Teaching is broken — here's why
Something has gone very wrong with education in the UK and we need to talk about it.
CCO & Co-Founder of Classify
Co-authored by
Anusha Narayan.
According to the latest
Department for Education workforce survey, over forty thousand teachers in the UK resigned in the last year alone — the highest ever recorded.
Teaching has always been seen by those in the profession as an act for the societal good, an act of love and reward. But, love alone is not enough to keep our amazing teachers from facing the brunt of the systemic issues that plague the UK today. Consecutive years of systemic austerity, falling real wages, cutbacks in government-sponsored services, gruelling Ofsted visits, as well as rising admin workload, and arduous data tracking have all reached a boiling point — it's no wonder our underpaid and overworked teachers are feeling the heat.
Instances of poor mental health, burnout, and breakdowns among teachers have become all too common and many teachers feel this profession is becoming more and more unsustainable. Our teachers have to work 60–80 hours a week to get through their task list and they frequently spend more time on admin than teaching.
Imagine signing up for a job, driven by the passion to teach and make a difference, only to find that less than half of your time is devoted to what you love. Instead, the majority of your time is consumed by navigating through clunky tracking software, endless piles of paperwork, and an avalanche of administrative duties that overshadow the reason why you are there in the first place.~
If such conditions would be deemed unacceptable in any other profession, why is it seen as tolerable for teachers?
In a single lesson, teachers are tasked with demonstrating, evaluating, and documenting the academic progress of every student in a class of 30. Simultaneously, they are expected to nurture each student’s personal development goals — critical aspects of a child's growth like communication, empathy, and respect — as well as navigating the complexities of supporting a growing number of children with special educational needs. Managing the behaviour of increasingly bloated classes, often with limited support, is also part of their role, requiring immediate documentation of incidents and timely communication with relevant staff members. Furthermore responding to parents' near-constant questions about their child’s education is an around-the-clock commitment. That’s just some tasks a teacher may have to juggle in a single day.
Whilst some of these issues may only be fixed by fundamental systemic change, there are areas of education, such as improving student tracking, that are ripe for innovation. That’s where we at
Classify want to help.✨
The Classify platform streamlines the tracking process, allowing teachers to input their observations effortlessly. Classify then analyses this data against national and school curriculum objectives, offering valuable insights into each student’s academic and personal development journey. With Classify, teachers can focus on what they do best — teaching — while we handle the rest.
Want to know more about Classify? We’re still in the early days of development but
join our mailing list to be the first to know when we launch! 🚀
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