Teaching is in crisis.
“Without urgent action, more education professionals will sadly decide that what should be a rewarding career is not for them, and pupils’ education and life chances will inevitably suffer.”
Ian Hartwright, National Association of Head Teachers
Mutant Genes: A Critical Spectrum Of Genetic Faults And Illnesses Have Progressively Struck the Education System. Education in the UK is thoroughly flummoxed by a rise in autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) as a result of wider society’s faltering mutational genetics. Children are entering into the care of a system woefully unprepared for this radical change in the fundamental qualities, traits, and personal characteristics of its average learner intake. The old rules and expectations simply don’t count anymore; the next generation is genetically ill beyond belief and schools are the frontline to encounter this illness and debilitation.
Over 1.5 million pupils in England have special educational needs (SEN), that’s an increase of 87,000 from 2022. This means there are a wider and more challenging array of behavioural profiles for teachers to navigate, without a proportional change of system and funding to support this change of circumstances:
- 389,171 pupils in schools in England were on an EHC (Education, Health and Care) plan. Up by 9.5% from 2022. The number of pupils in England issued with a special needs support plan has more than doubled in the last eight years to 180 a day
- 13% of pupils in England are with SEN (Special Educational Needs) support. That is up from 12.6% in 2022.
A Thankless Profession: Woefully Underpaid And Undervalued. Teaching has been upended by a persistent crisis of low pay leading to the profession having less than competitive wages.
- A succession of below-inflation pay rises over the last decade means teacher earnings have fallen by 13% in real terms since 2010.
- The UK Gov has introduced more generous bursaries for trainees and committed to raising starting salaries in England to £30,000 by next year. Though early-career funding will help with recruitment, it has no impact on the deteriorating pay of experienced teachers, for whom the Department for Education has proposed a meagre 3% increase to be taken out of the existing schools budget (unfunded).
- Headteachers have warned that low salaries are fuelling a recruitment and retention crisis as teaching staff are leaving the profession to earn more working in supermarkets or retail.
Workload: Unpaid Overtime Is Out Of Control. Inefficient and ineffective over-regulation has led to excessive workload causing the average teaching workweek to total a crushing 54 hours of drudgery – with around 13 of these hours falling outside of the normal school day. Excessive workload not only affects the wellbeing of individuals, it is also the most cited factor impacting adversely on teacher recruitment and retention.
- One of the UK’s major teachers’ unions, NASUWT, is calling for a contractual, enforceable limit on teachers’ working hours to ensure staff can enjoy a life outside work.
- 25% of teachers in England work more than 60 hours a week.
- The ‘status quo’ expectation is that teachers work outside directed hours to ‘fulfil duties’ such as in ‘planning and preparing courses and lessons’. For obvious reasons, this vague language opens the door to excessive workloads that extend beyond directed hours.
- The number of headteachers leaving for reasons other than retirement is also the highest since records began, with 1,694 leaving in 2021/2022 – this is up from 1,151 the year before and makes the third time since current records began that over 1,000 headteachers have quit the profession.
- Four in every five teachers say that their workload and the stress of the job have increased and half of teachers say that workload has negatively affected their physical and mental health.
- There is no justification for schools seeking to place increasing demands on teachers. The work of teachers cannot exceed the time that teachers are paid to do the job.
A Record Mass Exodus: Shortfall of Teaching Recruitment Targets. Teaching is wrought by an exodus of new teachers from the chalkface, with one in three leaving within five years (~33%), with 40,000 overall ditching the career in 2021-22 (not to retire). However, the DfE said almost 48,000 teachers joined the profession in 2022-23, up 2,800 from the previous year. Yet if 33% leave within 5 years we could say that about 16,000 of those new entrants won’t be sticking around. So (hypothetically) the real intake is approx 32,000, meaning the circa 40,000 teachers leaving the profession leaves an approx 8,000 deficit each year. Additionally, the government has actually missed its secondary teacher recruitment targets for nine of the past ten years.
“Addressing teacher retention should be at the heart of dealing with the teacher supply challenge, with further policy action needed to reduce teacher workload and increase the competitiveness of teacher pay.”
Jack Worth, school workforce lead at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)
- Recruitment for some secondary subjects is consistently much lower than the average; physics is 83% below target in 2022/23, design and technology 75% below target and computing 70% below target.
- The DfE’s latest workforce data has shown that 39,930 teachers left the teaching profession in the 2021/2022 academic year for reasons other than retirement, which amounts to around 8.8 percent of teachers in the sector – this has increased from only 7,800 in the 2020/2021 academic year.
- This puts teacher departure levels at their highest since current census records began in 2010/2011.
- The number of temporarily filled teacher posts increased from 1,800 in November 2020 to 3,000 in November 2022.
“This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of a recruitment and retention crisis which is affecting virtually every school and college in the country.”
Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL)
Former head of year at a Wiltshire secondary school, John Chettleburgh, left teaching earlier than planned this summer because it had become so “hard”. The difficulties he cites are workload and expectations, but also the increasingly challenging behaviour and emotional problems of pupils, particularly in the younger years. And concentration spans, which he says have “dropped significantly” during children’s return to school after Covid.
“No matter how government tries to spin it, today’s data shows that it is in denial over its failure to tackle the longstanding recruitment and retention crisis in teaching.”
