in the big Secondary Schools

As a side note: I once had a class of 28 where 14 of the students were deemed 'difficult/special needs/ disruptive/needing extra help etc. Almost impossible to get any work done of any value with the students who were eager to get on. At best it was crowd control, at worst it was a war-zone. I felt sad for the students, they were all being short-changed

So in answer to the thread: Yes, it takes a specialise, trained and supported team with excellent back-up resources to raise and educate a child, all working together and for the same purpose: to fulfil the potential, enhance the learning and give pride and confidence to each and every student, what ever their starting point

I went to a really rough comprehensive school in a mining area in the West Midlands and they actually showed us a slide show of sexually transmitted diseases and quite a few people fainted

Galaxy
I didn’t say I took the advice. ?

For all those saying schools managed in the past without any help when I started teaching there was a children's health section which provided a local clinic serving an area, where a doctor, dentist and nurses were available, and nurses were sent to schools to do regular checks. Children also had regular medicals at the clinic or in school. There was also a school attendance officer (they had various nicknames) who investigated and followed up children who didn't attend. Some of those people were absolute dragons but they did provide a degree of support and care-all gone now.

meryl Don't go near the boys ? That was it.
My mother told me about periods but it was left to an older girl who I played out in the street with, to warn me that ‘if a boy was rude to you, you’d have a baby and disgrace your family’.
This rather puzzled me and I asked my mother what my friend meant. Mum replied that I was too young to understand. I must have been 9 or10.
Enlightenment only came when we did human reproduction at school.
Our 40-something, bachelor science teacher, Mr Finch, told the wide-eyed class of 11-year-old boys and girls that having sex must be nice because it resulted in having children, so no-one would do it if it wasn’t
Needless to say it wasn’t long before some of the class were trying it out for themselves

YES,YES,YES!

My daughter is a teacher and there is so much she has to deal with that she has never been trained to do. So much of the pastoral care needs a qualified professional.

And don't get me started on the workload. She often works seven days a week, 10 hours a day through all half terms and holidays. She cares about her students and never gives other than her very best. Students can email her out of hours and often it is not just homework they have questions about. Especially during lockdown.

She says she still enjoys her job which is amazing considering the pressure she is under.

To be fair I wish someone had given me that advice

My mother gave me some sex education when my periods started. Don't go near the boys ? That was it.

The reasons why I was happy to retire - I loved teaching, but there was too much else - and not enough time!

Yes those children with learning difficulties were just left in the corner of those classrooms, as were those with safeguarding issues.

It’s changes in society that has made teachers job more difficult,
more single parent families, more deprivation, more assertive parents, more indisciplined pupils, all together with shrinking budgets.
I enjoyed school one teacher with a class of 35 or so teachers were respected, pupils mostly well behaved. Looking back there were some with mild learning difficulties but no special provision was made. Almost everyone got jobs at 16 according to their exam results, the norm then was to train on the job and get extra qualifications on the career ladder.
Some of course make no progress and remained in unskilled work, where the main qualification is to “turn up on time” sadly not always achievable.

* Teachers are capable of dealing with mental health issues, giving sex education, etc., they just need the back up along with smaller classes. At the moment, we are stretching them to their limits and then wondering why they are leaving in droves*

Absolutely right Icanhandthemback

Re the sex ed. My mother told me about periods but definitely not sex. My friend at school was a farmers daughter and she gave me some information!!

No, from my experience from working in a school, it has always been a part of their job. My old Aunt was a primary school teacher years ago and welfare was part of what she did, it was hand in hand with teaching the children.

Yes am laughing as well at the idea that parents on the whole used to provide adequate sex education.

I used to work for a well known supermarket and we were told to fill in customers details for them if they seemed like they didn't want to and they wanted a home delivery as a lot of people couldn't read or write very well! My friends Mum worked for the adult literacy service at our local college too helping people learn to read. I had totally forgotten this until you post icanhandthemback.

I can't be the only person bemused by all the references to our parents talking to us about sex, relationships, contraception and periods can I? I don't know ANYONE who was spoken to by their parents about s-e-x- and relationships. I started my periods and was frightened to tell my Mum as I felt like I was in trouble (she had never mentioned it) and it was something to be kept quiet. She certainly never spoke to me about anything else and neither did my Dad.

Icanhandthemback what an excellent post. The prisons have been full for years of people whose needs were unrecognised and were simply failed by the square peg education system.

It makes me laugh when I read about the education system of yesteryear being so much better than today. One of my uncles left school being unable to read or write but it pretty much went unnoticed as long as he kept quiet which he did; looking back he was definitely on the spectrum. My aunt is dyslexic so avoided school whenever she could because she was made to feel stupid. Another uncle can read but stringing a sentence together on paper is difficult...yes, undiagnosed dyslexia. My mother, bright, able to read and write well achieved very little at school because she was off so often caring for her sick mother. Nobody ever chased her for attendance at all. It was just accepted that she couldn't be there. The uncles were fantastic engineers but everything they learned was after they left school!
Skip forward 20 years and my very bright sister struggled with writing. Mum moved her to a private school and she blossomed. Turns out she was left handed but the school she was at before wouldn't let her write with her left hand. I was always labelled as lazy, messy and melancholic in school. Actually, it is now looking like I had ADHD to go with my dyspraxia and being in a busy classroom was very distracting for me. I was lambasted by the teachers for my sins which I never seemed to be able to help committing. I suspect today's teachers would have recognised the depression and withdrawal as a sign that something was not right at home. I actually went into teaching not out of a desire to educate per se, but to make sure that the children I was teaching were not just branded as trouble makers, lazy, or stupid but to help them where I could so they didn't lose their self esteem along the way.
Teachers are capable of dealing with mental health issues, giving sex education, etc., they just need the back up along with smaller classes. At the moment, we are stretching them to their limits and then wondering why they are leaving in droves.

Kryptonite

Trisher, those other staff you refer to are called - teaching assistants! They're already doing all these things and many teach also. Any teacher who doesn't know about special needs and especially those of the children they teach, should be ashamed to call themselves a teacher. Sadly, many just leave the education of such children to unqualified people (teaching assistants) even though the teacher is meant to be responsible for them as a member of their class.

You misunderstood my post completely. Teaching assistants do (or used to do so many have gone) a valuable job in schools, but they have not the expertise, training or experience to deal with the problems now seen in many schools. There are professionals, speech therapists, psychologists, physiotherapists, counsellors etc who would bring their skills into schools and help children who need such assistance. Even if a teacher knows about special needs, providing tailored assistance to every child is difficult and sometimes impossible. There may be a few teachers who fail to do their best for such children but they are few, and if a child has special needs they are required to keep records and assess their progress.

As an ex teacher I would say that too much as always been expected of teachers !

Trisher, those other staff you refer to are called - teaching assistants! They're already doing all these things and many teach also. Any teacher who doesn't know about special needs and especially those of the children they teach, should be ashamed to call themselves a teacher. Sadly, many just leave the education of such children to unqualified people (teaching assistants) even though the teacher is meant to be responsible for them as a member of their class.

I have re read the thread and I don't know where I have said you were using 'judgement' but even if we start on a very basic point some children will starting school very soon after their 4th birthday and because of how underfunded early intervention is now they may have additional needs anyway, so you have no idea do you of their short-long term outcomes?