Regrets, I've Had A Few...

It's that time of the year again, just after the resignation deadline has passed, that I wonder whether I should have tried a bit harder to find a new job. Plenty of my colleagues, in fact more than normal, have decided to move onto pastures new (both in and out of teaching), but I am not one of those. The place will be very different next year, but my classroom will be the same, at least initially.

I must admit that I've sent out a record number of applications this year, but only to jobs that are possibly beyond me on paper. This you may think that naïve and a waste of my time, but I've always lived by the philosophy "if you don't ask, you don't get". Now I don't appear to have "got" so far, but that hasn't left me hugely downhearted, for the reasons below.

I know that teachers in my subject, at least competent ones (which I, perhaps incorrectly, consider myself to be), are fairly few and far between; they have been for years and this situation is unlikely to change in the near future, if at all. Not even the gleaming and government lauded TeachFirst will rectify the shortage of staff or potential staff as there are just too many spaces to fill. Whatever your feelings regarding TeachFirst (and I'm sure other, similar "charities" will spring up with government backing in the near future), people who enrol are filling vacancies that would otherwise be very difficult to fill, and no matter how long these people remain in the profession, some at the very least must do a good job, and some must continue to work in education.

My qualifications aren't great. I am the first to admit that I took a relatively easy option regarding my degree (a degree I genuinely enjoyed, I hasten to add, despite lacking sufficient talent to really excel in it), and I had to spend extra time at university to bring myself up to speed in my current teaching subject in which I had decnt A Levels, but I now have over a decade of teaching experience and many other positives on my CV. I have held posts of responsibility, but they didn't really "float my boat" if I'm honest. It wasn't that I did them badly, in fact far from it (I'm not boasting at this point). I was given a Head of Department job temporarily which was offered to me permanently but I didn't accept. The reason for this is that I actually quite like teaching, and the further up the food chain you go, the less teaching you do. The problem is that I am applying for positions with no management and potential employers wonder why. The current obsession with promotion is held against those who don't necessarily want it; I look at the TeachFirst logo at this point.

 

 

Some people might not want to get out of the classroom - ever thought of that? However weird you may think that is, there are some of us out there. It's not that I think I couldn't do a decent job higher up the food chain, I just have no ambition to be there. Is it really a crime not to want to be a manager? Perhaps not, but rightly or wrongly, potential employers are suspicious.

 

There's also the fact that I see no point moving for the sake of do so; my experience is that most schools are essentially the same. Starting a new school is stressful and it takes a while to establish yourself and learn new ropes, so I will only move to a "better" school. These schools get many more applicants, many of whom look far better on paper than I do, so I fully expect knock backs.

 

The problem is that in the current climate if I don't move I will be forced to leave teaching. It's not that I don't enjoy it (not all the time, admittedly), but it is becoming unbearable in certain sectors. You need a good department head, which, fortunately I have, but no leader can't shield everyone from all the faeces being dropped on educators from various heights at present.

 

I know that I'm not alone in this feeling either. People, even in the current economic climate are leaving the profession in their droves. Although, with the rise in demand for private tutors due to increasing exam pressure on students, and decreasing attention paid in classrooms by them too, maybe this is what these ex-teachers are now doing.

 

Ultimately it boils down to the fact that if I don't find something else to do or a different place in which to teach soon, I can't be held accountable for my actions. I think the main regret I have is that I'm beginning to think that becoming a teacher in the first place was a mistake.







The Working Class Are Not Taking Degrees

A new study has suggested that the numbers of school leavers from the working class who go on to university is not growing at anywhere near the rate that the numbers from middle classes is. Just hold the thought that people have been paid to come up with this stuff.

I have a basic understanding of society and would suggest that working class families generally have less income than middle class families. The cost of university is rising and from September 2012 many universities will charge students £9000 per year for the privilege of having a place at their establishment, with no guarantee that that young person will secure a better job than his mates who didn't bother with university. The average 3 year course with fees, living expenses and anything else once can think of will amount to a spend (or should I say "borrow") of around £40-50,000, unless the student becomes a hermit outside of lecture and seminar time, living off the land. Even if they did that, they'd still be around £30,000 in debt by the end.

If I were a young person from a working class family I think I'd pass up the opportunity, don't you. In fact I'm middle class (in theory) and I wouldn't encourage anyone to go to university who isn't going to do a worthwhile degree, and by that I mean, avoid subjects that may well be interesting, but ultimately have little use. For some reason anthropology springs to mind, which is probably unfair on anthropologists around the world, but I may have been checking out the wrong press, but I haven't noticed too many vacancies for an anthropologist in the well paid job section.

There's also the issue of what you think you might get in your degree. If it's lower than a 2:1 I wouldn't bother. Graduates are ten-a-penny in the job world; you are better off getting some experience in work, and if you're lucky, getting paid whilst doing it.

This will have a knock-on effect to the likes of teaching and nursing, professions that require a degree or equivalent. The greed of the universities has made these, not that well paid jobs, even less desirable as you could end up paying off your university debts throughout your thirty plus year career. Unless a rich relative dies of course - morbid, but true I'm afraid.

It's the sort of article and study that I usually ignore, but this one just made me angry as those who've compiled this statement of the obvious have probably been paid a lot of money to do so - more than a teacher or a nurse at any rate.