[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

Oh no, it's a nationwide problem. You must know some teachers. I certainly do... and they're almost all considering other careers.

Edit: For the record, I think the Tories have an appalling track history in education, as they have dealing with the NHS. But I think kids are failed in state school, whoever is in charge.

Indeed. They're even managing to slowly **** up my older daughters school which was amazing, truly amazing, and the best by far in the county (where a lot of other primary schools are failing badly). But council / government interference has meant that there hasn't been a permanent head-teacher for now 2.5+ years (My daughter has only been there for 4 years!) with no end in sight because of how they're selected, and also temporarily "swapping" teachers with other local schools half way through terms (teachers of 5 / 6 year old kids). It's constant interference and disruption and it's starting to cause some major problems for a lot of kids. No regularity, no security, growing to trust teachers and then having them replaced with no notice... mess. The whole thing needs to be restructured and in my opinion, schools need to be given FAR more autonomy (IF they are performing well) and left free from ... "fiddling". By all means step in when schools are performing badly or failing but stop trying to fix the ones that aren't broken!