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Why should teachers have a pay rise?

Schools in England are struggling to recruit English teachers, with hundreds still trying to fill vacancies in time for September, as headteachers warn they have reached crisis point.

They warn that if the government does not tackle low pay, overwork and the pressure of inspections by Ofsted, growing teacher shortages will mean spiralling class sizes and children falling behind because they do not have the right specialist subject knowledge.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/17/schools-across-england-face-unprecedented-struggle-to-hire-english-teachers-as-recruitment-crisis-grows
 
ks.234 said:
Schools in England are struggling to recruit English teachers, with hundreds still trying to fill vacancies in time for September, as headteachers warn they have reached crisis point.
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Do they mean English teachers (nationality) or teachers of English? Nothing pedantic here as you can be both (as I was) or either, though a foreign national teaching English is counter-intuitive, however fluent they are.

If this paucity or personnel in the teaching of English is true, it's the very first time in 50 years that I've come across it. Maths, science and even languages, yes, but English?. Wonder if they'd still employ octogenarians (but I wouldn't like the literature content );). Why don't they advertise for/recruit E.F.L. teachers/ They're well up grammatically on many school teachers of English and are practised, probably in teaching children as well as adults. Teaching pay would dwarf E.F.L. pay as well; always has.
 
Mike Reed said:
Do they mean English teachers (nationality) or teachers of English? Nothing pedantic here as you can be both (as I was) or either, though a foreign national teaching English is counter-intuitive, however fluent they are.

If this paucity or personnel in the teaching of English is true, it's the very first time in 50 years that I've come across it. Maths, science and even languages, yes, but English?. Wonder if they'd still employ octogenarians (but I wouldn't like the literature content );). Why don't they advertise for/recruit E.F.L. teachers/ They're well up grammatically on many school teachers of English and are practised, probably in teaching children as well as adults. Teaching pay would dwarf E.F.L. pay as well; always has.
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Read the article.
It makes it clear.
Teachers of English.
 
Bob McC said:
Read the article.
It makes it clear.
Teachers of English.
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I have now (though cookie panel obstructs somewhat) and it uses an unfamiliar preposition in this context. Not 'teachers OF English' but 'teachers FOR English'. Regardless of your acerbic post, Bob, there was no confusion on my part but my point about nationality in teaching English holds. Only in teaching languages can this ambiguous description hold, as far as I can see.
 
gingermrkettle said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-66673971
Don't need as many teachers if you don't have any school buildings to teach in, the policy is joined up even if the building materials aren't.
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That's a very valid point.
Before we moved to our present house (35 yrs ago) a secondary school had been built in the village. As there was decent provision locally it was deemed surplus to requirements so the existing primary school became a Library and Village Hall and the new school was used for primary age kids. It was unnecessarily large and thus expensive to maintain. Inevitably, I suppose, economies were made and the school began to deteriorate.
Years on the local population has grown and now siblings are being separated as the village school (still crumbling) cannot accommodate the numbers, it's no longer big enough.
Still, there's a posh prep school just up the road so the rich kids won't suffer.
 
Mike Reed said:
Do they mean English teachers (nationality) or teachers of English? Nothing pedantic here as you can be both (as I was) or either, though a foreign national teaching English is counter-intuitive, however fluent they are.

If this paucity or personnel in the teaching of English is true, it's the very first time in 50 years that I've come across it. Maths, science and even languages, yes, but English?. Wonder if they'd still employ octogenarians (but I wouldn't like the literature content );). Why don't they advertise for/recruit E.F.L. teachers/ They're well up grammatically on many school teachers of English and are practised, probably in teaching children as well as adults. Teaching pay would dwarf E.F.L. pay as well; always has.
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Teachers of English. The article is saying the English has become a shortage subject much like the other STEM subjects.

The only reason that there is not so much a shortage in Arts subjects is because Michael Gove made them dispensable, so they have become, er, dispensable. The jobs aren’t there anymore

The bald arsed fact is that the Tories have only been in interrupted for 13 of the last 50 years in their plan to decimate education as much as they have health. Labour do not propose another interruption.

As to your last couple of points, on the one about about employing people without a teaching qualification, then there has been much deregulation of the statutory requirement for a qualification to teach. So, yeah, give it an go. Someone will pay you!

On the second, pay is only a part of the problem. An increasing part of the problem is stress induced by bullying and workload. I don’t blame head teachers, they are themselves under increasing stress, but workload has become the means by which too many teachers are bullied.

