By James Simons -

The statistics were made available in response to  request from the Liberal Democrat MO Greg Mulholland.  They reveal how 13 % of teachers dumped the profession in a year, and 30% dumped it after 5 years.

Former Education Secretary, Michael Gove , is being blamed for the shortage, because of alleged far reaching reforms, turning most secondary schools into academies and rewriting the exam system. Gove clashed with the teaching profession on the introduction of free schools that would be exempt from the national curriculum and run by parents, religious leaders, business managers, but not teachers. Gove sought to introduce performance related pay for teachers and scrapped G.C.S.E’s before reinstating them. Michael Gove was criticised for turning many secondary schools into academies, but why? This would seem to have been a positive mood with good intentions, the basis of the criticism is puzzling.  Heavily derided by the National Union of Teachers(NUT),Mr Gove has been blamed for leaving behind terrible foundations for the UK education system.

This is partly unfair on Gove because there are many other reasons teachers may have left the teaching profession. Teaching in many UK secondary schools can be a handful in the face of uncontrollable and undisciplined children who are majorly disruptive in class. Students can be very rude and mean to teachers, secure in the knowledge that teachers are very limited in the disciplinary measures they can take. Detentions has always been one of the preferred measures for punishing unruly students, but not all students show up to detention even when asked to do so. Many of those who turn up are many times extremely disrespectful and rude to teachers.  Some can be really rude, a dispiriting issue for teachers.

Cuts to school budgets have not helped either, one area Theresa May’s government may have to urgently address. If schools are underfunded and teachers feel the pressure of it, they would rather go into some other profession. The establishment of more academies in British schools is a positive thing, not something deserving of rebuke. If Michael Gove is to be criticised for anything, let it be for his late back stabbing of Boris Johnson for the Pm job after he forgot to send a tweet. After all, he could have reminded  Johnson to send the tweet at the last moment.

Teachers need a lot more support and training in dealing with badly behaved children, and the budget for  schools also needs to be adequate. Teaching is a very important profession with great challenges of its own. It requires patience, peace of mind, and dedication. More needs to be done to equip teachers to handle difficult children in school with no respect for teachers. The eye of media.com are monitoring the case of  3 teenagers who are an absolute nightmare to their teachers and their parents, with little hope in sight for them outside of intervention. Former education secretary Michael Gove would have left out measures to deal with such problematic children, but the problem they pose have gone no where.

One of these teenagers skips schools, goes missing from home, and even occasionally attacks teachers physically. No teacher who is attacked by a teenager, in addition to other abuses they must have endured from badly behaved children will enjoy the job. They would rather try other options, and who can blame them?