‘A 10-year-old told me to p--- off’: the bleak reality of being a teacher in the UK
On my first day working as a supply teacher in a medium-sized town in the north of England, a Year One child entered the classroom through an open window of the Year Five classroom where I was teaching, using the fire escape lever to let himself in. As I tried to establish who he was and how to get him back to his class, he turned out drawers, pulled displays off walls and hit a few of the children in the class.
I have no training in the physical handling of violent children (read – restraint), so I had to call for support. The same child later returned with a sidekick and suggested to him that they kick me, while he pulled my hair.
On day two, I was on the receiving end of a torrent of verbal abuse from a teenage girl when I asked if she could wait until break time before using the bathroom. “It’ll be your f------ fault if I bleed out everywhere because you won’t let me f------ go.” I (of course) let her go.
On my third day, when the students saw that it was a sub, they ignored the seating plan and spent the class throwing paper at each other, fixing fake eyelashes and chatting – totally ignoring my attempts to teach them.
On day four, a child purposefully set off the fire alarm. Day five: a child tried to self harm with classroom scissors. Day six: the class was so noisy I gave up trying to make myself heard. On day seven, a 10-year-old child told me to p--- off. I sent him to the headteacher and he arrived back three minutes later. It turned out that there was a line out of the door of very similar children, many who are at risk of permanent exclusion by the time they’re 10 years old.
Most mornings, across many different schools, I see hungry children who aren’t fed properly at home being given toast at break time while clusters of other children clamour for a piece, since they’ve not had breakfast either.
And, at every school, I’ve sat in the staffroom and listened to a barrage of negativity from tired, frustrated, demoralised teachers and support staff grumbling about pointless meetings, changes to behaviour plans, unrealistic planning expectations and performance management. Every staffroom I’ve visited is peppered with posters advertising helplines for staff seeking support. One Facebook chat group I’ve found myself perusing, called Life after Teaching, is full of ex-teachers citing workload, mental ill-health, stress, depression and anxiety as the reason for their departure.
So I am entirely unsurprised by a recent survey showing that nearly half of school leaders in England sought support for their mental health or wellbeing in the past year. To say that teacher morale is low is an understatement. No one could properly function with this level of stress.
It is all a very different landscape from the schools in England I worked at 16 years ago when I first qualified as a teacher. And it’s thrown into ever sharper relief by school life abroad, which I know well after recently returning from teaching overseas for 12 years, as a head of year and assistant headteacher in British International schools.
I started supply teaching five months ago as a way to navigate my way back into the UK education system. But in just a few months, I have found myself demoralised, exhausted and seriously questioning whether I can do this any more.
Since my return, the most noticeable change, and the topic that is discussed most in staffrooms and online teacher discussion groups, is the change in pupil behaviour. Closely linked is the huge increase in the diagnosis of special educational needs. At every school I visit, there are so many more children wearing ear defenders, holding fidget toys or sensory cushions – and exhibiting a total lack of attention and an inability to concentrate for more than short bursts.
There are probably multiple reasons for these changes. Use of technology is an obvious contributing factor; smartphones and highly addictive games have eroded all of our concentration spans, but clearly the effects on the developing brain are profound. One result is that, unless teaching is delivered in a similarly high octane fast-moving way, children switch off. There has also been – for better or worse – a rise in psychiatric diagnoses, which adds additional pressure for teachers who are balancing multiple needs in the classroom.
But a huge change I have noticed is the sanctity of the working bond between parent and teacher, which was dealt a fatal blow by Covid. Attendance is a massive battle: schools across the country are struggling to contend with parent engagement. Advice is being disseminated in schools about how to approach families and parents “with sensitivity” about getting their children back into school. Reading at home is also something profoundly lacking. Various children have told me their parents are just too busy. Perhaps the information about early stories being shared and a love of reading at home being the primary predictors of academic success at GCSE level need reaffirming to families.
I’m influenced by my most recent posting, which was in Asia. There, post-pandemic parents returned to school in droves, keen and ready to attend workshops, find out how to parent their children towards academic success and, crucially, how to rebuild the home/school partnership that is key to educational success.
If I make suggestions to families here about the benefits of, for example, reading daily at home – let alone raise the topic of a child swearing – I fear I would be the subject of complaint rather than respect, which is fundamental among Asian parents when it comes to teachers’ knowledge and the educational institution.
Most days, whatever the school, disruptive behaviour, aggression and violence is the norm, as is swearing, racism, police and social worker visits, parent hostility, poor attendance and classes with such a wide spread of learning knowledge and ability that the best I can achieve is crowd control. Some days have been such a litany of disruptions and disharmony that I have been left feeling I’ve done little more than herd cats. I have returned home rejected, baffled and with low professional self-esteem, questioning whether I’m still cut out to be a teacher.
Did I use the word bleak yet? Because that’s the word that overwhelmingly describes my experience of teaching in the UK at the moment.
One of the pressures schools are facing is the need to maximise budgets, so paying for expensive supply cover is often low on the list. Instead, “cover supervisors” are routinely used, especially in large secondary schools. This is often a non-qualified teacher, probably a teaching assistant used to working in schools. They move around the school during the week to cover teacher admin time and for staff absence. How much teaching and learning goes on during those classes is anyone’s guess.
Higher-level teaching assistants are also used to cover staff absence but schools with tight budgets join classes together for the day with one teacher and hopefully a teaching assistant. Imagine suddenly having 60 or so children to teach for the day; how can you possibly even get their attention or control the crowd, let alone teach, assess or manage the specific needs of such a large group? And, learning aside, does that sound like the kind of environment designed to promote good mental health?
Comparison to international schools
It’s all very much at odds with the international school sector, where there is a constant discussion around the importance of leaders looking after themselves. A bit like putting on your own seatbelt before you help others, it’s understood that if you’re not looking after your own emotional health, you can’t support someone else’s when they need it. This is discussed at conferences, money is set aside for training and most international senior leaders I know have access to a coach with whom to discuss ideas before making significant decisions that affect the lives of many young people in their care as well as staff and the wider school community.
Here in the UK there would be no time to be coached into thinking strategically, because the needs in the schools are so great that leaders are constantly operating at firefighter level. They simply would not have time to make strategic plans, to visit classes, to engage with reading, to see their coach or mentor in order to write a school development plan or to prepare for Ofsted.
Ah yes, we couldn’t discuss mental health without discussing the impact of Ofsted. Most teachers I know agree that Ofsted is not a support network aimed at helping schools to improve, but a system designed to trip teachers up. In a recent school I was in, an extremely capable, intelligent teacher was reduced to tears at the inspectors’ question about her subject which she didn’t even understand on account of it not being well phrased in plain, jargon-free English. She couldn’t even begin to do justice to the answer and discuss all the excellent things she is doing to further the teaching and learning of history in her school. A school with the behavioural issues I’ve seen over the past few months will be dealing with so many complex issues that it will only ever get the Ofsted status of “requires improvement”, regardless of the fantastic work they are doing on trying to maintain teaching and keep children safe.
A friend recently asked if I had encountered these issues in international schools. There are, of course, children with special educational needs, perhaps even at risk of suicide, in those institutions, neglected by families and caught between cultures. The fundamental difference is that there is money to work towards solutions. Here, education is simply not prioritised and funded accordingly and schools are picking up the tab. And thinking about the mental health crisis among school chiefs, can anyone really be surprised?
