If you’re looking at becoming a teacher in Scotland, it’s probably best not to talk to current teachers about it.
In what the EIS teaching union is calling a “shocking survey” (although the results probably aren’t much of a shock to most of us), 70 per cent of teachers said that they would not recommend teaching as a career.
The poll also shows that more than 75 per cent of teachers frequently feel stressed about their workload, with 16.5 per cent saying they feel stressed “all the time”. Again, for many, this will hardly come as new information.
The survey follows a freedom of information request that revealed the extent of the teacher shortage and recruitment problems faced by Scottish schools.
One secondary vacancy for a technical education teacher at Ellon Academy in Aberdeenshire was advertised 14 times, with just four applications submitted throughout the process.
Also in Aberdeenshire, primary teacher vacancies in Banff were advertised seven and nine times, while at Aboyne Academy, a chemistry teacher post was advertised six times.
The problem isn’t going unrecognised by the powers that be.
Ken Muir, chief executive of the General Teaching Council for Scotland, has appealed to teachers to “talk up teaching” to help recruitment, and it was recently revealed by Tes Scotland that the government spent over £500,000 marketing teaching as a career. This was a whopping 60 times more than the amount that it spent in 2015-16, when the cost was just £8,600.
Yet teachers have taken to Twitter to say that until workload and pay are addressed, the attraction of teaching will remain weak.One user said: “I love my job but my goodness, I don’t see the attraction of teaching any more. Pay is waaaaaaay below teachers relative across the world (& that’s just average pay). The workload is unmanageable. @scotgov does not listen. All under @theSNP government.”
Another tweeted: “And yet I’d still try to talk folk out of it. Want to be sworn at? Feel stressed? Lie about levels? Have no pay increases because you’re experienced? I’ve looked at being a train guard...better pay.”
EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said: “It is this toxic combination of soaring workload and declining pay that has created the current recruitment and retention crisis facing Scottish education.”
A Scottish government spokeswoman said: “We have undertaken a range of actions to reduce teacher workload, acting to clarify and simplify the curriculum framework and to remove unnecessary bureaucracy, while the education reforms being implemented by this government will also create new opportunities for teachers to develop their careers.”
