My partner has just started her probationary year as a primary school teacher in Scotland. She has been up since 2am stressing about the amount of work she has to do. I think she could be a great teacher but she is really struggling with the workload. Today she will be in the school from approximately 7am-6pm and she would have stayed longer if not for our son needing collected from his diving lesson. She did a good six hours of work yesterday and will probably try and do some work this evening and every other evening this week. So how do other folks manage it? Everybody with any understanding of teaching says that it will get easier but that seems a long way away at the moment.

The first year is like that unfortunately. Most people say it never gets easier but it sort of does. In my opinion it takes about 4/5 years before the workload seems manageable and you are comfortable with your teaching.

It is one of those jobs where you never win and your to do list is as long as a piece of string. Experience allows you to triage those jobs and be comfortable with the fact that some things just will never get done.

That said if you wrap your head around it being such a full on job it is very rewarding and a lot of fun at times. I certainly don’t think I will be a teacher forever (am 30 and have done this for 5 years now) but at the moment I am hard pressed to say what I will do in the future. Although setting up my own cinema sounds fun!

I hope she doesn’t burn out and that the actual job itself if enjoyable for her to make the workload worthwhile.

My missus has just packed in full time teaching after 25 years and she has said its got worse in the last 5 years or so, she now does supply work and is much happier and has no stress. Its a proffesion she discourages anyone from entering. The government dont run flashy ads on tv to recruit teachers for fun, its a tough stressfull job with very long hours and its our wonderful leaders that have made it that way by putting baffoons like Gove in who piles on the work and pisses everyone off. If you want my advice tell your missus to get out of it!

Her hours in the last 5 years have been similar to what your OA works now, personaly imho I think thats how it will be for a while until something drastic changes, which wont happen anytime soon unless the whole teaching proffesion band together and tell said idiots in power where to stick all their targets etc.

Although setting up my own cinema sounds fun!

Have you got a spare bedroom?

The first year is like that unfortunately. Most people say it never gets easier but it sort of does. In my opinion it takes about 4/5 years before the workload seems manageable and you are comfortable with your teaching.

It is one of those jobs where you never win and your to do list is as long as a piece of string. Experience allows you to triage those jobs and be comfortable with the fact that some things just will never get done.
This is pretty damn accurate. My wife is a teacher, first 2 years were hell, very tough, lots of stress, lots of tears. She’s now 8 years in and whilst I suspect the stress is still there, her ability to manage it, work with the time constraints and more importantly prioritise means its not as bad at all.

Married to a teacher. Pretty much agree with all the above, it is extremely hard to start with but does get more manageable.

It is one profession I would not recommend. Too much meddling by successive ministers more concerned with their own career progression and a growing number of stroppy unsupportive parents. The press are usually pretty good at damning teachers too.

@slowoldman. No spare room but looking at the BFI guide for community cinema sounds fun!

Sounds like a lot of other jobs. Mrs Nobeer, who’s a nurse, quite often comes home from a 12 hour shift at least an hour later than she should do, and with her uneaten lunch and dinner still in her bag.

Then spends another couple of hours fretting and worrying that she’s made a drugs error.

It does get better,she should contact other probationers and do a wee bit of group chat in case they are all making the same courses up. It has got worse in the last 5 years,and isn’t going to get better. We are the “blob” remember.

A lot depends upon your school. I’ve been protected from a lot of the crap that schools make teachers do because we’re post-16, but it seems to be creeping in.

I qualified as a primary teacher, did four terms and then left vowing never to set foot in a classroom again; I was in a dodgy school with weak management and feral kids, which wasn’t great for my NQT year. By accident, I ended up teaching in a sixth form college, where I’ve been for the last 13 years.

There seems to be a mismatch between what Ofsted say (no lesson plans needed, no need for huge amounts of written feedback) and what senior leadership in some schools say that Ofsted want (ridiculously details lesson plans for every lesson and copious written feedback on every piece of work).

I’ve just quit after a few years as general science, A’ level biology, physics and maths teacher.

The hours are not worth my health and I’m rubbish on 5 to 6 hours sleep.
The kids were great though. There is no support for teachers and poorly behaved kids are ruining it for the others but nothing – no punishment or expelled. Maybe one day off for punching a teacher in the face. Every move is watched and scrutinised by seniors who undermine and never worked in the real world/stiff as deadwood lol.

