Schools In Crisis As Graduates Turn Their Backs On Teaching - Can't Afford Housing....

[dougless]

Academies, free schools, and FE colleges aren't constrained to national payscales are they? (Genuine question)

They can surely pay extra for the right staff? Or would the unions not permit this?

In those establishments its even worse, especially in FE. The FE sector has been slowly boiled alive since fundamental changes came in to effect in 1992. Even the eager young (stupid/wet behind the ears) managers are starting to question the sanity of what is happening in FE. The ONLY ones who are benefiting from any of this are the most senior staff (Heads, Principals etc); their pay has become stratospheric (over £200,000 is not uncommon in FE Colleges). Contrast that with teachers with two degrees on £21,000; it really is that bad. Its no wonder FE Colleges are having a real recruitment crisis. The average staff turnover in FE colleges in 2013 was 18%; in 2014 this rose to 23%. I stress this is the AVERAGE staff turnover, some Colleges are much higher.

[dougless]

Balls. Pay and condition vastly improved.

The thing teachers gripe about is being assessed more. Tough. Teacher assessment is no where near the level of assesment in the private sector. And there's still nothing like the level of hire and fire.

Its not 'Balls' but you think that if it makes you happy.

[spyguy]

I used to work with a former maths teacher, who got sick of teaching and went into IT (this was about 5 years ago).

He reckoned, when he went for a job interview for a maths teaching job there were only 1 or 2 other people who had applied so he new he had a pretty good shot.

However for PE and English there could be 60 or 70 who applied, so no skills shortage there.

I've said this on another thread - I've never worked with an ex-teacher in the private sector.

I've worked with ex-Army techs, ex-LA (once, he was useless).

Asking around, a lot of state sector teachers quit teaching and either a) get retired off on the sick, join Ofsted/LA c) do tutition/supply/private school.

In general, the 'cannot recruit teacher's' has a lot of BS to it.

My partner works as a school secretary at a large primary.

Like most school secretary, she's there to do the bulk of work that the head teachers do not do and sort out the mess HTs and teachers create.

Any how, I help out with odd stuff - you may or may not be surprised how inept teachers are with actually doing stuff and making decisions.

I've been through the 'Its really hard to recruit teachers' routine.

Here's the reality as that I have witnessed:

1) Did you advertise the position. 'Oh yes'. Can I check? 'Oh its not there.

2) 'Oh, hardly anyone has applied' 'How many?' '6', How many do are suitable/good? '4'. 'Soooo ... you've had a positiion open for 3 weeks, you've got 4 suitable candidates. Do you realise my company, with making a lot more effort than you, gets about 2 suitable interviews in about 3 months for each opening.'

[spyguy]

Its not 'Balls' but you think that if it makes you happy.

Again, I can only give you a real world example of a couple I know.

Him - worked in tech during 98-01.

Her - secondary teacher, maths.

99 - 'Oh, its much better in the private sector. xx has had a 30% salry bump, he flies everywhere business class. going to a convention'

00 - 'Oh, x is having to take a 30% salary cut.

01 - xx has been laid off.

15 - Him works very long hours. Bounced from job to job. Her -earns about 15k more and has 10 weeks holiday. Works about 40 hours in term time.

The majority of primary + secondary teachers are arts + humanities grads. There is almost no demand for them in the private sector. The sort of jobs a graduate with a non-voc degree did 30 odd years ago i.e. middle management no longer exist.

[SillyBilly]

Teachers get a hard time IMO. I couldn't do it. The pay is crap, everybody (government and parents principally) thinks they're an expert in education and I don't even think the current lot's pensions will be honoured in full.

Hopefully it will be another realisation that housing is too expensive when teachers can't afford to live a remotely middle class lifestyle either.

[ZeroSumGame]

Being involved in recruitment in that area, I can tell you that there is a massive shortage of maths and physical science teachers. The article actually says that it is subject dependent which seems to be quite accurate from my experience.

