Latest news with #educationCrisis
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
The local council trying to recruit a teacher for more than six years
A local council has been trying to recruit a teacher for a remote island primary school for more than six years, according to new figures. The Scottish Liberal Democrats said data they uncovered shows that local authorities have had to readvertise more than 1,350 teaching posts in the last two years. This includes a primary school teacher position on Papa Westray – one of the smallest islands in Orkney – which, at the time the request for information was made, had been vacant since the end of March 2019. Figures released by councils show 692 teaching positions had to be readvertised in 2022-23, with a further 665 posts needed to be advertised again in 2023-24. The Lib Dems said the data, uncovered using freedom of information laws, shows Moray Council has had to readvertise 252 teaching roles over the past two years, while Aberdeen has had to readvertise 206, Shetland 90, and Argyll and Bute 70. Highland Council has had to readvertise 62 teaching posts, according to the data, just ahead of Dumfries and Galloway where the total was 61. In addition, the party noted that Western Isles Council has advertised a PE teacher role nine times, while a post for a home economics teacher in Aberdeen was advertised six times – with East Ayrshire Council also adverting a teaching post six times. Lib Dem education spokesman Willie Rennie said action is needed to 'make teaching an attractive role if we are to tackle these shortfalls'. He said: 'Qualified teachers are enduring years of short-term, zero hours contracts yet some schools are advertising roles over and over again without success. 'This data suggests that there are acute shortages in rural areas and in key subjects like maths. 'Terrible workforce planning has resulted in missed opportunities for so many young people and so many teachers too. If we want every young person to reach their potential, they need teachers who can inform and inspire.' He said the Lib Dems would introduce three-year packages for probationer teachers 'who are willing to take on hard-to-fill roles', and would also bring in 'teacher premiums' in a bid to 'reward the best teachers in schools with the greatest need'. However he warned: 'No-one believes education is high up the SNP's agenda. That's why we need a change of government to get Scottish education back to its best.' A spokesperson for local government body Cosla accepted there are 'long standing recruitment and retention challenges in remote, rural and island areas, and in some secondary school subjects'. The spokesperson said: 'Local authorities work hard to fill vacancies to meet the needs of learners in all areas of Scotland, but there are challenges. 'For example, we know that newly qualified teachers tend to seek posts within the central belt of Scotland. 'Many of the areas which struggle to recruit teachers are beautiful and exciting areas of the country to work in, with unique opportunities for learning and development. 'Cosla and Scottish Government have committed to working together on medium and long-term joint workforce planning, taking into account the importance of responding to issues in a way which addresses differing local needs.' A Scottish Government spokesperson said: 'The number of teachers in Scotland's classrooms has increased by more than 2,500 over the past decade as a result of direct funding from the Scottish Government, with the number in permanent posts remaining stable at more than 80% over this period. 'However, we are working hard to ensure that teaching remains an attractive profession, with Scotland's teachers continuing to be the best paid in the UK, and our teaching bursary scheme provides funding to career-changers wishing to undertake a teaching degree in the hardest to fill subjects. 'Ministers have been clear they are laser-focused on improving education and supporting Scotland's teachers. That is why we are providing councils with £186.5 million this year to increase teacher numbers, and why ministers continue to engage regularly with local government and teaching unions. 'The Education Secretary also met School Leaders Scotland this week and agreed to host a roundtable with them, the General Teaching Council for Scotland, Cosla and other professional associations to discuss challenges around teacher recruitment in more detail.'
Irish Times
27-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
No problem in principal
Sir, -John McHugh surprisingly states that 'The role of principal is no longer seen as attractive or sustainable, and this poses a threat to the quality and continuity of school leadership in the country.' ('It is a great honour to be school principal – but the role is no longer sustainable', Education, May 26th ). It is surprising because there no evidence of a recruitment crisis for school principals. On the contrary these well-paid, permanent jobs are highly sought after and any vacancies that arise are promptly filled. By comparison there is a long running, and deepening, crisis in teacher recruitment. This is unarguably the single biggest threat to the quality and continuity of education (including school leadership) in Ireland. A principal and the school s/he leads can only be successful when they are able to recruit the necessary personnel. READ MORE At present it's a lack of teachers, not principals, which is threatening our educational system. –Yours, etc, SEAN KEAVNEY, Dublin 15.
