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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

    updating the classroom risk assessments or rewriting schemes of work (again) so that French definitely includes teaching “fundamental British values” (seriously).

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.