In reply to wushu:
From a cynic with 27 yrs teaching experience that ended with a nervous breakdown in 2007 after a year of bullying by a megalomaniac headteacher in a 2 class primary and being completely p***ed off by it being seen as quite acceptable for classroom assistants with NO teaching qualifications teaching whole classes - lessons that you have to prepare for them and then mark - just to save money....
Working hours - forget the contractual 1265 because you'll have done all those by Feb half term and then you'll find out that you were supposed to do them anyway and the 1265 only covers the things that teachers aren't s'posed to do like collect dinner money etc.
Working hours - 8am til 6.30 pm in school then work taken home to complete somewhere between dinner and bed. Several Saturdays through the year, - not to mention a week's school camp where only your waking hours count towards the 1265, plus evening parent meetings (you ever tried to see your solicitor or bank manager of an evening???)Work/life balance - ha!
Several children with special ed needs in your class but no teaching assistant for them because the special ed budget has been cut and Statements are as rare as hen's teeth. Then of course there's the non-existent budget so teaching with no money for resources, so staying up till silly o'clock making your own...
Hours spent preparing lessons that you then teach to only half the class because Hitler in the Head's Office has decided it's far more important to take the year 6's to be interviewed for the latest daft award she wants the school to get just for her own kudos....
Before the rest of you come charging in bleating about long school holidays - a fair bit of which are spent preparing for the next term - if the hours that teachers spend doing school work were evened out over the whole year, you'd find that we work the same-ish number of hours as the average office worker. And while we're on the subject of popular misconceptions - teacher training days. Teachers used to have to teach 190 days/year. Baker then decided teacher training days would be a good idea - quite possibly - so then took 5 days off the school holidays and called them teacher training days - so an increase in the working year of 5 days -but guess what - no pay increase; so yes, teacher taining days are done in their own time and can be put anywhere in the school year..... Chip on my shoulder - you betcha - because of seeing a gradual decline in the resources being put in to the education of our young people and being powerless to stop it.
So, if you're a climber and value your weekends climbing - teaching just isn't the job for you, because while your friends are all out on the crags, you'll be home doing school work wishing you'd chosen a 9-5 leave your work at work job.
And before the rest of you jump in asking why I stayed for 27 years....I enjoyed working with the children and I was good at it.....