You end up working and planning during holidays and schools closing rooms to save money!

I’m happy with working in the finance sector in London for double my wages and half my hours.
The commute is a pain, and I leave at 6-7 pm with early starts but do what I want on the weekends.

Bankers seemed stress too but I’m finding it really easy and have time to do what I want for a few hours each evening (no kids) but teaching I couldn’t even ride and worked during my holidays.

Might go self employed next year.

Teachers don’t get the respect, wages or work/life balance.

Teachers don’t get the respect, wages or work/life balance

In a nutshell!

My brother became a teacher 7 years ago, having previously worked in electronics and communications. He teaches science at what is a pretty rough school in a run down post industrial area, and he loves it, much prefers it to working in industry.

The first couple of years were very hard, and he still has hard times, but the successes and the good days far exceed the rewards that most of achieve working in industry.

I don’t want to try and say it is an easy job, it can clearly be very difficult, but I also do believe that as a profession teaching has an unrealistic low view of itself compared with the outside world.

Not worth the hassle to teach someone else kids if they don’t want to be there 😯

Weak management seem to be terrified of OFSTED so they pile on the demands for endless unscientific data and the pointlessness of a lot of this stuff adds massively to stress. People don’t mind working hard if they’re building up their resources and techniques to make the future a bit more relaxed and manageable but when the demands change every year you realise what an utter waste of energy it has been. If you stay in teaching long enough the ‘new’ ideas get circulated every few years in a slightly different guise and a new politician’s name attached to them. Gove was a cut above the rest in terms of asinine sniping and demoralising teachers to the extent that now there is a crisis in recruitment.
MrsMC goes round about 100 schools in an advisory capacity and she has never known a year for such staff loss and turnover. She has to spend forever updating her database. Plus she comes home reporting about teachers she has known and respected for ages talking about how they can’t wait to pack it in.
Having said all of that I’m just about to do a maternity cover for 6 months after 18 months of blissful and productive early retirement. But it’s only A level teaching in a rural post-16 college, so quite different from the demands on primary teachers, plus it’s a subject I taught and examined for 35 years. However, I’ve already done 25 hours of unpaid work for it. That’s what it’s like.

This;

There seems to be a mismatch between what Ofsted say (no lesson plans needed, no need for huge amounts of written feedback) and what senior leadership in some schools say that Ofsted want (ridiculously details lesson plans for every lesson and copious written feedback on every piece of work)

Culture of fear and a lack of trust in us as a profession seems to be the root cause.

I think I have had enough with the profession then I get involved in discussions on it and realise how much I actually care about education.

Successive governments (since the 80s) have failed to assign teachers the value they deserve.

That has trickled down to the parents now and nobody respects them, least of all the kids.

Being a good teacher in a “challenging” (essentially, full of kids on free school meals/poor) school is hard, and not many people can cope.

My wife is a department head in a “good” school (i.e. mostly middle class, all girls, catholic). She still spends a significant amount of time dealing with discipline issues.
Also, whilst she has a wealth of resources from the 10+ years she’s spent teaching, she still spent 6 hours yesterday lesson planning for a new A-Level syllabus.

A friend of mine works at a ‘good’ school in a middle class area. He is currently being made to teach 4 different A-levels and has exam classes at GCSE from 2 different exam boards.

There is the job being tough by its nature and then there is making it tough for the sake of it!

Eventually when ‘they’ realise they have broken the system so much they will walk away and let teachers just get on with it.

I hope.

I don’t think they will ever let teachers ‘get on with it’. It’s a process of both de-skilling and micro management so that eventually you won’t have to be qualified or particularly knowledgeable to follow the programme/syllabus, wages will be pushed down further and classrooms will be full of unemployed teachers from other parts of the world. Except, that is, in private schools.

Replace teachers with robots and online tutorials.

Now where did I leave that robotics/Java for dummies book?

The quicker we accept education for non private schools is cr4p and underfunded for teachers/students/parents the happier everyone will be 😆

In Scotland we have had CfE to replace old exams and entirely new course specs in the last 5 years. On track with learning,a data inputting service that makes you input a lesson plan for every child you teach.It was meant to be the other way about,but they realised you couldn’t allocate classes of pupils to the lessons,but hey ho! Launched it anyway. You submit materials for the new exams to be “prior verified” as the SQA requests,and they are using the stuff you are putting in to actually build a resource bank of materials. That is a kicker bearing in mind every resource you have made and used needs changed to meet the new cours specs….Any jobs Frankenstein? 😀
That is the nuts and bolts,and not dealing with the increase in so called tracking and monitoring which involves writing a report on every pupil every month.

