A damning new report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has found that the Department for Education still ‘does not have a grip’ on teacher shortages after more than a decade – an issue that is hitting the Isle of Wight particularly hard.
Local education leaders say this failure is leaving young people on the Isle of Wight to ‘shrivel’ without the vital support they need in schools.
Peter Shreeve, Assistant District Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) for the Isle of Wight, has echoed the PAC’s stark conclusions, warning that English education – and especially that on the Isle of Wight – has been neglected for far too long.
Mr Shreeve says:
“We are in the midst of the worst teacher recruitment and retention crisis in a generation, created by long hours, poor pay, Ofsted and so much more.
“This is certainly the Island experience. A lack of funding is impacting everywhere: normal pay progress is being slowed because schools simply don’t have the money, teachers are increasingly forced to cover subjects they aren’t trained for, and supply cover is almost non-existent – all adding to stress and burnout.”
The NEU points out that support staff on the Isle of Wight are suffering too, while the PAC report highlights that high levels of pupil poverty and the pressures of Ofsted inspections are making a bad situation worse for local schools.
Peter Shreeve added:
“Recruiting and retaining teachers with excellent subject knowledge will only be possible with a correction in teacher pay — and it must be fully funded. The Chancellor needs to engage with reality before an entire generation misses out.”
The PAC is now calling for the Department for Education to produce a clear, evidence-based plan to tackle the crisis, with realistic targets to reverse the teacher drain in communities like the Isle of Wight.
Pay is the lesser of the issues. The relentless tick-box reporting, the data dumps, ever more criteria to fulfil, evidence collating for both students and teachers, the constant threat of a bad (arbitrary) Ofsted and seriously not enough hours in the day. Burnout happens really quickly in NQTs, unless they quickly develop a don’t care attitude. Seasoned teacher are absolutely exhausted. Straw poll from some forums estimate that there are currently over 60,000 teachers in the UK desperately trying to afford a way out. The older ones are counting up whether they could afford to take early retirement, even if it means a menial part time job to top up their income. Let teachers teach; get someone else to do the bloody number-crunching.
stop wasting time on woke drivel then and teach the basics, after all, that is what kids need