Why I left the Teaching profession and will never return to it

First of all, let me state for the record that I never set out in life to be a teacher... I merely fell into it by accident. When I began my training as a teacher, it was merely a stop-gap until something better came along. That said, for a short while I did get some enjoyment from the job, however I couldn't be happier that I left the profession and will NEVER return to it.

When I was a student, teachers garnered a certain level of respect. That respect has all but disappeared. Major reforms are needed in education but I can't see them ever being put in place. What follows is my opinions built up over seven years of teaching in eight schools across four different countries (not England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland - but instead four different countries across the world, England included).

The abolishment of grammar schools in favour of comprehensive schools was a terrible idea. This ideology of higher ability students bringing up lower ability students is absolute garbage. I've seen it for myself, what actually happens is the lower achieving drag down the higher achieving students. After all, if they high achievers see other students not doing their work and getting away with it, what is their incentive to do the work? Now I speak of only a small percentage of students, unfortunately however this percentage seems to be on the rise.

Discipline is the root cause of students' deteriorating behaviour, or rather a lack of. I was taught that the most important thing to establish in a classroom is proper classroom management. This also seems to have fallen by the wayside. I have seen teachers completely ignoring behavioural issues and instead trying to act as the students' friend. Again - terrible idea. A teacher must be the figure of authority within the classroom. Group students together and they are basically like a pack of wild dogs, if their is no leader then they will all vie and compete to be the alpha male or female. When you are the only teacher (it seems) abiding by the rules and enforcing the behavioural procedures, it is a battle that you can never win alone. I recently heard of a student who physically attacked a member of staff, pinning her against a wall whilst punching and kicking her. The poor woman was traumatised afterwards. The punishment for the student? A few days of suspension. If attacking a member of staff is not cause for immediate and permanent expulsion, then precisely what is?

However, discipline should first be established in the home. Unfortunately in the case of some that also seems to be falling by the wayside. The students who broke the rules and caused trouble when I was in school are now having children of their own so it now a case of second generation rule breakers (and in some cases even third generation). These are the parents that will be the first to complain that their child is underperfoming or being picked on when, in reality, it is because they are not making their child do their homework, nor establishing their own rules for behaviour in the home and instead excusing their child for all of their wrong-doings.

Further to this is telling the child of the supposed special learning requirement that they "suffer" from. Again, when I was a student myself, I don't recall any of the multitude of special requirements that children are labelled with now. If a child was naughty, it wasn't because they had "behavioural issues", it was because they were naughty and were treated as such. If a child displayed aggressive behaviour, it wasn't because they had "anger issues", it was because they were bad-tempered and were again treated as naughty children should be. If a child has a genuine issue, fine; inform the teacher. The child itself though should NEVER be told about what their issue is. All that does is give them a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card to behave however they want and have an excuse to fall back on. Rather than meddling in situations that they clearly know nothing about, these idiotic child psychologists should stop trying to justify the bad behaviour of children. Force them to work as a teacher in a school for a month. Then and only then will they see that not all children are born equal or fundamentally good at heart, just with psychological issues affecting their behaviour. Some children, unfortunately, are just rotten to the core. Then they grow up, still rotten, and give birth to rotten kids of their own. And so the cycle continues.

And then there is the paperwork. Teaching brings about a multitude of paperwork. First of all comes the planning of lessons and the paperwork to explain and support what you will be teaching. Then comes the teaching and hours of marking afterwards (that is to be expected). But then comes more paperwork and revisiting of past paperwork because at yet another meeting, it has been announced that the way you have been teaching students and managing your paperwork has been completely turned on its head, revised and overhauled so now everything that you are doing has been rendered obsolete. Now you have to update or redo all previous schemes of work, lesson plans and such because some meddling busybody who doesn't work in a school, probably never has, or hasn't done so in decades has decided that things need to be done differently for the "good of the child". I have seen several such major revisions and reforms introduced in my years as a teacher and all it ever did was confuse teachers, students and parents alike. One was a revision to the grading system - for some reason, the system of 'A, B, C...' was no longer valid - students needed numbers to know what level they were at. Except that they would continually ask "What grade is this?" afterwards. The second was the introduction of targets for teachers to justify their own pay-rise. Translation: yet more paperwork. I am all for lesson observations and feedback given to teachers - how else would they improve? But to provide them with targets - and completely unrealistic targets at that - in order to qualify for a pay-rise is wholly unfair. Ensuring that every student achieves at least a grade 'C'? Not every student is equal in ability. Sometimes despite their best efforts, all they can achieve in a certain subject is a 'D'.

I am sure that there are still good teachers out there as there are good students. Unfortunately they both seem to be diminishing breeds. Something needs to be done to correct the problems. That person who has the courage to do so, will undoubtedly be wholly torn apart and scorned for such radical reforms (this time justified) at first, but ultimately that's what education needs and that person will be remembered as a saviour of education in time to come. Unfortunately I doubt that anyone is that brave.