Blows me away how badly-run education is, how much work teachers put in only for something to change and their workload increase again, time after time after time. It’s why I get so annoyed on the “taking kids out of school for cheap holidays in term time” threads.

Its a proffesion she discourages anyone from entering

I think if you’ll find almost any profession has a lot of these people… Who declare (having never worked in any other environment) that the job is terrible and people shouldn’t enter it. Often saying it’s not like it used to be. Doctors, nurses, dentists, architects, solicitors, accountants, fire fighters, police officers, etc…

Probably the worst people to go to for advice therefore are the people who should be most supportive and nurturing – the established people in the staff room.

My mother was a teacher. She put me off it with this attitude when I showed interest in studying it after school. I didn’t realise then what I do now. Perhaps if I was keen enough I would have ignored her and followed it. Perhaps if I did I would be telling others how bad it is.

Teachers don’t get the respect, wages or work/life balance.

This – in a nutshell!

My wife is a science teacher in a secondary school, has been a teacher for 15 years.

I’m a head of Maths (I’m off today as I’m booked into hospital tomorrow and have had some nasty prep medications to take today).

It gets easier after 4-5 years, I’m in my 7th year now…but the one thing that is so draining compared with other jobs is the lack of downtime.

I get in at 7:30am and by 8:05am it’s started.. you then literally rarely get a second to breath until 3:15pm. I often have my lunch then and then start again working until about 6pm

It’s not so long hours in that sense for me, but barely getting a minute to take a break during the day is really tiring mentally and physically.

That said, I’d not change it. Pays well when you’ve been going a while and have extra responsibility, plus 13 weeks off is nothing to sniff at (yes we work in the holidays, but you can still have a lot more time away than 99% of other folk).

And the best bit for me is the upside of the intensity.. you are never watching the clock… Quite the opposite, you are constantly looking at it thinking “crap I’ve got 5 minutes to get this done before whatever else starts”. The day flies by every day!.

Its not all doom and gloom, and for me the second year of being qualified was by far the hardest. You get used to it and also more efficient the longer you do the job.

Being in different schools can be very different, I’d advise any teacher having a tough time to experience different management teams above them as they all have very different approaches.

I’ve packed in teaching after10 years teaching secondary science.

No regrets about leaving- says it all!

Bits were good, bits were bad, I was stressed for significant parts of the year.

Current job seems much nicer.

One word – Management.
Or to put it more bluntly, Tyranny.
Ruins everything it touches.

One word – Management.
Or to put it more bluntly, Tyranny.
Ruins everything it touches.

People who are good teachers are not necessarily good managers, or indeed business people which is where the “Head” role is going now for academies.

Mrs Dubleyou’s head is clueless on budgets etc.

I’ve been a:

postman, industrial cleaner, environment officer/geologist, business man, manager, call center bod, data entry bod, computer bod, ski man, grape picker, UK science teacher, ELF teacher, holiday rep, garage mechanic, ski man, precision driver, barman… .

There are only two on that list that I wouldn’t do again and only one in which I was confronted with violent, racist scum who hated me because of what I was – a teacher and white. The swear filter prevents me from adding anything useful about the headmaster.

Choose your school very carefully or get out.

I asked a probationer in the school I work recently how things were going.
He described it in one word “relentless” which I thought was very apt.

The day certainly passes pretty damn quick. Personally it is getting a little more manageable, but I do think of quitting often. I am learning how to be more efficient, what has the biggest impact, and not too take too much of it home.
I spend about 2+ hours extra a day in school most days, there is a lot of pressure due to “evidence” and loads of unnecessary administration.

. On track with learning,a data inputting service that makes you input a lesson plan for every child you teach.

This isn’t a national thing in Scotland and I’ve never heard of it. Where are you teaching?

I once worked in a government organisation jam pack full of ex-teachers who suprisngly were all trying to get people to become teachers. Washed out, egocentric, lacking all common sense and wouldn’t know what to do with a PC if it told them.

A******les to a man.

