Stress drives teachers out of schools (UK teachers union conference)

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Stress is driving increasing numbers of teachers out of the profession, with some even considering suicide, a teaching union conference heard on Monday.

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers conference in Harrogate heard there had been a "meteoric" rise in work-related stress due to demands to meet government targets.

Research by the Health and Safety Executive in 2000 found teaching to be the most stressful profession, with 41.5% of teachers reporting themselves as "highly stressed".

Sue McMahon, a delegate from Calderdale, West Yorkshire, said: "As a divisional secretary, I have seen a meteoric rise in work-related stress and on more than one occasion have had to support a member who has attempted suicide.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/25/stress-drives-teachers-out-of-schools

[DrDan]

1. couldn't agree more

I taught for 6 years - at High School and Junior High levels.

Left for a corporate position - never the same stress as teaching. When you are a teacher - you can never let-up, never relax (save your plan period, of course, if you have one). When the stress builds in my current position, I can go for a walk, get up from my desk, go chat with a colleague, etc.

I have never missed the stress of teaching.

[Igel]

2. I've seen a lot of teachers come close to this.

It's funny, there's authority and there's responsibility. In a perfect world, you have fairly good alignment between the two. You don't give authority to act to one person and make another responsible for the outcome.

Yet that's what they're doing.

Kids don't learn. The politicians claim authority, and then tell others they're responsible. The politicians say what must be done, what mustn't be done. If it doesn't work, the principals and teachers are responsible. They don't set curriculum; they don't set funding; they don't set a lot of the policies. Then, because they didn't use their lack of authority wisely, tests were instituted to show that the politicians really meant business.

And the principals were held liable when all the fads and fancies of the experts, foisted on them by politicians, flubbed.

So the principals make more rules and requirements and order the teachers to do certain things, saying that if those certain things fail to work it's the teachers' responsibility. Meanwhile everybody takes away more and more autonomy from the teachers.