Ian Hartwright, head of policy at the National Association of Head Teachers, June 2023
The Party Inspectorate: The Cruel And Arbitrary Reign Of Ofsted. Teaching is under the boot of The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspections; a punitive system that passes judgement on the basis of dubious and oft-arbitrary criterion:
“More than a decade of real-terms cuts to pay, accompanied by crushing workload and the impact of high stakes inspection and accountability measures that drive ill-health, mean that teachers and leaders continue to walk away from an education system where funding is still below 2010 levels in real terms.”
Ian Hartwright, head of policy at the National Association of Head Teachers
- A culture of fear and apprehension is fueled by Ofsted’s dread-based omnipresence. One solution would be replacing the current system of ratings with a more nuanced range of indicators, providing parents with information without penalising schools.
- Headteacher Ruth Perry’s tragic suicide in 2023 led to widespread calls for Ofsted’s reform. “#ReformOfsted” became a viral hashtag on the socials.
“We rely too much on Ofsted. It is a blunt tool that fails children, parents and schools.”
Sonia Sodha
The UK Is An Anomaly In The Education World
Surveys have revealed that teachers in England work far longer hours than their international counterparts, causing serious concern amongst both policymakers and the profession.
One in four put in more than 60 hours a week – 12 hours above the limit set by the European Working Time Directive to protect employees from exploitation. Their average working week lasts up to 15 hours longer than teachers in other countries. Four in 10 usually work in the evening – and 10 per cent at weekends.
Secondary school teachers spend as much time on management, administration, marking and lesson planning (20.1 hours) as teaching pupils (20.5 hours).
Last year it is suggested that teachers worked an average 49 hours a week – compared to 34 hours for those in Finland. This is despite successive government promises to reduce their hours.
“Overall, bolder plans are needed by the Government to show they are serious about reducing working hours for teachers and bringing them into line with other countries.”
Professor John Jerrim, of UCL’s Institute of Education (IOE)
The figure for industrialised OECD nations across the globe was 41 hours, the University College London (UCL) study found.
Lead author Professor John Jerrim, of UCL’s Institute of Education (IOE), said: “This is the first study to attempt to track the working hours of teachers over such a long period of time.”
The findings demonstrate the gap between the UK and other countries in the organisation of its education system, emboldening the need for extensive reforms.
“Teachers are underpaid and overworked thanks to government-imposed pay austerity combined with a relentless series of reforms which have left teachers doing more for less.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL)
Behaviour Policies In UK Schools Are Soft
Why is being strict seen as oppressive? To be strict is to be clear, consistent, constant.
Sam Strickland, Principal at The Dunston School
My firm view and stance is that schools should adopt centralised, centrally-led approaches to behaviour. Critics cite that such approaches are either strict, deskill staff or are professionally suffocating. I believe these claims to be false and ill-founded.
Many schools are entering upon, through the effect of ‘progressive’ Initial Teacher Training colleges, ‘restorative justice’ and ‘positive reinforcement’ approaches to behaviour management. These approaches in isolation are injurious to school cultures, however in combination (with behaviourist approaches) they can have positive effects. Unfortunately, a divide between ‘restorative’ schools and ‘behaviourist’ schools has presented problems with the effective management of school culture – for all types of teachers.
On top of this, a lack of central planning of behaviour management, and leaving the arrangement and policing of sanctions and punishments to already overworked teachers to fulfill, will cause damage to the constancy required in the sphere of influencing group, and school-wide, behaviour.
Children of any age need clear boundaries, clear routines and clear rules to know where they stand. Once they know your position and that it will be adhered to, then they know where they stand.
Schools are disempowered from permanent dismissal or extending internal exclusions of disruptive pupils/students to the protective benefit of obedient and engaged children, whom otherwise are having their education woefully disrupted.
The Failure Of The ECF/ECT Programme
The Early Career Framework is a two-year programme, rollout began in September 2021, which aims to improve teacher retention through a package of support fully funded by the government. In reality, the ECF increases mentors’ and new teachers’ workloads, and regurgitates a lot of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) principles – already relayed to new teachers in their training years. It’s a backfired blanket policy that just adds more paperwork and scrutiny (red tape, essentially).
Commenting on the 12.8% of new teachers who quit after just one year, union chief Ian Hartwright added: “The concerns we repeatedly raised about the content overload, repetition and workload involved in the (ECF) for both new teachers and mentors were not acted upon, so we are sadly not surprised to see it appears to have had little positive impact.”
- An overwhelming majority (95 per cent) said that the ECF had increased workload for a newly qualified teacher (64 per cent said the ECF had significantly increased workload). All respondents (99 per cent) said that the ECF has had an overwhelmingly negative impact on the workload of mentors. Over eight in ten (81 per cent) said that the workload of mentors had significantly increased. Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of respondents told us that the ECF will have a negative or very negative impact on the work life balance of ECTs.
- A third (32 per cent) of school leaders feared that the ECF will have a negative impact on retention rates for ECTs. Just under a third (28 per cent) reported that mentors did not want to continue their mentoring role as a direct result of the impact of the ECF.
- More than one-third of school leaders now say they may take in fewer early career teachers in the future, which rises to 46 per cent among primary heads.
- Despite being designed to improve retention, 21 per cent of teachers say reforms would make them less likely to stay in the profession – the same number of teachers who say that it would make them more likely to remain.
- Fifty-seven per cent of ECTs say it has added “a lot” to their workload, with 65 per cent of mentors saying the same.
“It is enormously concerning that schools are finding the additional workload from the ECF so debilitating. One of the key aims of this new system is to improve retention of early career teachers. That obviously won’t happen if they are so overwhelmed in their first two years. Even more concerning, those who are stepping up to mentor new teachers are also drowning in the resulting workload and considering not continuing in this crucial role.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT
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