Mrs M left teaching from primary in a “special measures” school after being hounded out by a nasty piece of work replacement head who has since left with the school still in “special measures”. The school is in a sink hole town with high unemployment etc and all the schools in the area are currently failing/special measures due to the unrealistic targets being set. She loved teaching but the workload was immense and relentless with planning, meetings, marking, levelling and reports. 60-70hr weeks continuously.

The only original teachers left at her school are just hanging on till they get a full pension in a few years time. The boil in the bag NQT they drafted in to replace my wife last half a term before buggering off saying there must be more to life than workIng like this!

A******les to a man.

Aristotles?

My other half is a primary school teacher, has been for more than ten years now. She leaves for work at half seven, gets home at about six. Usually has her tea and can then be working until ten/eleven pm on her laptop. She takes Saturday off but is back on the laptop Sunday evening, she wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I’m a cop and we do work shifts and get days off cancelled but at least when I get home that’s it!

I feel like I work fairly hard as a teacher but nothing like what some others are saying.

Although there are issues aplenty in Scotland it sounds like the workload is still a little saner.

[/quote]Teachers don’t get the respect, wages or work/life balance.

No different to doctors then, who on the whole are in a worse off position on all of the above

Sounds like a lot of other jobs. Mrs NobeerGruntfuttock, who’s a nurse, quite often comes home from a 12 hour shift at least an hour later than she should do, and with her uneaten lunch and dinner still in her bag.

This. Her daughter is a teacher & seems to enjoy the job!

I, like Frankenstein and several others on here it would seem, have taught for three years and am currently on a ‘sabbatical’ while I assess my options. I’m also a science teacher and worked in other sectors for 10 years before making the move into education. I went in eyes wide open but have still been shocked by the workload, the relentless pressures and the appalling lack of respect from some quarters.

The tipping point for me was when we adopted in April this year. I already have one child but the thought of not ever getting to know this new addition was too much. I loved much about the job but didn’t want to risk my relationship with my own children while educating those of others! I’m lucky in that I have other skills and experience on my CV to fall back on. I still remain in education, but on a freelance basis that doesn’t require 70-80 hour weeks.

Many of my colleagues in school were sadly looking at their options, but for some who had gone into teaching straight from Uni there was little else that they could reliably side step into. The notice periods (at the end of the term you are in) are very restrictive when looking for alternative jobs outside of education without breaking a contract and letting your class down. I regularly read about the predicted teacher shortage and agree it is inevitable – making the pressure on those left even greater. Two science teachers (from a dept of only eight) have already left since the start of this academic year in my old school. Poorly equipped NQTs who have been dropped into high pressure jobs in already under staffed departments.

I’d struggle to recommend it as a profession to anyone at the moment. I know some schools are better than others, and certainly some subjects are less intense than science, but still. Those that had been there a while spoke of the downward spiral in recent years but it’s such a shame that what can be such a fantastic job at times become too much of sacrifice for me and my own family.

I’m a teacher, my wife is a teacher. It is really hard work for both of us. In the first couple of years of teaching it was incredibly hard work. Rather than having a rant about it here are some tips or suggestions that I would offer to help new teachers get through the early days without burning out:

1. Recognise that your own well-being and your relationships with loved ones, family and friends are far more important than your job so make time for yourself and those that you care for.

2. As a teacher you are only (a small) part of a life-long process of learning so don’t feel you have to ‘solve it all’ for the children you teach.

3. You role as a teacher is to help guide, encourage and inspire, not to perform and provide the answer to every question. Children will often be able to do more than they realise given the opportunity but all too often we (as teachers) don’t think there is time so we end up trying to make things easier by helping/intervening and end up creating a rod for own backs as children become dependent rather than independent.

4. Don’t set more homework than you can get marked and back to your pupils in good time. This may be less relevant at Primary level, I’m not sure.

5. Make out of work leisure commitments that have nothing to do with teaching that you keep to such as going out for a meal, the cinema etc. Again I appreciate that this may be difficult with young children but if you can get wider family/friends to support this then do!

6. If and when you can commute by bike then do! It is a great way to wake up to the day and to unwind from a long one in the classroom.

In my experience there is always more that you could do to prepare your lessons so that they are the best, most exciting, engaging educational extravaganzas that any child could ever want for but before you put that extra 6 hours of work in at the weekend reflect on what it is that gives you your ‘spark’ as a person as this is what makes you a good teacher. Don’t let a potentially misplaced sense of duty and responsibility to your profession allow this to become extinguished. Good luck!