I am starting teacher training and so have been visiting classrooms to get some experience of what to expect. While the teachers I met were very welcoming and never made me feel like I was burdening them, I could easily see they were being overworked and pressure was only ever being built up. I only ever hear bad news in regards to teaching: high percentage of trainees and NQTs leaving, mental health problems i.e. depression, and a startling amount of contempt displayed by those in charge.
#teaching: is this indicative of your own experiences? Is it all really doom and gloom?
I've never heard about this Secret Teacher column on the Telegraph before, so thanks for that! I've had student teachers in the past, and yes, it's a lot of work for the supervising teacher. If the student is good, then the classes roll very nicely without a lot of issues, but even then, there's still mentorship that takes place on a daily basis. If the student isn't that great, however... imagine trying to teach your classes, help a student teach his classes, and get prepared for fixing the disaster once the student is gone. Not fun. Being a teacher is great. Being a supervising teacher for a practicum student is... well, it's important to pay it forward, as I had fantastic supervising teachers while I was in undergrad, but it can be very, very challenging.
Teaching is in a sad place at the moment in the UK, dominated by tedious paper work which don't really have much to do with the actual meat-and-veg of teaching
I've seen a lot of friends from high school and university go in to teaching and more than half leave after a year or two. Whilst one anecdote doesn't equal data, it's telling when you know lots of people who have similar experiences with their friendship groups. Whilst undoubtedly some of it can be written off to "people-not-knowing-what-they're-getting-into", I know in quite a few cases people who had extensive class room experience pre-PGCE leaving once the reality of paper work and lack of time to support any students, whether they're the best and brightest or those struggling. Mostly, this situation just makes me sad. I really wouldn't be where I am today without the influence of many great teachers (even though I went to a "bad" school) who pushed, challenged and encouraged me, opening my eyes to opportunities I would never have encountered from mine and my parents' background. If we're losing this, we're losing social mobility and opportunities for kids. Edit: also, I've just seen this article that you posted a couple of days ago, which is deeply disturbing. Especially the comments from the previous Ofsted inspector towards the end.updating the classroom risk assessments or rewriting schemes of work (again) so that French definitely includes teaching “fundamental British values” (seriously).
You know, one of these days I'll find a happy article about teaching to post ;) I think the statistic is something like 72% of all trainee and NQTs are leaving, it's a ridiculously huge number that is backed up anecdotally by friends and family. My theory is the government are trying to privatise all schools, so by pushing these high workloads and shifting targets they can point at public schools and loudly proclaim they aren't working. Heck, free schools and turning into an academy are already halfway towards privatisation and the government is heavily pushing those at the moment.