I was a teacher. I am no longer a teacher though I still work in the education sector.
The job can be incredibly rewarding, yet despite that, one in 10 of all qualified teachers left the state-funded sector in the academic year 2021-22. There is also an increase in the number of new teachers leaving the sector after one year - from 12.4 per cent in 2020 to 12.8 per cent in 2021. Given the investment that applicants to teaching make to qualify, these retention figures are deeply concerning.
I really enjoy teaching children, but the demands of teaching can be alarmingly heavy. At the time of leaving teaching in the UK, I was head of PE, and Pupil Premium lead across two schools in a federation. I also led Y3 and Y4 in those two schools. I was paid 27k a year. This was a rural school with a small number of teachers, and under constant budget pressure. The final straw was the inability to provide additional support to two children in my class. One was in the first percentile of all readers, and had an IQ of 70, while the other was a danger to other children and could not go to the toilet alone. With no additional support, nor classroom TA, the situation was unmanageable. The LA would not provide additional funding because I could not evidence the delivery of sufficient additional support and results - a requirement to justify additional funding. I could not provide that because of the lack of additional classroom support!
I generally worked a 60 hour week. I planned lessons at weekends and marked approximately 60 books every evening. I ran after-school clubs and regularly took children to sports events. In addition, the increasing demands to 'sell schools' resulted in regular social media activity and school website updates. This, in turn, meant more demanding parents who felt more 'involved' in school life. The 2 hours of planning time received per week were generally eaten into by pressured colleagues filling their own objectives. WhatsApp messages about planning and admin were regularly sent up to 9pm.
I left the UK to teach internationally. I received a similar salary in a country with a cost of living approximately half that of the UK. I received 7 hours per week of uninterrupted planning time and there was zero contact at weekends. Within the seven hours, I was able to plan all lessons thoroughly and complete any outstanding admin task. I was head of English, and the coordinator of the lower primary school - I had a similar seniority to the UK. Subject specialists taught languages, PE and music. It was a radically different experience with levels of support light-years away from my UK experience.
Teachers in the UK will have many experiences to tell, both positive and negative, but the fact is that we are not recruiting enough teachers to fill roles, and we are losing too many teachers. Together, that is a terrible recipe. Things have to change.
