All-time high 40,000 teachers quit sector blighted by privatisation and unnecessary inspections
The teaching sector saw the biggest exodus in its history last year, with just under one in eleven qualified teachers quitting the profession entirely – a staggering 40,000 loss. Including retirements, the number rose to a fraction under 44,000, one in ten.
The number of head teachers leaving teaching was also at a record high and the number of teachers leaving after only a year of qualified teaching also grew.
Overall teacher numbers are slightly up since 2010, by 6% – but pupil numbers grew by 11% in the same period, driving up class sizes and contributing to one of the many growing stresses on those who teach and aim to inspire our children, alongside privatisation in the form of forced academisation, unnecessary and punitive inspections, massive increases in the numbers of children attending school hungry because of burgeoning poverty driven by government callousness and corporate greed, relentless cuts to resources, Conservative contempt and other factors. The government has missed its teacher recruitment target in all but one year of the last decade.
Tory Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said something meaningless and misleading in response, betraying yet more of her lack of understanding of, concern for and connection with the vastly important sector she is supposed to be running.
The National Education Union will strike on a further two days early next month – 5 and 7 July – and its joint general secretaries have slammed Keegan for not even bothering to try to negotiate, an extension of the Tories’ reckless disregard for industrial relations and the nation’s wellbeing that has been seen grotesquely in the rail workers’ dispute.
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But Covid….Ukraine…Corbyn…El Nino…Some talentless twunt (not) on the TV…
Education – as both a profession and social asset – is being destroyed by avowed neoliberals, Starmer’s centrists are key players in this. Thanks SW for reporting yet more information that the ideological billionaires’ MSM need us to not know .
Sadly, it’s not just Education that they intend to destroy: Health and social services are, arguably, more debilitated by them already. It’s not just herr blair’s ‘market forces’ reforms by NewLabor1 and extreme NHS under funding by the proper tories, it’s also “The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity” (see here) and systemic attacks on our freedoms and health under the guise of ‘the biggest lie in world history’.
qwertboi – https://www.globalresearch.ca/🙄
I see you are still lost down your 🐰🕳️, will you ever escape?
I see you are still firmly entrenched right up keef’s arse hole, resisting all attempts at eviction.
Gobshite.
Can’t think what the “globalresearch” link has to do with teachers quitting, or anything else for that matter. Still each to his own.
Education provision in this country started to go downhill in 1988, with the Great Education Ripoff Act, and every government since has continued the assault. Certainly pay, paper work, long hours and inspections by people who have no understanding of how varied children are in the way they learn plays a large part in the exodus. It seems to me, though, that there is an underlying factor that is never mentioned, and that is the removal of autonomy from teachers. They have been turned into virtual machines in the mass production system that goes under the name of Education, but which is the very antithesis of education. It is “training”.
Teachers are now another brick in the wall.
goldbach – “Can’t think what the “globalresearch” link has to do with teachers quitting, or anything else for that matter. Still each to his own.”
That’s easy, qwertboi linked to the infamous globalresearch conspiracy site in his comment.
Ah, where it says “see here”?
Rather than go back to your feud, wouldn’t it be useful to give your perspective on the loss of so many teachers?
Fantastic question goldbach.
Wee Stevie’s take ought to be most enlightening, seeing as he was allegedly headhunted by three local schools on his paradise island…😙🎵
Toffee – Who are you trying to emulate ToryBoy, Boris?
goldbach – Who can blame them, the Tories have shown nothing but contempt and disdain for the teaching profession.
Toffee – Who are you trying to emulate ToryBoy, Boris?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ba/e9/0a/bae90a4987765865bfbc851bc7777962.jpg
“Who can blame them, the Tories have shown nothing but contempt and disdain for the teaching profession.” ……………………………….. as did the 1997 – 2010 Labour governments.
goldbach – Did they really?🤔
Do you have any evidence to support your assertions?
goldbach – I’ll take that as a NO then.
Borstals and they were for pot washers. Nothing wrong with that true. But these were the screws pots.
Many teachers are now employed on ‘short-term’ casualised term-time only contracts, which the teacher’s unions seem to accept.