'If I could stack shelves at ASDA for the same money, I’d do it in a heartbeat': could the ‘Great Resignation' give teachers a route out?

Overworked and overwhelmed: could the ‘Great Resignation’ be the escape teachers need from their profession?

Photo credits: Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

What is the ‘Great Resignation’?

The ‘Great Resignation’ is a term invented by organisational psychologist Anthony Klotz for the post pandemic wave of people quitting their jobs. In October 2021, a Deloitte study found that among Fortune 1000 companies in the US that 73% of CEOs anticipate a workforce shortage that will disrupt their businesses over the next 12 months.

A survey by recruitment firm Randstad UK looked at 6000 workers and found that 24% of them were planning to move to a new role within three to six months. In a normal year, the company would expect up to 11% of workers to move. Victoria Short, CEO at Randstad UK, said the pandemic “made people step back and rethink their lives. Covid has reminded them that life is too short”.

Reflecting on a work-life balance is as relevant to public sector employees as it is to those in the private sector. While in many cases, public sector roles are viewed by employees as a calling to serve rather than just a job, the pressure put onto nurses and teachers during the pandemic will have made many reconsider this concept.

From October to December of 2020, 82.6% of the workforce in the UK was employed in the Private Sector. The potential mass opening of new opportunities in this sector due to the ‘Great Resignation’ may just give those in the public sector, who want to resign, a push to move into less taxing professions.

‘It’s so physically and emotionally draining.’

K.G, a primary school teacher who chose to remain anonymous, spoke about working in the teaching profession and said ‘the workload is horrendous and the pressures are just awful.’

They believe that this prompts one of the main reasons that teachers want to leave the profession, ‘because of all these pressures, there’s more accountability and pressures for accountability – reaching targets and getting children to the grades is so much higher now.’ K.G. expressed how much they struggle with the pressures of the profession and how it’s only worsened by ‘a constant threat of Ofsted coming in.’

Teacher retention has been a long term problem. A report from the Education Policy Institute published in May 2021 found that the teaching profession faces problems with retention at all levels of experience. The 5-year retention rate has fallen by 6.8 percentage points since 2010, from 74.2% to 67.4%. Whilst the pandemic has boosted teacher numbers, longstanding retention problems are likely to return.

W.C, another anonymous primary school teacher, explains that ‘for me, I would not be able to do this job full time. I’m 61 now, it becomes almost physically impossible.’ They recall how being a teacher in the current climate ‘is so physically and emotionally draining.’ For older teachers, continuing to work in the profession proves particularly taxing, eventually forcing them to drop the number of days they teach during a week in order to continue working and maintain an income.

J.P, a teacher who also chose to remain anonymous, worked in the profession for 36 years. They explained that teaching ‘is very physically demanding along with being mentally demanding […] as you get older your capacity to continue to deal with those demands day on day becomes less.’

Photo credits: CDC on Unsplash

A Staff Workload, Wellbeing and Retention survey carried out by the National Education Union in April 2021 asked over 10,000 school and college staff to report on their working lives over the past year and how they view it in the months and years to come. 35% said they would definitely be no longer working in education in five years’ time, whilst 66% said the status of the profession has got worse and blamed the government for failing to listen to or value teachers.

‘If I was in a position where I could leave and earn the same money elsewhere, I’d be gone in a heartbeat.’

Kevin Courtney, the NEU joint general secretary, said ‘teaching is a fantastic job […] but it is the perennial issue of workload which is driving people out.’ He said ‘to create an environment in which so many are overworked and looking for an exit, it is a scandal that so little effort has been made by government to value the profession. Instead, they feel insulted, and for many there comes a point where enough is enough.’

K.G. believes that a key reason for teachers not leaving the profession is ‘probably to do with salary because I think most teachers, if they’re in a position like me where they’re a single parent, they financially can’t find another job that pays the same sort of money.’

‘I know there are a lot of teachers that are fortunate enough that they have a partner so they’re leaving full time positions and taking up supply positions because there’s not the pressure. They literally walk in, can teach, the planning’s done for them, they mark it and then leave at the end of the day. There’s no pressure, there’s no responsibility.’

They emphasised the intensity of the job and said ‘if I was in a position where I could leave and earn the same money elsewhere, I’d be gone in a heartbeat.’

Similarly to K.G, anonymous teacher J.P. explained that ‘the pay is just not good enough when your responsibilities are so vast.’ They further emphasised that the continued workload outside school hours ‘takes a negative toll on your family life.’

A survey carried out by the Education Policy Institute of 2000 teachers in January 2021 found that 21% of them intended to leave the profession that year. However, Government data found that in 2020/21 34,100 teachers left, representing only 7.8% of all qualified teachers.

Image credits: Jessica O’Rourke with Canva

This data suggests that teachers similar to W.C. and K.G. are also struggling to make the move to a different career path and find themselves, as W.C. said, ‘trapped in teaching’ despite their desire to leave the profession.

‘If I could go and stack shelves at ASDA for the same sort of money I’m earning now, I would do it in a heartbeat.’ More evidence to show the successes of teachers changing their profession, as a result of the post-pandemic ‘Great Resignation’, might be what other teachers like K.G. need to push forward into new, secure careers and escape the intensity of teaching.