Personal: What's wrong with Teachers

I do apologise but the title is mostly miss-leading.


Teachers are under extreme pressure to get Students with grades, results, Ofsted inspection all while dealing with day to day lives.


What issues can a Student have that is out of everyone's power?

• A family loss.
• Illness (from serious or general problems).
• Abuse.
• Poverty.
• Health, from food to lack of exercise.
• Behaviour.
• Parents who don't care.
• Always the Schools fault.

The Teachers will be expected to get those Students through an educational system to getting their predicted grades if not better.  The Government though will simply not care about that nor that the above can impact attendance.


The Government changes the Curriculum, goal posts and teaching level?

• ICT Changes from day to day general IT to "coding".
• English changes to teach "British Literature".
• 1 Year to prep for these while still doing day to day work.
• Telling Schools they should employ trainee teachers.
• VLE requirement, suddenly cancelled
• BSF rollover, suddenly cancelled
• Ofsted changes in requirements.
• Longer hours
• More Students
• More classes
• No extra budgets, buildings and classrooms - Instead cut backs.
• New Government with new changes

Under paid, under valued and as mentioned before it's always the Schools fault.  Ever sat and watched a Student insist they are innocent, they "swear down" and the Parent 100% believes their child.  Not until you get CCTV proof that little Johnny was indeed responsible.  This actually happens more often than most people think.


A Teacher should be Teaching, this is a generic thing I use for anyone including us in IT.  We are IT Support and we should be doing that.  Would a parent be happy if their child was being taught English by an IT Technician who was fresh out of School? No.


So what do Teachers do?

• Lesson plan (usually months in advance and record it for Cover).
• Evaluate Students often (including recording it all down review).
• Marking Students work (all of it)
• Teach all day every day (with minimal free periods that usually get taken for Cover).
• Deal with 25-30 Students per lesson with 5-6 lessons a day Monday to Friday.
• Parent evenings and events.
• Training (from child protection, to new policies, procedures and general improvements) - Usually a few periods a week at most.
• Work daily long hours

Summer Holidays off?  Correction.  I've been told by a few heads over the years that the holiday time is actually when the above work should be completed.  This includes any tracking, marking and lesson planning.  Teachers are expected to do the average 25-32 days off a year same as any profession (give or take a few days).  Some teachers will choose to work late during the week so they get the half terms off.  You have to remember that teachers can't book time off during term time.


Are they Perfect? The bad bits - after all they are human
Not perfect, you will see in other posts some teachers are just the same as any other professional job.  You have the good, the bad and the nutty.  You have those who treat you the same as the Government treats them - like dirt.  You have teachers who are very ambitious, selfish and don't actually just teach but want to show off new ideas that don't actually benefit teaching. 


A major issue Teachers have especially young ones is their career path:

• School
• College
• University
• Teaching

This path provides little experience in anything else, Schools are responsible for millions of pounds (yes millions) which is why they are generally employing School manages/business managers to offload.  It's why finance officers tend to be also experience in business management.  After all why would a head teacher have experience in budgets? until they hit deputy head.


They can be very poor with IT, know nothing about it but claim they are the best qualified to say what tool to use.  You wouldn't trust some one who can't drive, knows nothing about cars to claim they are best qualified to say what car is suited for the jobs? No.  I once had to help deal with a situation of a teacher lying, although wasn't a serious incident in fact it was very minor but because this teacher had lied - it resulted in their sacking.  I've had teachers openly tell me how to do my job, what my job is - regardless of my job description.  It's not my job to be responsible for externally provided websites - use Facebook as an example.  If Facebook went offline, what's that got to do with any School let alone the IT techies?  Some teachers over the years have acted towards me like I am a teaching assistant, admin assistant or even a cleaner/site staff.


Then again, I have heard some stories from teachers over the years including heads and deputies.  Good stories and Bad stories, I know some teachers today that are absolutely lovely to talk to.  Always apologetic if they make a mistake, always kind and caring towards us.


So it goes to show there are some really nice, great teachers but there are some poor nuts and bolts around.