Is that experienced hires you're talking about? In London and the south-east ? I thought the Grauniad article was about business studies teachers. A couple of years ago the Tories were offering 20,000 tax-free for new entrants to maths and physics teaching. So I don't doubt there's truth in what you say.

Got to say it's refreshing to see young people finally refusing to become galley-slaves : what with student fees and stupid accommodation costs.

[spyguy]

In those establishments its even worse, especially in FE. The FE sector has been slowly boiled alive since fundamental changes came in to effect in 1992. Even the eager young (stupid/wet behind the ears) managers are starting to question the sanity of what is happening in FE. The ONLY ones who are benefiting from any of this are the most senior staff (Heads, Principals etc); their pay has become stratospheric (over £200,000 is not uncommon in FE Colleges). Contrast that with teachers with two degrees on £21,000; it really is that bad. Its no wonder FE Colleges are having a real recruitment crisis. The average staff turnover in FE colleges in 2013 was 18%; in 2014 this rose to 23%. I stress this is the AVERAGE staff turnover, some Colleges are much higher.

FE colleges should be shut down.

I track a couple of FE colleges, both in different parts of the UK.

Both have followed the same path as most other FE colleges.

1) Shutdown vocational training - catering, building.

2) Try and be somewhere between a sixth form and poor Uni, and fail at both.

Both tracked FE's have had the A level funding withdrawn as, frankly, the taugh a handful of low level A levels badly.

[spyguy]

Teachers get a hard time IMO. I couldn't do it. The pay is crap, everybody (government and parents principally) thinks they're an expert in education and I don't even think the current lot's pensions will be honoured in full.

Hopefully it will be another realisation that housing is too expensive when teachers can't afford to live a remotely middle class lifestyle either.

No. for the qualifications and skills teachers have, the pay is good. The holidays are great.

[grasshopper]

No. for the qualifications and skills teachers have, the pay is good. The holidays are great.

Nominal salary not bad for up north if your top of the UPS scale , particular if you bought your house twenty years ago before the silliness.

Hourly rate of pay not that good. Rarely took a holiday without doing some prep or marking except during the summer holidays.

Met some great kids and colleagues but was always stressed out while doing the job - so glad to be or of it now.

p.s. re your sister - the flooding in Calder Valley where I live was of biblical proportions. But don't think I would want to live anywhere else.

[SarahBell]

Teachers get a hard time IMO. I couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it because such a large number of parents produce nasty monsters who do not have the first idea of how to behave in a classroom situation.

[billybong]

From the OP link.

“It makes teaching much less attractive as a career,” Howson said. “The history of teaching suggests that, if you allow public-sector salaries to get too far out of line with the private sector, you fail to recruit graduates.”

That picture seems well out of date - although they keep resurrecting it over the decades.

If all teachers were immediately given jobs as senior managers/directors in the blue chip private sector then they might attract more wages (not inevitably though). Far less likely outside of blue chip companies.

Incidentally they've been saying London house prices have priced out teachers since at least the 1980s (hence key worker schemes etc) but it spreading to the general SE shows that the problem is getting worse reflecting the London mega bubble - but comparing to general private sector employees isn't convincing.

[frozen_out]

Is that experienced hires you're talking about? In London and the south-east ? I thought the Grauniad article was about business studies teachers. A couple of years ago the Tories were offering 20,000 tax-free for new entrants to maths and physics teaching. So I don't doubt there's truth in what you say.

Got to say it's refreshing to see young people finally refusing to become galley-slaves : what with student fees and stupid accommodation costs.

This is an entirely more accurate description of the situation. If there is a shortage it is not in 'skillz' but in the number of people who have put themselves into debentured slavery to obtain the requisite piece of paper.

[frozen_out]

Get some XPS on that anecdote.

Your judgement presupposes a homogeneity of the sampled material. It may turn out that it has some structure. This just in from the lab - history graduates struggling to demonstrate the mathematical connection between the gradient of the scalar potential and the associated vector field, (back on the A level specification again, as well as how it presents in the electrostatic and gravitational cases.)

