Overworked teachers

Sorry about the grammar...I'm a bit doped up today and it's affecting my typing and thought processes.

I would never be a pre-16 teacher now. Back in the day, when I first qualified, teaching was, I think, a genuinely satisfying career with prospects. Now? No. I don't think so. I've worked as a supply teacher and that was awful too.

As a FE/HE lecturer the hours were worse (60 plus hours, including weekends and evenings) and the pressures practically finished me off. Had I not had dd, and given up, I think I would have become ill.

I do not think comparisons are helpful - a stressful job is a stressful job whatever it is.

Teaching is a very very high stress occupation. I am a primary school governor and regularly receive emails from staff sent at 2 in the morning.

Unless you have actually seen the process that teaching has become, you can have no concept of the nonsensical data crunching and policy drafting that has taken over from real teaching. The job has become much more burdensome, but the difference is that the burdens in no way move forward the quality of teaching.

Anyone who seriously thinks it is a cushy number because of the holidays is living in a dreamworld! Without the long holidays the staff would all be off sick with stress; and posters above who are in the know have explained how little of those holidays are about resting of having a jolly time. But there are those who refuse to believe this - I cannot imagine why.

or

Luckygirl. Too right. In the earlier days we had a life as well as getting on with, and enjoying, our teaching. Around 2000 I asked a rather down young teacher whether she was doing anything nice that evening. She looked at me with something near contempt and said 'On a SCHOOL night?'
Oh dear!

I don't think anyone who hasn't taught can understand the demands of the job. i taught in primary schools for many, many years and then went into the LEA Advisory Service. There I had to give up my school holidays and make do with the same annual paid leave as most outside of teaching have.

Despite this, the stresses and workload was nothing compared to the classroom. NOT A JOT!

Firstly as a teacher I was working most evenings for at least two hours marking, assessing, planning and preparing. No time was allocated within the school day to do the paperwork required to do the job properly. Teachers don't just walk into a classroom without having spent hours preparing lessons and writing up lesson notes, each lesson being planned so work is differentiated so all children can access some parts of the concept being taught, from the basic to the advanced depending on the ability of the child, and work being marked from previous lessons ready to be returned and built upon. Ditto most of Sunday. Secondly, holidays; granted were longer but even so I'd be going into school most of the 'last week' to get everything ready. If I'd added up my annual working hours.......

And IMO things have got much worse since I left almost 20 years ago, especially in the secondary sector. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, going off with stress-related illnesses or just marking time until retirement. I'm speaking here from the point of view of a mother with 'children', nieces, nephews and others in the teaching profession and others outside of education. The only thing that comes close is colleagues in the NHS struggling to carry on in appalling conditions.

Education and health are two of our most important and undervalued public services being driven into chaos and showing signs of imminent collapse

I recently had retire from teaching on ill health grounds. I was physically burnt out due to my excessive workload and a number of medical conditions, which I had previously successfully managed, flared up. On top of my already very heavy workload, I was covering the remits of two other teachers, who had been seconded to other schools, due to staffing problems. Working till after midnight most nights, trying to cover paperwork, as I spent most of my day dealing with behaviour and children who had social and emotional difficulties was the norm. I was promised that it would only be for 3 weeks, till the situation was resolved. Six months later I was still doing it, as "No one else was experienced enough to manage these children." said the HT. The school I worked in was in an area of great deprivation. On going for a routine hospital appointment, my consultant would not allow me to return to school, indefinitely.
As for long teachers' holidays, I spent most of mine in school, installing new ICT equipment, whilst the school was empty and preparing lesson programmes, ready to to be given to staff on in-services days. I loved teaching, just couldn't find time to teach! It is not the job I signed up for and it nearly finished me off.

Blimey! I almost forgot the actual dealing with those kinds of children Mary and the stress of trying to teach 4C on. Friday afternoon (.or on any afternoon!!)

My niece is an NQT. She started late in taking on teachng and is 38 years old, so is mature and confident.

Her mum was a career special needs teacher in an inner city school which helps my niece a lot. She is with the 5-6 year olds. (Year 1?)

This school is almost into special measures. Most of the children are from deprived backgrounds. There are autistic children who are being mainstreamed that really should be assessed, but the backlog for that is beyond belief, so she just has to cope.

