Just over a year ago, I embarked on a new project called “A year in teaching”. It involved following a group of teachers through the academic year with monthly surveys gauging their wellbeing and engagement in their roles. It also offered a chance to reflect on the challenges and highlights of each month, as well as opportunities to share ideas about teaching and pedagogy at key points in the year.

The aim of the project was to navigate the peaks and troughs of the school year to generate findings that might help managers and teachers pace themselves through the roller-coaster of a school year. It will be interesting to compare the experiences of this group with those of teachers embarking on the new academic year. I’m curious to know what has shifted and what remains, happily or stubbornly, the same.

The number of participants inevitably fluctuated throughout the year, but about 50 teachers from across the UK saw the project through from beginning to end. They represented a wide variety of roles, from newly qualified teacher to headteacher from a variety of school types. They were self-selecting so the sample is inevitably skewed. 

The initial early September survey gave a positive picture with 67 per cent of respondents reporting that they felt either “optimistic” or “very optimistic” about the year ahead. 

I’m always interested in the question “what’s your why?” In September, teachers were asked to rank their motivations for entering the teaching profession. If we took the top three factors, 65 per cent included the desire to “make a difference” and 58 per cent “enjoy spending time with young people”. Fifty-eight per cent joined the profession to “share a love of the subject”. At the other end of the spectrum, only 4 per cent put “the salary” in their top three and 6 per cent arrived “for the holidays”.

Participants were then asked to describe a particular highlight from their early teaching days. The majority (79 per cent) involved an experience with young people, either within or outside the classroom. Some involved exam-results day. Louisa, a head of English in the North of England, described her experience as follows:

“On GCSE results day, I received a text message at 5.45am from my senior leadership team link with the headline figures for my department. He passed on his congratulations - he knew the day before and knew how anxious I had felt about them. The results were excellent, and then going into school and seeing students, especially those from my own classes or those who had really struggled, but did well in the end, was wonderful.”

Other shared memories involved helping students and their families to overcome significant challenges. The following is from Samantha, who is starting a new role in a primary school:

“I have a young boy with autism whose parents wanted him to stay part-time, as they were anxious he wouldn’t cope. Less than a week in, they’ve already upped it to full-time because he enjoys it so much.”

How’s that for “impact”?

Many responses included seeing students come back enthusiastic and keen to learn, with a number of examples of students thanking their teachers for lessons. Several included humour and laughter. 

On the flipside

I also asked teachers to identify a negative experience they’d had. 

Of course, not everyone’s GCSE results day will have been as positive as Louisa’s, and teachers expressed their frustration at an arduous, even traumatic, scrutiny of their results, with many reporting frustration and insecurity at systems of accountability that one participant said felt “unreasonable, draconian and at times, entirely illogical”.

Others cited negative experiences with colleagues and admin/paperwork; rudeness from others, feeling undermined or being “scolded” were also mentioned. Some participants felt simply overwhelmed by information and “change for change’s sake”. A feeling of not being consulted on change was a source of significant frustration for some respondents.

Participants were asked to identify their dominant emotion on the day before starting (back) at school. Determination and excitement ranked joint top, but anxiety was a very close second.

The final section of the survey asked participants to identify how often/to what degree they experienced both positive and negative factors at - or related to - their school role. Overall, the findings support the positivity of most participants at this stage of the year: 79 per cent “often or always” experience a positive working relationship with their line manager; 90 per cent “often or always” have positive relationships with students and 87 per cent have positive relationships with colleagues; 83 per cent would describe themselves as “happy in their work” and 90 per cent feel that they are good at the work they do.

On the other hand, it is quite striking that, even at this early stage, 25 per cent of participants state that they “often or always” have “an unreasonably heavy workload” and 32 per cent are already feeling guilty about neglecting responsibilities outside school. Meanwhile, 62 per cent do not feel that they are getting enough sleep.

As the days grow darker and the demands ramp up, I will return to this group of teachers in a month to see what October brings.

Emma Kell is a secondary teacher in north-east London and author of How to Survive in Teaching