Times
25-05-2025
- Times
Teachers going on strike over pupils acting like ‘feral cats'
For ten years, Jorge Pashler loved being a science teacher at a comprehensive school in a deprived suburb of Ipswich not far from where he grew up. But the Cambridge University graduate is reluctantly leaving Westbourne Academy for another school in July following persistent abusive and disruptive behaviour from pupils. 'You get quite a few classes where the respectful relationship that existed in the past has broken down. As much as you disliked your teacher, you would still call them Sir and you wouldn't swear at them,' Pashler, 32, said. 'You feel like you put a lot of effort in and there are some amazing kids here, but you go home and you feel a bit rubbish. I've had enough of going home and feeling sad.' Last week, he and 50 colleagues at Westbourne Academy took the unusual step of going on strike over pupils' poor behaviour, which included swearing at teachers, throwing chairs, posting offensive videos of staff on social media, making homophobic and sexist comments, and disrupting lessons. On Monday teachers at a school in Liverpool also started strike action because of 'dangerous pupil behaviour'. In January, teachers at a school in Scotland threatened to walk out, saying they regularly faced swearing and violence. Staff at a school in Wales went on strike for two days last October. A survey of 5,800 teachers across the country last month found that more than 80 per cent say pupil behaviour has worsened in the past year. Twenty per cent have been hit or punched by pupils and 25 per cent suffer verbal abuse several times a week, the union NASUWT found. The problems at Westbourne Academy, a co-educational secondary school, first emerged two years ago. It has 1,063 pupils, a third of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and its GCSE pass rate for English and maths was 54 per cent in 2023, lower than the national average of 65 per cent. The flat-roofed, red-brick school is surrounded by small, semi-detached houses in the residential area of Whitehouse, one of the most disadvantaged parts of Ipswich, where Year 6 obesity, school exclusions, depression and in-work poverty are prevalent, according to the 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation. In Ipswich, lone-parent households and unemployment are higher than the national average. Every day, 40 pupils across all year groups run around the grounds, skipping lessons, banging on doors and dragging other children out of classrooms. 'They are just wandering around like feral cats and disrupting everyone else's learning,' Katherine Moore, a union representative from NASUWT, said outside the Westbourne Academy picket line on Wednesday. 'I was talking to a [teaching assistant] and there was some personal abuse about the colour of her hair, other [students] were being derogatory about LGBT people,' added Moore, who visited the school last Friday to plan for the strike and was greeted with pupils screaming in the corridor. 'The teachers told me that happens every day,' she said. The situation has deteriorated over the past 18 months, forcing unions to open talks with executives at the Academy Transformation Trust, which runs the school and 21 others across the country. After improvements failed to materialise, NASUWT and the National Education Union (NEU) announced strike action in April. Fifty of about 70 staff members were on strike for two days last week, according to the unions, forcing classes to be cancelled for students in Year 7, 8 and 9. Senior pupils still attended to sit exams. Further strike action has been paused after the Academy Transformation Trust appointed a new vice-principal and promised new measures, including pastoral care, to tackle troublesome students. 'I love being a teacher and I love this place. I didn't want to [strike],' said Helen Feakes, 52, who has taught science at Westbourne Academy for 15 years. But the problems, including regular verbal abuse, left her with no choice. Last week, students posted offensive videos on TikTok of Feakes and other teachers, criticising their appearance. Feakes and Pashler believe mobile phones and social media are partly to blame for the breakdown in behaviour. 'You ask [the students] what they are doing tonight and they say 'scroll TikTok',' Pashler said. 'You do see a rise in sexism and over the past ten years words that were buried in the past have started to come back again. 'Kids weren't really homophobic but that's coming up a lot now. It's bizarre because when I first joined it felt like the opposite, everyone was defending that, but now it has tribalised out.' While Pashler regularly stops classes to challenge pupils on their offensive comments, he faces an uphill battle. 'I don't think what we do for an hour a day, over a week, can change what people experience five hours a night on TikTok,' he said. Covid lockdowns and poverty are two other factors behind the crisis, Pashler said. During a recent school trip camping in Scotland, he arranged for the students to go to Pizza Express. It was the first time the majority of them had been to a restaurant or a motorway service station. 