On second thoughts... I genuinely don't know what your problem is with me. I'm actually quite flattered to have a stalker. Keep up the good work I enjoy the attention.

[Bland Unsight]

On second thoughts... I genuinely don't know what your problem is with me. I'm actually quite flattered to have a stalker. Keep up the good work I enjoy the attention.

No problem this end. (Aside from finding the aliens meme inherently funny and lacking the impulse control to avoid posting it on any pre-text, no matter how tenuous.)

I was just trying to make an on topic post in a jocular way. It amused me that someone who apparently knows what x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is appeared to be missing the point that there might be shortages in some subjects, for example physics, but not others, but that was just a footnote to the main point, which is not about you at all and makes up the entirety of the post.

My job includes having to go to the market place and obtain physics teachers; I can assure you that my presence on this thread has a great deal to do with me, and essentially nothing to do with you. If you want a stalker, you are fresh out of luck if you think I'm offering to provide the service. Sorry to disappoint on that score.

[spyguy]

Nominal salary not bad for up north if your top of the UPS scale , particular if you bought your house twenty years ago before the silliness.

Hourly rate of pay not that good. Rarely took a holiday without doing some prep or marking except during the summer holidays.

Met some great kids and colleagues but was always stressed out while doing the job - so glad to be or of it now.

p.s. re your sister - the flooding in Calder Valley where I live was of biblical proportions. But don't think I would want to live anywhere else.

You've jumped threads!

I put it down to God smiting all those wimmin marrying other wimmin.

Same sex marriage made legal in 2013.

Bang! A vengeful God floods Hebden 3 times!

Christ, Noah was the only story that interested me during RE.

[frozen_out]

No problem this end. (Aside from finding the aliens meme inherently funny and lacking the impulse control to avoid posting it on any pre-text, no matter how tenuous.)

I was just trying to make an on topic post in a jocular way. It amused me that someone who apparently knows what x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is appeared to be missing the point that there might be shortages in some subjects, for example physics, but not others, but that was just a footnote to the main point, which is not about you at all and makes up the entirety of the post.

My job includes having to go to the market place and obtain physics teachers; I can assure you that my presence on this thread has a great deal to do with me, and essentially nothing to do with you. If you want a stalker, you are fresh out of luck if you think I'm offering to provide the service. Sorry to disappoint on that score.

Interesting, it's just that this is the second or third thread where you've been apparently hostile for pretty much no good reason that I can fathom.

'A' level and GCSE physics is all pretty elementary. I doubt that we have a lack of people with the requisite skills and knowledge, we might well lack people with the requisite piece of paper and a willingness to put up with teachers' pay and conditions. IMO that's not a skills shortage.

On the XPS point, I do know what XPS is and I even know how to use it and interpret the data, but my knowledge of the physics would be rudimentary at best as I'm by no means a physicist. Ironically I am the PhD supervisor of someone doing a physics PhD, but I just abuse his work for my own nefarious industrial purposes. I always have to ask him to explain it to me in words an idiot child could understand. To his credit he must be doing a good job as I understand most of it. Superficially at least.

[Motor_Blade]

I couldn't do it because such a large number of parents produce nasty monsters who do not have the first idea of how to behave in a classroom situation.

A very good point made worse by the fact that a lot of the parents of said nasty monsters think that their little angels can do no wrong and/or are entitled do do exactly what they want - which makes the teacher's job doubly difficult.

[Bland Unsight]

Being involved in recruitment in that area, I can tell you that there is a massive shortage of maths and physical science teachers. The article actually says that it is subject dependent which seems to be quite accurate from my experience.

Exactly. This infographic maps out the desperate situation in physics teaching.

[Bland Unsight]

Interesting, it's just that this is the second or third thread where you've been apparently hostile for pretty much no good reason that I can fathom.

People disagreeing with you does not represent hostility. You also appear to be setting a very low bar for stalking. As to the fathoming, if you don't want to catch the attention of a passing strangers maybe lay off idly disparaging everybody else's posting. A post like that is going to motivate me to poke a little fun at you. It's a bit wild to suppose the resulting light-hearted mockery is hostile stalking. Don't take yourself so seriously.

