Winter is here

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We are heading into the perfect storm. Students numbers are growing, and there aren't enough teachers.

For the second year in the UK, secondary (high) school numbers have grown, and it's expected that over the next 8 years there will be a 19% rise in these numbers, with over 600,000 additional students. The sudden increase in births from 2002 onwards is largely responsible for this trend, and this was an expected rise. However, at the same time, funding for schools (regardless of the recent announcement for additional funding - which is simply being siphoned from elsewhere in the education budget - a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul) is paltry, and hardly makes a dent in the urgent problems we have in our British schools. There is a teacher shortage, and it's worsening.

A recent report from the National Union of Teachers reveals some disturbing statistics.  Recruitment of new teachers is a growing problem. Maths teacher specialists are down to 84% and computing specialists are only at 68% of the capacity required. In many secondary schools, students are now being taught mathematics by teachers who are not qualified to do so. Retention of teachers is also a problem according to the report. In 2016, the UK government confirmed that 30% of teachers who had joined the profession in 2010 had left within five years. The report holds many other equally worrying statistics which are beyond the scope of this discussion.

What can be done? There are some solutions to these problems. The British government should urgently fund the building of new schools, and should do so with money from elsewhere than the already stretched education budget. If they can find £1billion to buy the support of another party to prop up a minority government then they can find more. The British government can also reduce (or preferably eliminate) the tuition fees for students for those wishing to study to become a teacher. Many prospective trainees are simply dissuaded from training as a teacher because of the huge debts they will run up as a university student. Alternatively, the government could decide to offset the tuition fees by offering some form of bursary.

By far the biggest problem though, is the failure to retain teachers in the profession. Training a teacher is an expensive business, so retaining their expertise and knowledge once they qualify should be the main priority. Teachers are currently surveilled and scrutinised beyond decent boundaries. They are weighed down with bureaucracy and work extraordinarily long hours, mainly spent at home marking exercise books and tests to try to keep up with the punishing assessment regimes the government imposes on all schools.

If as a society, we don't address these problems soon, education in the UK will be stifled, children will be deprived of a good education, and we will all suffer. The UK government must urgently intervene, because winter is here.


Winter is here by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.