More Good News

There was an interesting article on the TES website regarding teacher suicides: click here to read

It says that in 2008 and 2009 the rate of teacher suicides went up by 80% according to the Office for National Statistics, with the number of teachers rising from 35 to 63 in 12 months. It doesn't sound that many (although you could argue that 1 is too many) and I'm sure that politicians would spin the information in that way, but the fact is that numbers are on the increase. Another article in the TES magazine concerning teacher suicide apparently amounted to a huge response from readers.

The Teacher Support Network has been increasingly busy in the last couple of years, with call numbers doubling between 2010 and 2011. Stories along the lines of the teacher who set themselves on fire due to exam result anxiety, the teacher who walked out of school one break and threw themselves under a bus, and various others.

So why is this? There are various thoughts in the article and in the comments below, but I thought I'd add my own.

Teachers have various sources of stress:

1. Workload - this can include merely planning lessons, although this becomes more problematic and time-consuming when being observed either internally by a line manager/colleague or by Ofsted. Whichever way it's being done, the lesson is judged based upon Ofsted's current ideals as to what makes a decent lesson and what doesn't. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the current fad is, and actually it's unlikely that Ofsted know themselves. Often, and this adds to teacher stress, the lesson is judged based upon the observer's own prejudices/pre-conceptions, so unless you are a carbon copy of the observer and in their good books, you will struggle to gain a decent grade whatever you do. It's happened to me on a couple of occasions in a couple of different schools, with the only justification for giving me satisfactory being "I didn't like the way you did it/I wouldn't have done it like that" rather than "you did it badly because...". This boils down to confusion in education as to what is good and what is not, and that is Ofsted/government's fault, bearing in mind that teachers' jobs depend on these lesson gradings. I am constantly hearing about teachers spending from 7.30am to 6pm at school and then doing more at home. If this is the case, and I have no reason to doubt the stories, then this is beyond the call of duty. The constant pressure to reinvent the wheel in order to make the curriculum more accessible and interesting for a more and more spoon fed generation.
2. Control/Behaviour - this is made all the worse when a school's leadership is weak or unsupportive. It also depends on the teacher, their personality, and often how long they have been at the school or what sort of reputation they have with the students. Public perception of teachers is at rock-bottom due to media representation of teachers as deviants (I can think of relatively recent Coronation Street and Hollyoaks storylines immediately, but I'm sure that there are more) alongside the seemingly constant belittling of the profession by members of the Department for Education.
3. Pay - teachers' pay should never have been moaned about by teachers as it's advertised so obviously. The problem is that with pay freezes and increased pension contributions, teachers may be finding it difficult to make ends meet - teachers now have something to moan about in the monetary sense. With the increased workload, there is less time to fit in any extra work, so no way to make up the shortfall.
4. Ofsted - an inspection was cited as the reason a headteacher killed themselves i  the article, and those in the profession would understand the stress placed upon all staff when the phone call comes.

Ultimately, teacher depression boils down to lack of support in teachers from various places: government Ofsted, parents (and therefore their children) and due to being told that teachers are lazy and incompetent by the others, the public in general.

Be a teacher - it's so rewarding.