Teachers totally unable to do their jobs properly

That fits well with my experience.

Outdated school books meant I spent an hour or so at the photocopier every single day of the week, and quite often two hours an evening preparing lessons in what was supposed to be my free time.

I know my DD often works in her own time. My sister gave up teaching as she was so fed up having to work in the evenings and weekends.

Our elder DGD is in the same situation. She has 32 year 6 pupils at a high achieving school. She is single. She spends every evening, weekend and school holiday working. Completely unacceptable and unrealistic.

One of my daughter’s joined the growing number of excellent young teachers who left 8 years post qualified. She had her 2nd child and decided leaving home at 7am, returning at 6, then planning/marking from 8 till whenever didn’t meet her children’s needs, or hers.

Two daughters teaching and completely run off their feet. Some work to be done most evenings and preparation at the weekends.

My experience as a Scottish secondary school teacher of English was that I went into the profession knowing I would have a heavy marking workload. It was manageable in the 90s. It was thought that newer technology would make reporting easier however that was not the case. As well as termly reports to parents which had to be in depth, we also had to assess pupils levels in a range of skills every month; predict abilities, share them with pupils and senior management; justify why we said they weren't achieving the same in English as in pe or maths or art etc. Every week there was onerous paperwork to do, on top of marking and preparation. Senior management couldn't understand the stress we were working under and how long it takes to mark a Higher English essay because they all taught practical subjects which assessed performance and none of them taught classes of more than 15, often smaller, while we had 30 in a higher class and 30 in a National 5 class. I had no time at school to mark. It was all done at home. Then pupils could send work to me by email. Frequently I had pupils send me essays online at night who were furious that it wasn't marked by the next day. And the demands by pastoral staff were endless. Reports on how individual pupils were performing/behaving, university appraisals with predictions, references etc. I loved teaching. But everything else became a drudge and took away from my preparation and marking time.

Is that title really true? Teachers are unable to do their jobs properly? What a sweeping condemnation of the whole profession. The link is from Australia and I wasn’t able to read the whole thing without subscribing.
There is too much specifically detailed preparation. There are too many changes in marking techniques, not just from the government but in different schools. There are sometimes curriculum changes.
If the point is that there is too little time to deal with all that and still have a work-life balance then I totally agree with what other posters have put.
However, teachers I know make time to do all this and teach properly, sometimes to the detriment of their personal lives. Don’t you think headlines like this make a wonderful opening for the public and government to slate teachers again?

One of the reasons for this is the vast quantity of totally unnecessary "assessment" and testing going on.

Teachers know which of their pupils are excelling, which are ticking along fine, which are struggling with a subject. They do not need to waste their time on all this target-setting and assessment - it simply tells them what they already know and its only purpose is to be able to wave it under the OfSted inspector's nose.

Luckygirl13
Absolutely! You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it or improve progress by constant testing.

Luckygirl, so well said.

Mollygo, ask any teacher if they have the time to do a good job. The only time I've been able to say hand on heart that I've prepared, marked, planned and assessed properly has been in private schools.

State ed students are disadvantaged because their teachers have out of control, unmanageable workloads.

A friend of mine had a good saying for this.

He said: We should stop digging children up to see if they're growing.

We all acknowledge the problem

Who though, is going to do something about it? Because I don’t believe this nonsense benefits the majority of our children.
So who is the beneficiary of all these targets and tests and curriculum dictats and WHY - as I often read or hear are the standards of literacy, after at least 11 years schooling, so poor when compared to other European countries.

We need a new constitution/legislation whereby Education cannot be tampered with at the whim of any “here today and gone tomorrow” politicians

The same should apply to the NHS.
Way too much “tinkering” by amateurs.

Lesson over??‍?

GJ, I have and I do. The problem is not whether I or they teach properly but whether they feel they have time to do everything without it impinging on their personal lives.
Teaching properly is not, except perhaps for the newer teachers, whether your planning and marking are perfect, but whether your teaching uses your assessment of what the children have learnt and provides support and challenge for the differing needs of the children. The teachers I work with do feel they are doing that and their results support that fact.
Do I agree that the workload is ridiculous? Yes.
Do I think the workload means no teachers are teaching properly? No. I think that’s an inaccurate generalisation.

The constant assessing etc and number crunching reporting etc is bonkers. Predicting grades and. Reporting progress is fine but the amount of evidence etc required is not. Honestly I can say that with experience good teachers can tell you which students are working well, being lazy, (sorry…underachieving), making progress, panicking, having emotional issues, plus pretty accurately what grade gcse they will get !

One of the daftest things is the proscriptive “marking” rules.
Mark once. With comments. Student responds . Mark/comment again. In 32 exercise books….. for Lord knows how many teaching groups.

I think most teachers actually do do their job properly because they really care, and because they know their pupils are relying on them to deliver a good education.
I agree media headlines like the OP do not help, and anyway teaching isn't a "job", it's a vocation.

I did my job properly from my point of view and actually in the opinion of my students and their parents,
However I did not jump,through all the hoops laid out by senior management/government initiatives so would probably be accused of not doing it properly. If you did every single thing expected you could not get through the week.

There needs to be a better bank of free resources, especially in academies. Especially when teachers need to differentiate learning for mixed classes. Creating worksheets or slide shows or any of the time consuming things they do is ridiculous when they could all be in one place and easily obtainable.

Why isn't there an educational library of some kind. It's ridiculous and it's no wonder teachers struggle

For primary there are endless banks of resources. Some that schools subscribe to, like Twinkl, or Hamilton Trust, some that are free like TES, Oak Academy, Red Rose Maths.
They are useful, but a teacher who knows the class knows that all activities and worksheets need checking to see if they match the way they plan to teach the lesson, tweaking to fit the differentiation for their children and arranging or discussing with any support staff they have in the classroom. Even something like a Prowise presentation or a PowerPoint needs viewing and sometimes tweaking to make its use really effective.

Who do you think pays Molly?

I've seen teachers told if they wanted a story book they needed to put a hand in their own pocket, let alone Twinkl etc

White rose maths videos are so boring.

Online resources are good, they could be better. A government set curriculum with at least a solid foundation of what is needed to teach it would be the dream and leave teachers so much time for adapting it to children's needs and for monitoring pupil progress. An actual bank of physical resources would be amazing. So many children who need support with resources that are too expensive for a lot of schools but could be much cheaper to hire when needed.

I left and went into social work. Much easier. Pay just as bad,though.

You may have found social work ‘much easier’ nanna8 but that doesn’t mean it’s so. The stresses, expectations and pressures are different but ‘easier’ , I’m not convinced.

Who pays? Currently, school pays for Twinkl, Discovery Education and a reading program, though we’re just trialling a new one. Our local authority also has an excellent bank of free plans and resources that we use in the way you describe, without it being so prescriptive that there is no freedom for teachers to create their own resources.
Online resources are good, they could be better. Who wouldn’t agree, but who decides what is better? Even at cluster meetings when discussion turns to resources, different teachers rate or slate what’s available.
I’m not disagreeing with the idea of a bank of resources. Many teachers, including me already use them. Many, including me also create them and share them. Researching resources and adapting them is sometimes yet another job.
A government set curriculum? We already have that. Resources designed by whichever team they have chosen, which would probably change every time we got a new government? As long as their use is not obligatory, no problem.
Paying to hire resources? We already pay to borrow books and other resources from the library service, just for when we need them. Paying to hire other resources? What did you have in mind?

Yes, I’ve spent my own money on story books and resources like those from Belair or resources for running extra-curricular clubs before now and it is unfair.