I did my PGCE with a group of five other trainees, whom I am still very close friends with. Though we were all equally enthusiastic at the start, I am the only one still in teaching.
I’m left wondering: what happens, seven years into a teaching career, to make people leave? Do teachers suffer from a seven-year itch?
It seems like a long time ago now when the six of us embarked on the journey towards a lifelong career in teaching.
The first two years were just as we had all hoped and dreamed. Of course, different schools brought different issues. I found myself really struggling with behaviour and differentiation, in a boy-heavy bottom-set group of Year 10s. My other friends had issues with getting to grips with GCSE content, meeting standards, and so forth.
But the one thing we all had in common was that we absolutely adored our jobs, and looked forward to walking into school every morning. It really was the best place to be.
The most satisfying job in the world
Those cheesy recruitment adverts you used to see, about no day being the same in teaching, and how it’s the most satisfying job in the world? For us, it was all true.
The second year in teaching was one of the best. You’re not an NQT any more, you haven’t got to evidence all those standards and get things ticked off a checklist, and you have some solid experience.
We all found ourselves much more confident in teaching, had picked up some good behaviour strategies and could really focus on things like assessment, moderation and wacky new ideas to try in class.
This was the year of having the confidence to experiment - although I do now recoil in horror at the amount of time I spent cutting paper onions and tomatoes for a PEA burger (if you know, you know).
When the buzz begins to fade
Three years in, we started to experience changes. Some of us had taken up responsibilities, some moved schools, and we all had to get to grips with the beginnings of a new system being introduced by the government, along with the impact of budget cuts. We had a new framework to plan around, and new texts to read and resource, despite the fact that the old texts worked well and produced good results.
Workload increased in many ways. There were heavier timetables and more and more paperwork. We were all doing lots of things that didn’t really involve being in the class, and we could see how the buzz and excitement we all shared was beginning fade.
These past few years have really changed the face of education. Hitting milestones such as moving on to the upper pay scale really began to weigh down a lot of us.
There were staff shortages, which meant heavy timetables…which meant heavy workloads, especially as we were now on the upper pay scale.
More and more admin tasks
Lots of this workload didn’t actually involve teaching in class. More and more admin tasks were added, there were more targets-trackers to fill in, and there were more interventions to run and plan.
There were performance-management meetings, linked to pupil outcomes, which at most times were not achievable. School trips were cut because of lack of funding, and many parents couldn’t afford to pay.
Some of us became disillusioned with what was happening to the system we once loved. The others began leaving, one by one.
Today, there is just me still left in teaching. One of us works for a charity, supporting teenagers, another does private tutoring, and another is now a personal trainer and competes in body-building competitions.
Seven years on, with only me left from my training cohort, I find myself looking back nostalgically to those first few years, and wondering what made them so good. Honestly? It was the simple fact that we were able to focus on what mattered most: the teaching.
Samantha Dubois is a Year 6 teacher on the outskirts of Essex