She has one in her class, the others are spread out in the other years. There are no one-on-one assistants available. NO MONEY. She also has one child is not toilet trained. You don't want to hear what the rest of the kids are like. And she is commended for having the most well-behaved class. The noise level is horrendous, she says, so she is on her feet constantly trying to keep them engaged so they can learn. I have spent hundreds of pounds on her at Christmas and Birthdays buying teaching aids/props/art supplies because there is NO MONEY.

She wants to finish this year...and actually likes working with these kinds of children, if only there was some help or funds for the normal things. She has to share a classroom assistant who is useless. She was a classroom assistant herself before finishing her training and the teachers all were so upset when she got to have a class of her own as they lost the only person who could get the kids to behave or learn anything.

I don't know why the education system is so broken... maybe it's OK in most schools, but not in the inner city ones.

Well I have been lucky in my career as Teacher, Headteacher ..... lovely schools, colleagues, parents and children. I am a bit of a dictator, but a kind one, and adopt the attitude that we just need to get on and do what's required, no moaning. I think the whole team has a duty to make it work for everyone, but there are ways of allowing everyone to feel valued and fulfilled.
BUT, and this is the reason, I work in the independent sector.

Small classes, supportive fee-paying parents, great resources, shorter terms and longer holidays........oh! how the other half lives

Marydoll I am so sorry you are suffering for having been a proactive and caring teacher.

I am not a teacher but, for a couple of years before retirement, I did work in a school. As I never had the necessity to interface directly with the young people I should have had an easier time and, indeed, I believe I did but ... education (which ever level) is very different to any job I had outside it. It is hugely stressful.

For a start so much has changed but the job analysis of teachers has not. All that has happened is that anything new is divided up and shared amongst the teachers. You may think that happens in 'industry' but old and unnecessary parts of the job in a business will deemed to be redundant and the job re-crafted. This cannot happen in education - the teaching must go on.

The management of education is another area where often the poison chalice is handed out. So many jobs in teaching have responsibility (to the point of life and death) without authority (even over the children to some extent). Yes, this happens in middle management in other areas but I have never seen so many senior managers hanging on to the authority they have. In the businesses I have worked in good managers do not want to 'keep a dog and bark themselves' they let people get on with what they have been given to do. Add to that the rhetoric poured on teachers on-line and in the press (here for instance) and why would you want to do it.

What is happening is people do not. Whether you think their working conditions are unreasonable or not they are leaving. You will not have the say. All you can do is tell the government to sort themselves out. It is becoming harder and harder to recruit. Classes are growing in numbers and lessons are shortened. More teachers are engaged on none-salaried contracts and have little loyalty - why should they have to an industry that has none for them. These are the people who will make a difference to our DGCs - surely that matters.

In our divided society it seems that, wherever the division, each side looks at the other and thinks them both wrong and stupid but that really doesn't solve any problems. By setting the wider society against teachers (in this instance) the government does us all a disservice.

GracesGranMK2 Teachers also have fewer powers and authority. My niece was put in a headlock by a 12 year old in the school yard. His mates were egging him on. She was so angry and just wanted to knee him in the goolies, but knew she couldn't.

Nevermind breaking up kids fighting with each other, you are not allowed to defend yourself against a student with the body of a teenager. Her neck was sore for a month! The union rep was all hand-wringing and useless.

I mentioned primary school teachers, as for some reason I know quite a lot of young ones of those sort. I only know 1 person who works in secondary. He is finding it hard, but I couldnt go by one person only.

GillT57 says they are "used and abused". That is what it looks like to me too.

The one newish primary school teaching that I know who is coping so far, says her key is not to take on too many extra responsibilities.
But she has only been doing it for 2 years so far, so we shall see.

gettingonabit - interesting that you say it is bad for supply teachers too.
The person that is leaving was offered a part time job not in teaching, and is planning to supply teach on the other days.

The holidays are for the children not for the teachers
five pieces of homework for 5 year olds over half-term?

I feel sorry for teachers. I am whacked after looking after two little ones never mind a class of 30, much as I love children to bits.

My GS is determined to be a teacher of maths and single sciences. He is already a mentor and a tennis coach. When he was little I used to sit on the floor surrounded by teddies and he was the Headmaster. He seemed to assume the roll.

