Schools face record-high teacher vacancies as unions warn of a deepening recruitment crisis—can government plans tackle workload pressures, pay issues, and restore stability to Britain’s classrooms?
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00:00When I was growing up, a very long time ago, teaching was seen to be a very revered profession.
00:06I suspect now that you ask the average teacher, do you feel valued?
00:12And the answer is probably not.
00:14It's a profession where, of course, you're under a lot of pressure, and that was always
00:18the case.
00:19But of course, you've got to hit targets in terms of getting these young people through,
00:24which of course is a good thing.
00:25You're under pressure from the national curriculum to teach to that.
00:29You're also scrutinized in many different ways, and of course, we hear lots of issues
00:34of off-step inspections and the stress that puts on teachers, and all of this in a profession
00:40where you start off in your mid-20s, well, mid-20s in terms of age, or early 20s perhaps
00:46if you come straight from university at 21, but mid-£20,000.
00:52So the salary is not exactly significant.
00:54I know that there are lots of incentives, and indeed, in terms of the problem of teaching,
00:59it's attracting them into the sciences, because what happens, understandably, is people who
01:04come out with numerical qualifications, they are being seduced to go into occupations where
01:10the starting salary is a lot higher without all of the pressure.
01:15But there is an argument, and indeed, I've heard this, I used to be a governor, and you
01:19get this that all teachers, they only work between nine and a half feet.
01:23Well, that's not the case.
01:24There is no doubt that there is an issue of behaviour in certain schools, and that is
01:30indeed part of the disincentive of wanting to become a teacher, because you are always
01:34treading this very thin line between trying to keep discipline, and perhaps going a little
01:40too hard on certain pupils, but what can you do if you've got unruly classes, and indeed,
01:47we've probably all been in, every viewer will have remembered a teacher who lost control.
01:51That's pretty dreadful.
01:52But of course, the fact is, though, if a child makes a sort of complaint, that can be career-ending,
01:57and indeed, I've heard of situations where sort of teachers have been sort of so traumatised
02:01by it, they have left the profession.
02:03So there's a big issue here.
02:05What we've got to also remember is that sort of, you know, we've got kids who are sort
02:07of coming into sort of the system, maybe there's an issue with sort of parenting, that's a
02:12sort of wider societal thing, and indeed, also, you talk to teachers of sort of primary
02:16school children who've come in post-lockdown, when you're getting sort of four and five
02:21year olds coming to school who, you know, have no sort of social skills and can't even
02:26go to the toilet on their own, indeed, some of them are wearing nappies, there is a big
02:29problem.