I blame the Secretaries of State for Education.
 
ks.234 said:
As to your last couple of points, on the one about about employing people without a teaching qualification,
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E.F.L. teachers, at least those accredited to The British Council, which is virtually all school-based teachers, need at least a CELTA qualification. This can be acquired over a longish period or (as in my case), a one month highly concentrated full-time course incl. practical hands-on stuff, the intensity of which I never experienced in my 3 year Cert .Ed. a generation before (an overly long sinecure by comparison).

What the E.F.L. teacher may, or indeed, may not lack in knowledge of literature, is made up for by knowledge of the building blocks of language; i.e. grammar and the essential skills in listening, speaking and writing. Something sadly lacking at the chalk-face for quite a time in state education.
 
Mike Reed said:
E.F.L. teachers, at least those accredited to The British Council, which is virtually all school-based teachers, need at least a CELTA qualification. This can be acquired over a longish period or (as in my case), a one month highly concentrated full-time course incl. practical hands-on stuff, the intensity of which I never experienced in my 3 year Cert .Ed. a generation before (an overly long sinecure by comparison).

What the E.F.L. teacher may, or indeed, may not lack in knowledge of literature, is made up for by knowledge of the building blocks of language; i.e. grammar and the essential skills in listening, speaking and writing. Something sadly lacking at the chalk-face for quite a time in state education.
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I think you might find teaching English in a bog standard Secondary School a bit different to teach English as a foreign language. What experience of teaching English in a Secondary School leads you to say that teaching the building blocks of English is “sadly lacking” in state education? I have not come across such a “lack” in my own experience.
 
ks.234 said:
I think you might find teaching English in a bog standard Secondary School a bit different to teach English as a foreign language.
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Indeed it is, but the adaptation of chalk-face delivery shouldn't be as difficult and state school teachers changing to E.F.L.

ks.234 said:
What experience of teaching English in a Secondary School leads you to say that teaching the building blocks of English is “sadly lacking” in state education?
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11 years teaching in a boys' sec. mod. plus a further 10/11 years as a supply teacher in almost every kind of school except Grammar and private. However, that was a generation or more ago, so I may be out of date. I did do a one term intensive refresher course 21 years ago, which placed me in my local comp. (circa 1800 pupils) for the equivalent of 10 full days; I spent some time in the English department, though also enjoyed geography and history lessons, ending up in maths, for some inexplicable reason.

Experience limited to Thanet area and Norwich, though, as nationwide per capita supply teaching hadn't caught on.:D
 
I retired as a headteacher nearly 20 years ago.
I would never now comment on how schools are run or the quality of teaching in them now for fear of appearing antediluvian.
 
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Well, I may be biased by dint of my career history, but I've noticed the decline in both oracy and grammatically correct reporting/printed material etc. Much of this may well be a by-product of digital communication over the past two decades or so and nothing to do with consistency or quality of teaching, except that those younger teachers I both hear (on radio/TV) and read about don't seem to have an adequate grasp of our language sufficient to pass on those skills.

Furthermore, I simply couldn't read my 6 days a week newspaper (down to one now) without finding many crass linguistic errors, even in the editorial! Maybe lack of proof-reading, maybe relying on error-correction; who knows? There has, without doubt though, been a steady decline in this field over the 40+ years of subscribing.
 
Mike Reed said:
Well, I may be biased by dint of my career history, but I've noticed the decline in both oracy and grammatically correct reporting/printed material etc. Much of this may well be a by-product of digital communication over the past two decades or so and nothing to do with consistency or quality of teaching, except that those younger teachers I both hear (on radio/TV) and read about don't seem to have an adequate grasp of our language sufficient to pass on those skills.

Furthermore, I simply couldn't read my 6 days a week newspaper (down to one now) without finding many crass linguistic errors, even in the editorial! Maybe lack of proof-reading, maybe relying on error-correction; who knows? There has, without doubt though, been a steady decline in this field over the 40+ years of subscribing.
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Or maybe language has changed in the 80ish years you’ve roamed the planet? Nothing stays the same forever.
 
lordsummit said:
Or maybe language has changed in the 80ish years you’ve roamed the planet?
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Indeed it has; however, changes are virtually all in vocabulary and expressions, not grammar. Apart from the McDonald's inspired 'I'm loving it', which may eventually effect permanent change on the stative case of verbs such as 'like' 'love', etc., punctuation and the bare bones of grammatical construction don't change, as in fact they can't, really.
 
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