'There's not really those opportunities, so the kids do not leave home. They do not see that there's a world outside the streets of Ipswich,' Pashler said. In Merseyside, teachers at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) School were also on strike last week. Some pupils have been verbally and physically aggressive, including shoving pregnant members of staff, while misogynistic and homophobic remarks are common. The school has 595 pupils, a third of whom come from disadvantaged homes. It was set up by Sir Paul McCartney as a performing arts school in 1996 and more recently has been expanded into a primary and secondary school, both in the city centre. Bryan McConnell, 38, a union rep who is assisting the LIPA teachers in their dispute, said that online content — from social media to podcasts and Andrew Tate videos — had 'desensitised' young teenagers, especially boys, to offensive views. 'It's become more acceptable for younger age groups to have those views,' McConnell said. McConnell, a physics teacher at another school in Merseyside, said the wider collapse of trust in society was fuelling problems at schools across the country. 'Since Covid and the rise of conspiracy theories, that respect and listening to authority seems to have diminished massively,' he said. 'Kids are copying what they see from their parents and if those parents have lost respect for society — whether it is the government or the police — then that feeds into what the kids think.' McConnell said some schools had reported a rise in aggressive behaviour from parents at the school gates, with some having to enforce antisocial behaviour orders. 'We have completely lost, from a teaching point of view, that respect that we used to have from parents,' he added. Others clearly feel the same. Teachers at the 1,000-pupil Ysgol Nantgwyn in Tonypandy, south Wales, walked out for two days last October. And in January staff at Kirkintilloch High School in East Dunbartonshire pledged to do the same, claiming that pupils faced 'no consequences' for abuse and violent behaviour. Back in Ipswich, parents are widely supportive of the teachers' decision to strike, although some have expressed frustration at how a minority of pupils have been able to affect the education of the majority of well-behaved children. For Pashler, the decision to leave Westbourne Academy is bittersweet. 'I love being a teacher, it's just not nice at the moment,' he said. • Parents want phone ban in schools to improve classroom behaviour A spokeswoman for the Academy Transformation Trust said: 'We take the wellbeing of our staff very seriously, and we fully support their desire to teach in disruption-free classrooms. The majority of pupils at Westbourne behave well, are respectful and want to learn. But we acknowledge there is a small but significant minority whose behaviour does not yet meet our high expectations. We are actively addressing this.' A Department for Education spokeswoman said: 'As part of our Plan for Change, we are committed to turning the tide on poor behaviour, breaking down barriers to opportunity and ensuring every child can achieve and thrive. 'Our new attendance and behaviour hubs will directly target the schools with the highest need as well as providing wider support for schools in all corners of the country, and an additional 900,000 pupils will have access to support from mental health support teams by April 2026. 'But we know there is more to do and are looking closely at how we can go further to support teachers and drive high and rising school standards for all our children.'
RNZ News
18-05-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Learning Support in schools "at breaking point" : report
Learning support in New Zealand schools is at breaking point, and the status quo is failing many vunerable learners, according to a new report. Learning support is for neurodivergent children, or those with disabilities, health needs or experiences of trauma. Services may include speech language therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists and teacher aides. The report by the Aotearoa Educators' Collective highlights broken funding systems, families battling bureaucracy and children who have extra needs denied access. An estimated 15-20 per cent of the population is neurodivergent, but only 6-7 per cent of students receive any publicly funded learning support. The report finds Maori and Pasifika students, those attending rural schools and neurodivergent students are most affected by chronic underfunding, fragemented provision and inconsistent access. Kathryn speaks with report author Dr Sarah Aiono The Beyond Capacity: Learning Support in Crisis report is being launched at parliament tomorrow - Minister Erica Stanford has been invited. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