'A' level and GCSE physics is all pretty elementary. I doubt that we have a lack of people with the requisite skills and knowledge, we might well lack people with the requisite piece of paper and a willingness to put up with teachers' pay and conditions. IMO that's not a skills shortage.

WTF? jiltedjen introduces the idea of skill shortages. It's not in the article, or the OP, or the post of yours to which I replied, or in my reply to your post. Hence in review, you've taken a pretty mild bit of fun poked at you and fabricated a hostile stalker, (on the basis that this is the second time I've had the temerity to disagree with you). You've then dismissed the key point, which is the lack of people willing to put up with teachers' pay and conditions, as beside the point.

On the basis of your humourlessness and unwillingness to argue the actual point on its merits (as doing so may require you to admit you might be wrong), I am for the moment totally convinced that you are the senior academic you claim to be and not a troll, (if that's any comfort) .

That's the last of the teasing. I'm out.

[frozen_out]

People disagreeing with you does not represent hostility. You also appear to be setting a very low bar for stalking. As to the fathoming, if you don't want to catch the attention of a passing strangers maybe lay off idly disparaging everybody else's posting. A post like that is going to motivate me to poke a little fun at you. It's a bit wild to suppose the resulting light-hearted mockery is hostile stalking. Don't take yourself so seriously.

WTF? jiltedjen introduces the idea of skill shortages. It's not in the article, or the OP, or the post of yours to which I replied, or in my reply to your post. Hence in review, you've taken a pretty mild bit of fun poked at you and fabricated a hostile stalker, (on the basis that this is the second time I've had the temerity to disagree with you). You've then dismissed the key point, which is the lack of people willing to put up with teachers' pay and conditions, as beside the point.

On the basis of your humourlessness and unwillingness to argue the actual point on its merits (as doing so may require you to admit you might be wrong), I am for the moment totally convinced that you are the senior academic you claim to be and not a troll, (if that's any comfort) .

That's the last of the teasing. I'm out.

This is what I don't get though. Why is my post idly disparaging, yet yours is gentle mockery? My post you referred to was a direct response to the claim that pretty much anyone who shops at a standard high street chain is a chav. It's a bizarre point of view, really.

I'm really not a senior academic, I just happen to have a few talented PhD students (only one physicist though) interested enough in the same things as me to devote four years of their life to it.

As it happens you appear to be rather heatedly agreeing with me. We don't lack skills, we lack people with the right pieces of paper who are willing to put up with teaching. I wonder if there's a creative solutiom to that? Maybe abolish the requirement for a postgrad teaching qualification?

[Bland Unsight]

This is what I don't get though. Why is my post idly disparaging, yet yours is gentle mockery? My post you referred to was a direct response to the claim that pretty much anyone who shops at a standard high street chain is a chav. It's a bizarre point of view, really.

The inclusion of the gentleman with the messy hair suggest that I am, at least in part, joking. Where exactly are you giving the reader any indication that you are not in earnest? Also, I was mocking you, hence mockery, where as you were being disparaging, hence disparaging. The qualifier idly I also stand by; "in an aimless or careless way"

Bloody hell, and you're complaining the likes of Asda and TK Maxx are full of Chavs? Anyone shopping at B&M or Home Bargains should really be looking to pick up clothes in Sports Direct. It's like B&M, but with clothes. Or are you a Charity shopper for clothes? Subscribing to the BS HPC meme that you can pick up a fabulous, barely worn Harris Tweed jacket in pretty much any charity shop for about 50p?

Occasionally I'm reminded how utterly bizarre, skewed and miserable the prevailing HPC wisdom can be. It's good for reminding me not to take the place too seriously on anything.

Back to the topic. I can see that there's not going to be much fun to be had here, but for the record...

As it happens you appear to be rather heatedly agreeing with me. We don't lack skills, we lack people with the right pieces of paper who are willing to put up with teaching. I wonder if there's a creative solutiom to that? Maybe abolish the requirement for a postgrad teaching qualification?

