Top 10 Reasons To Leave Teaching: Number 3: Endless Government Schemes

A similar reason as for number 4, but separate in it’s own right. What I mean here is the endless unnecessary reform, continual improvement and moving of goalposts that occurs in education. Of course, continual improvement is important in any profession and it’s absence causes even bigger problems than it’s excessive implementation. However, the balance is definitely way off in teaching. There is continual improvement, and there is fixing things that aren't broken.

The reforms happen across the board in education, from things as macrocosmic as the recent review into Key Stage 2 (http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a0066617/michael-gove-announces-review-of-key-stage-2-testing) or the scrapping of SATs (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7669254.stm) to small things, like changing a column on the scheme of work proforma, causing you to have to copy and paste everything in again from the old one, and everything in between.

This sentiment also extends to the all most voyeuristic style of micro management, that starts in government, and trickles down through SMTs across the country. The language you use when you teach? There’s a scheme for that. Your responsibilities in loco parentis? There’s a scheme for that.

Like a lot of modern professions, as a practitioner you are not trusted to do the job on your own, you have to be able to prove you can do it, on paper. This is a pain in other professions, but becomes completely unbearable in this one, because of the sheer amount of it. This is what generates the endless paperwork that has to be produced, which this reason also encompasses.

It’s true another common complaint is the high amount of paperwork, which includes: schemes of work, lesson plans, reports, marking, feedback, CPD portfolios, internal verification, behaviour management systems etc. When I was teaching, I wrote the equivalent of my BSc dissertation every half term. This is too much!

The result is that less time and effort is put into the actual delivery of the lessons, quality is reduced, and teachers work ridiculous amount of hours per week.


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