Teaching is in crisis. There is an enormous shortage of qualified staff in the state system, especially in subjects such as physics and maths. There are also serious budget problems. Teachers are all too familiar with these issues, but are parents aware of what is happening to their children’s education?
I work at an academy where the priorities are generally – thankfully – in the right place. The students are fantastic and the staff are experienced and incredible. But that hasn’t saved us. We have a six-figure deficit. The financial outlook for next year is even bleaker, thanks to frozen income from government, on top of increased costs from pensions and national insurance contributions.
As a result, we will not be replacing many of the teaching staff who are leaving. In my department, we lost six teachers this summer and have employed just one for the new year. Appointing that person was difficult enough – the pool of decent applicants was very small, as a result of the exodus from the profession.
This means that class sizes are increasing; some now have as many as 36 pupils. We can just about fit enough tables and chairs, but such a congested classroom brings increased challenges for checking on students’ progress and managing behaviour. Lessons are having to be taught by teachers outside of their specialist subjects, and non-teaching staff are increasingly being drafted in to fill gaps.
At sixth form, there has been a reduction in subject choices and teaching time: new sixth-formers used to get 40 hours of contact time per fortnight, but this will now fall to 27 hours.
Meanwhile, many positions of responsibility throughout the school are not being filled. Our department is now without a curriculum leader. That role includes writing schemes of work (the overviews that ensure each teacher covers what is needed) – a task that is becoming increasingly difficult in the wake of enormous changes to GCSEs and A-levels. This work still needs to be done and will now fall to others who are not given time (or money) for it.
Our non-teaching staff were told to expect redundancies and, on the final day of the summer term, many were told that they would not be coming back. There were tears, and anger. Included in this group was the only careers adviser for our multi-academy trust. I regularly sent students to this person – who was always extremely busy and overworked – and they invariably came back with more ideas and more confidence about the paths that were open to them.
The redundancies also removed three of the four librarians employed across our group of schools. Aside from the obvious loaning and chasing up of books, these invaluable staff would organise reference boxes of texts for lessons, advise students on suitable reading material, supervise pupils who had been removed from courses and read one-to-one with children who struggled with literacy.
The library provided a safe place; it was always packed at break and lunch. The librarians would open up before school and stay open afterwards, providing a place to study and read, which was vital for those students who don’t find it easy to do this at home. I don’t know what will happen to them now.
The increased pressure on staff is already damaging wellbeing. I have seen more teachers signed off as a result of stress and mental health issues in the last year than throughout my many years of teaching.
Student mental health is also an extremely serious concern – and it will not be helped by poorer teacher-to-pupil ratios. Our student counsellor is currently unable to manage the number of referrals they receive; they say that they are only able to “firefight”.
But these problems are not unique to my school. This is about all state schools. And that means all parents need to be aware.
I urge every parent to ask the following questions of their child’s school:
- What was the average class size last year and what will it be this year?
- How many teachers did you employ last year and how many teachers will you be employing this year?
- Will my child be taught by non-specialist teachers or non-teaching staff?
If you find the answers worrying, you’re not alone.
But don’t just address concerns to school leaders – they are doing the very best they can in a difficult situation. Contact your local MP, as well as the Department for Education (DfE).
Teachers’ concerns have been ignored and dismissed, and strikes seem to have entrenched the position of the DfE, with former education secretary Nicky Morgan describing the July action as “unnecessary and harmful”.
If the powers that be will not listen to staff, maybe they will listen to another knowledgeable, motivated and large group – parents.
We need to put pressure on the government to provide schools with sufficient funds, to train sufficient teachers and to retain the ones who are there already there. The DfE needs to realise that other members of staff are vital in supporting and complementing teachers, and providing students with the first-class education they deserve.
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