Educators are facing ‘significant challenges’, says headteacher

Lisa Tunnell of the NEU said "fourteen years of funding cuts have stripped education budgets to the bone and educators are paying the price."

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name's David Bradshaw. I'm a headteacher at Hilbert Junior School in Luton. Where you've

00:07got schools where turnover of staff is quite high, that can have significant challenges

00:14in terms of being able to do the job and then the additional work to support the children

00:20as well. And we are seeing that in schools a lot where we are teachers, but actually

00:28we're a lot more than that now. It's really hard in schools at the moment. I think there

00:34are challenges there in terms of recruitment, trying to recruit teachers as well. It has

00:40been difficult and I know the new government is looking to address that immediately. So

00:45fingers crossed, fingers crossed things will look a lot brighter in the future.

00:49Loads of teachers going on strike. It seems like they're sort of crying out for a bit

00:53of help. The latest one that I saw, teacher absenteeism. So the number of sick days taken

00:58by teachers. Could that be down to the stress related to supporting students with these

01:03extra needs? I imagine seeing so many students who are struggling does take its toll.

01:08Yeah. Yeah. That's a difficult one to answer really. It really is because there's a whole

01:15range of reasons that could affect that. Teachers tend to build up a resilience to a lot of

01:21illness due to the nature of them being in schools around lots of children and you build

01:26up that resilience. And I think over COVID, you've probably lost a bit of that resilience

01:31because you haven't been so much around that. And, you know, it's a case of building that

01:36up again. And, you know, that does take time. But, you know, there are challenges in schools

01:43now, you know, more challenges than we've had previously. I think that actually, you

01:49know, will take their toll. It will take their toll. And, you know, it's up to leaders

01:57to ensure that's managed well.