When I was teaching in Crawley there was a schools inspector who wanted to remind himself what teaching was like. Basically he couldn't hack it, failed miserably. It's fricking tough. After teaching in Ashburton I had enough and got a proper job.

Having never been a teacher, as I said before, I'm not qualified to have an informed opinion, but it strikes me that if you have gone into teaching from further education and have never done another job then how do you really know how bad teaching is ?
I have done jobs in the past where the pay was disgraceful, working unsociable shifts and being treated like s***. Is teaching worse than a lot of other jobs? I doubt it. All things are relative
Also can I suggest that that if you went into teaching thinking it was easy then you were a little naive.

Teaching is one of those jobs where you have a voice. You have a strong union and a high profile. There are many others who work in appalling conditions, with no prospects or job satisfaction, who are ignored by the media and just have to get on with it.

I work in Education at a senior level, and have to admit that there is some truth in what you say but not in everything stated. There are certainly those joining the profession with a naive view of what to expect e.g. that they can transform poorly behaved children and consistently present whizz bang lessons, and that the administration can't be that demanding, can it? The drop out rate for new teachers is high mainly because their pre-conceived ideas of the job have proven to be inaccurate.

Yes, the job can be ruthlessly demanding eating into personal home life and is certainly one of the most unsociable careers to enter into. Teachers also work into their holidays e.g. assessment & planning ahead; marking; tidying up and preparing the classroom for the next term etc But other jobs can be likewise massively demanding with not even the cushion of the amount of holiday time, enjoyed by teachers, to fall back onto.

Incidentally, the influence of teaching unions has become markedly weakened by recent Government legislation and the significant increase in academies who have structures in place that make them largely exempt from union comeback re: employment conditions. As an example, it is easy nowadays to get rid of older, more expensive though talented members of staff on subjective, trumped up charges of lack of competence....in favour of young, inexperienced and cheap to employ teachers ...from supply agencies...that also results in head teachers not having to cover 'on-costs' e.g. holiday; pensions. In the mean time, Academy Head Teacher salaries continue to spiral out of control. Oh,and you're expected to work until you're 68 under latest retirement legislation. I'll bet that the majority do not make it that far.

They certainly aren't idiots, and they have very good lives.

Sometimes people's work/life balance is putting in the graft now, while enjoying holidays others could only dream of, and retiring at 50 odd with sod all debt. Or being mortgage free in your 30s/40s.

Optimistic as ever

my view may be controversial but many young people have no intention of going onto further education and plan to go into trade work as there is some serious money in skilled trades, pupils should have the chocie to pull out at an earlier age say 13-14 when they have all the numeracy and literate skills required for daily life, but then can focus on a trade for life.

would save money and space in schools and less competition in university places.

and everyone will be where they want to be, i just dont believe education is everything as people are needed at every level of skilled work from the labourers and cleaners to doctors and politicians but todays education seems to think everyone should be going for those highly academic jobs, not very sustainable if you ask me, a brick layer can earn as much as a doctor or more nowadays simply becasue this is the rubbish model of education we have had for decades

13-14 sounds too young. I'm not sure that many kids know what they want to do at that age so it makes sense to give them a structure while they find themselves. I've heard that there are more apprenticeships being made available for school leavers nowadays, but I don't know if they're genuine or something halfhearted brought in to tick a box.