However, I do know that teaching is a hard job. People complain that teachers get too much time off. They obviously discount the marking of students' work, supervising students on trips, Parents and Teachers meetings, Staff meetings and Teachers training days, plus emails these days advising pupils of what is happening in the CCF and other extra activities.

My OH had a friend who always wanted to be a teacher. He was and unfortunately he taught in a very rough school. He lost all confidence and finally committed suicide. Very sad.

GG2 how refreshing that someone who hasn't been actually interfacing in the classroom can have the insight to understand what we are saying. I am seriously worried that my DD (a secondary English teacher) who is standing in for her HoD who has gone off with stress, will break under the strain. And she has two young children to try and raise,

"Small classes, supportive fee-paying parents, great resources, shorter terms and longer holidays........oh! how the other half lives."

He he, Anya, but generally, a faster work pace, more expectations, very demanding fussy, unrealistic parents, holidays spent conducting trips away. The job is full on! It isn't any easier, just different.

Hello? Faster pace of work? I don't necessarily think so.
State school. students going to university/getting into Oxbridge. ✔️
pushy demanding parents?✔️
(At one school I taught in, said to have the highest % of graduate and postgraduate parents in England, most the daddies were research scientists at Unilever up the road and the mummies lectured at Bedford College down the road, training the likes of teachers. (Or so it seemed)
School trips in the holidays? ✔️

Oh and shorter hols than our independent school peers.

But Lillie you are unlikely to be threatened with violence, have something thrown at you or be told what a f-- waste of space you are (by the children). If you discipline a child you are unlikely to be grabbed by a parent and told to - leave his/her child alone. You will not spend your time trying to teach children who have had a traumatic weekend because mum's boyfriend put all the house windows in when she threw him out.
I've taught in inner city problem schools and nice suburban middle class schools and I can tell you it is much easier to teach when children are from a settled background. Yes it is still a stressful job and you work far more hours than anyone imagines, but at least you can teach, you're not a cross between a police man and a social worker. Trying to keep everything under control and at the same time trying to monitor children and ensure they are safe.
I remember when I first started teaching some married women on the staff of the Infants school went home to lunch everyday and sometimes did their shopping. The head only ever walked through the door at 10mins to 9.
Things needed to change but a little balance would be nice!

What an interesting thread will informed comments from people who understand what teaching is like. Anyone who says they have it easy and get lots of holidays doesn't know much about teaching. As has been said, most teachers spend a lot of their 'holidays' working in school, or planning / dealing with admin . All the teachers I know are in school between 7 and 8am, none leave before 5pm and often much later than that. Home, quick bite to eat, kiss their own children goodnight, then planning, book marking etc till bed time.
We have a big problem with substance dependency/abuse in this country. We therefore have many children who may have been exposed to alcohol or other substances before birth. Their emotional and developmental needs aren't met consistently or at times at all by parents who are emotionally unavailable even if they aren't asleep or doped out. Levels of domestic abuse in families with substance misusing parents are higher than in your average family.
If you're teaching 5 and 6 year olds from this kind of background, you likely to have at least 6 of your 30 children in a state of crisis. Add the child who is autistic but said to be ok for main stream but who understandable is screaming and running about in the face of the melt down from a little lad who had no tea and arrived to late for breakfast club. Well, I'll stop there.

Vampirequeen
Undermined ,Ofsted were just two words amongst many my cousin used when after spending most of her working life dedicated to teaching hung up the towel saying enough is enough.
Teaching had been her life claiming she didn't have time to get married and have children of her own.
All the family were so sad for her when after only five years as head of a school, sought after by many parents for the excellent results it produced, she threw in the towel. Saying had she wanted an office job she wouldn't have bothered with university and she was continually losing excellent staff who too saw their careers nothing more than an office job.

Your final paragraph sums it up vampire - this is what I see from the governor's perspective. I chair the staffing committee and see it as part pf my responsibility to listen to staff, to acknowledge their difficulties and to make sure that they hear loud and clear what a valuable job they are doing.

True education is being forced out; but good teachers work their tripe out to try and keep a vestige of it and it takes a serious toll on their well-being.

Iam64 just reminded me of when I was first in one of the inner city schools and staff were discussing a parent who was a 'dealer" I thought "Ooo second hand furniture, or clothes?" It was of course other substances! I was very green in those days. I soon learned.