Don't do A levels.

I agree. What's in place isn't perfect and Dispatchers style investigating (we had someone come into our school and do that, and one of the teachers flirted with her and it was all secretly filmed) might be a good shout. But I dunno, I guess it's just not really an attractive career for a lot of people and/or the whole keeping kids well behaved thing is more of a struggle and wears teachers down than the actual teaching itself - maybe looking into how to improve behaviour which would be a mammoth task, is worth looking at too.

Otherwise, you can try to get rid of 'bad' teachers but you'll just end up with more of a shortage, and you can't exactly force people to become teachers

Sounds like surprise Ofsted visits would be a good idea.

But yeah, I think it'd be a good idea to address the problem at it's cause. The teaching system needs a major uphaul; if we could treat teachers better then we'd get more potential teachers attracted to the field, giving us a wider variety of choice and allowing us to select the better ones as well as improving the motivation of the current teachers, ensuring they can teach better, etc...

I'm stopping there because I feel like I'm writing an answer for some employee motivation question for GCSE Business now.

Exactly! Getting the kids to treat teachers better on the other hand..

The problem with maths as well and the maths shortage, I believe, is that if you're doing maths then it opens up so many doors and you can pick a lot of things, ya know, that can be more interesting or something like that and you can get started straight away rather than going off to do a PGCE or whatever.

But it'd also come down to money as well and financing and all of that political stuff.

Oh god, everyone is so wooden while they visit - it is actually hilarious!
And the teachers tell you before the inspectors come, to get you to maintain the facade...

Exactly! Getting the kids to treat teachers better on the other hand..

The problem with maths as well and the maths shortage, I believe, is that if you're doing maths then it opens up so many doors and you can pick a lot of things, ya know, that can be more interesting or something like that and you can get started straight away rather than going off to do a PGCE or whatever.

But it'd also come down to money as well and financing and all of that political stuff.

Omg in my old school we'd basically all run for the dinner queue but when Ofsted came every teacher would hold us back for a few mins and tell us not to run...
They'd stop us at the school gate, give us wipes to take off our make up and force us to do our ties up
And we'd all suddenly be doing some next level activities in class with flashcards, in teams and all sorts (and the classic 'lesson reflection' at the end

Also I was never late to lesson, ever, but the one day I was, it was an Ofsted inspection

If it helps, there are also students out there who don't even have the benefit of a school, let alone a teacher! Imagine having to run around begging your exam centre to sort out why your unique candidate number has suddenly changed because you don't have a school to sort that out for you whilst also simultaneously trying to get yourself 3 A*'s without the help of a classroom, textbook or teacher as well as juggling STEP.

Not that I'm trying to trivialise your problems, they do sound bad and something definitely does need to be done, but there's no point getting upset over "oh, someone is getting a better teaching than I as", that'll always be the case, things are unfair all the time, you just need to view them as opportunities instead. You getting to teach yourself a bunch of A-Levels is a good thing, it'll prepare you for university all that much better. So what if some rich Eton kid is getting taught how to get an A*? You're engaging with your subject that you find genuinely interesting and exploring them on your own terms, that's an invaluable experience!

That said, I can sort of understand what you're feeling and I do agree that genuinely horrible teachers do need to be rooted out of the system.

Oh god, everyone is so wooden while they visit - it is actually hilarious!
And the teachers tell you before the inspectors come, to get you to maintain the facade...

Exactly! Getting the kids to treat teachers better on the other hand..

The problem with maths as well and the maths shortage, I believe, is that if you're doing maths then it opens up so many doors and you can pick a lot of things, ya know, that can be more interesting or something like that and you can get started straight away rather than going off to do a PGCE or whatever.

But it'd also come down to money as well and financing and all of that political stuff.

There is an issue with this also. I think disruptive kids are disgusting, if we can throw them out of the the window that would be great.

I think that would come naturally, if we treated teachers better and got to get people attracted to the teaching field, giving us an overall boost in quality of teachers, then kids would, for the most part, treat them better. Or at least, I would hope so, that sounds overly-idealistic...

That's actually a really good point that I hadn't thought of myself! Woah, it's so true. (can't lie, it's slightly comforting to me as well... )

Argh, yeah. Always money and politics in the way! On a brighter note though, to combat all the doom and gloom, in a global arena, the UK's education system is pretty darn great. Sure, it has it's problems and flaws (what doesn't?), but in the grand scheme of things, it's quite good.

This was me and my class mates last year. [...]

[...] Luckily now, I'm at a better place. I can only hope I now have better grades.

My GCSE Maths teacher actually had a sports degree rather than a Maths one

I think that would come naturally, if we treated teachers better and got to get people attracted to the teaching field, giving us an overall boost in quality of teachers, then kids would, for the most part, treat them better. Or at least, I would hope so, that sounds overly-idealistic...

That's actually a really good point that I hadn't thought of myself! Woah, it's so true. (can't lie, it's slightly comforting to me as well... )

Argh, yeah. Always money and politics in the way! On a brighter note though, to combat all the doom and gloom, in a global arena, the UK's education system is pretty darn great. Sure, it has it's problems and flaws (what doesn't?), but in the grand scheme of things, it's quite good.

I would do my best to be on my worst behaviour whenever we had an inspector over. Got me into plenty of trouble after, but it was so worth it to see the looks on the teachers face as I took my food out in class and ate or treated the bin as a basketball hoop.

I wouldn't stop you, but I would pretend to know nothing about it

Now that I think about it, it's quite interesting when I think about all of the teachers that I've been taught by and how good they are at controlling the class (and they tend to get stuff done when it comes to teaching things.) You'd have ones where you can't say a word or toe any kind of line or you'd get into actual trouble, which I think worked pretty well. Then on the opposite end you just have substitute teachers that don't stand a chance and they must feel pretty awful when they do it, but they have to call on the support of another teacher. always hated when that had to happen. It's just such a demanding job as it stands, ya know, and that certainly does not help, but at the same time you're teaching kids.. and that's exactly what they're like.

I wouldn't stop you, but I would pretend to know nothing about it

Now that I think about it, it's quite interesting when I think about all of the teachers that I've been taught by and how good they are at controlling the class (and they tend to get stuff done when it comes to teaching things.) You'd have ones where you can't say a word or toe any kind of line or you'd get into actual trouble, which I think worked pretty well. Then on the opposite end you just have substitute teachers that don't stand a chance and they must feel pretty awful when they do it, but they have to call on the support of another teacher. always hated when that had to happen. It's just such a demanding job as it stands, ya know, and that certainly does not help, but at the same time you're teaching kids.. and that's exactly what they're like.

Zacken! I wish I had more guts to stand up to my teachers like you did, though.

I think a maths degree for just teaching GCSE would be overkill (given the stuff that you study ) so I dunno.. wouldn't have any complaints. And if there's a shortage.. why not?