(Emphasis added)

and yet...

The article is ********.

Teaching is still massively oversubscribed going by the experience of teachers I know.

(Emphasis added)

I think this is a bit of a waste of your time and mine. You clearly know nothing about teacher shortages and shot from the hip. I am in the game, operating at the sharp end of those shortages. I wished to make the point that in some parts of the country for some subjects there are profound shortages. I have now made that point. It does not matter to me whether you accept it or not. I wished to push back on your earlier incorrect claim that teaching is massively oversubscribed, a claim which you now appear to have forgotten you made.

I'm going to head off to Property118 to get cheered up.

[frozen_out]

The inclusion of the gentleman with the messy hair suggest that I am, at least in part, joking. Where exactly are you giving the reader any indication that you are not in earnest? Also, I was mocking you, hence mockery, where as you were being disparaging, hence disparaging. The qualifier idly I also stand by; "in an aimless or careless way"

Back to the topic. I can see that there's not going to be much fun to be had here, but for the record...

(Emphasis added)

and yet...

(Emphasis added)

I think this is a bit of a waste of your time and mine. You clearly know nothing about teacher shortages and shot from the hip. I am in the game, operating at the sharp end of those shortages. I wished to make the point that in some parts of the country for some subjects there are profound shortages. I have now made that point. It does not matter to me whether you accept it or not. I wished to push back on your earlier incorrect claim that teaching is massively oversubscribed, a claim which you now appear to have forgotten you made.

I'm going to head off to Property118 to get cheered up.

So is there actually a school somewhere that doesn't have a physics teacher?

[Guest eight]

I think this is a bit of a waste of your time and mine. You clearly know nothing about teacher shortages and shot from the hip. I am in the game, operating at the sharp end of those shortages. I wished to make the point that in some parts of the country for some subjects there are profound shortages. I have now made that point. It does not matter to me whether you accept it or not. I wished to push back on your earlier incorrect claim that teaching is massively oversubscribed, a claim which you now appear to have forgotten you made.

Well at least now it's apparent how come you've got so much time on your hands.

[frozen_out]

Well at least now it's apparent how come you've got so much time on your hands.

Stop being so disparaging. Or is this idle mockery? Or just gentle mockery? I can't tell.

What's the HPC groupthink on recruitment consultants? Is it still leeching middlemen? Same circle of hell as estate agents? Or do they occupy the circle above estate agents, but below people who buy clothes in Sports Direct?

[Bland Unsight]

So is there actually a school somewhere that doesn't have a physics teacher?

Yes, according to the Institute of Physics.

It is estimated that less than a fifth of science teachers in UK schools have a physics specialist background, despite the subject making up a third of the science curriculum.

This means that most chemists and biologists will find themselves expected to teach physics to Key Stage 3. Many will also teach it to Key Stage 4 and some even at Key Stage 5. This is due to a chronic shortage of physics teachers, and it is a very sad fact that there are now a number of schools with no physics specialist. However, the government is aware of this fact and is now trying to turn the situation around by promoting subject specialism and recruiting more trainee physics teachers.

(Emphasis added, source)

I had to really push the research envelope on that one, I googled "schools with no physics teachers"

This is also telling, though a little out of date now.

In a series of papers Smithers and Robinson (2005, 2006 and 2007a) have quantified the impact of the shortage. They found that 8.7 per cent of comprehensive schools with sixth forms did not offer A-level physics. Of the schools without sixth forms, nearly a quarter had no teacher who had studied physics to any level at university. They showed that teacher qualifications were second only to pupil ability as a predictor of performance in physics. Shortages led to wellq ualified teachers being distributed across schools very unevenly so the opportunity young people had of discovering whether physics was for them depended very much on the school they attended. The proportion of the age cohort taking A-level physics had dropped from 5.9 per cent in 1990 to 3.9 per cent in 1995, which indicates that there are young people capable of taking physics to a high level who are not doing so.

(Emphasis added, source)