Ep 119: The Birth Rate Crisis: Teacher Redundancies, School Closures & Fewer Teaching Jobs!

0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Teach Sleep Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name is Hayden. We are in the new studio now. Look, lots of people last week said love the new setup guys. Anything you've been teasing for a while? Hmm, little bit of something to say about that. Yeah, I'm glad we've, I'm glad we had the professional studio last week. So that this now by definition comparison just doesn't look as good. So we, you know, we spent absolutely ages in our, in the, the very little spare time we have trying to get this all set up and ready to go. And yeah, hope you like it guys. Doesn't look as good as last week, so whatever. If we'd just not gone to this lovely professional studio last week, by the way, ran by James. Lovely guy. Been talking to him a lot, haven't you, about our setup? Yeah, he's been brilliant. Really nice guy and amazing setup. If we hadn't done that, though, and just come from your, I think, like box room, dingy cave, we call, sorry, my my studio ogre pit or something.

0:48 I don't know. Anyway, if we just come from that to here, this lovely penthouse suite in someone else's house. I don't know who's house it might be a lot of people probably would have been like, wow, what a jump. But now it's just gonna be like, I'm see the old professional podcast one last week. Maybe you should stick to that, guys. But I'll tell you what, no, we're here in Dylan's house, in Dylan's third. Room, All the cameras around here picking us up. Yeah, I'm going to look at you down, down in the camera who's listening to this podcast and a camera, obviously, if you're watching, you can see me pointing right now. Anyway, lots of room here today. We're going to be talking about a crisis that I do think as a whole population, we're walking into sleepwalking rather. And we do always end up with crisis talks, don't we? Just go straight into the big issue. And it's that of the burst, right?

1:29 The amount of children being born. And it's something we kind of need as teachers, isn't it? Children to teach. Well, you could say that. I don't know. Is is it off a debate? I don't know. I think we probably do need them and it's the impacts it's going to have on that birth rate declining. Yeah. If there are fewer children, that means that schools aren't full. And if schools aren't full, that means their funding is cut because we're on a per pupil model right now. So schools are going to be squeezed even tighter. We're going to see closures, we're going to see downsizing for sure. And just in general, I think a big impact we're going to have is on jobs and and the amount of teachers there are actually able to fill roles because that's going to decrease. There's going to be fewer children.

2:09 And I'm sure Labour are licking their lips with all this, right? Oh, fewer vacancies? Eh, Let's just put that as the headline. Fewer teacher vacancies than ever before. Yeah, because the jobs don't exist. Dylan, we're gonna talk about this later on, OK? We can come back to this. OK, stay tuned, but first, let's dive into our week. As always, Hayden, how's your week been? My week has been fantastic. We've had a A an incredible ending to this week. As you all know Dylan, because we have been in to our school on our day off. I know crazy because we're part time, as many of you know, for our sports day. And Dylan, would you like to share what we've been doing for our Sports Day event? Well, I for a long time had told the children that I'll be coming in on sports day, even though it's my day off, and they're very excited. Oh, my teacher's going to come in because they're lucky enough to have two teachers through the week because we share. And then I found out that the reason we're coming in, which is for a fun run, can't wait, a costume fun run we'll get into in a second.

3:01 But I found out that that was happening about 3 hours after sports day. So all my children in the morning were doing sports day, no doubt thinking, Well, Mr he told me he was, he promised me he was going to come in. And I was like, yeah, I'm for the surprise thing. You don't know about later on. So that was a little bit of an awkward situation. But yeah, the main thing is this is one of the big things I love about the summer term is that these kind of wacky events happen. This is what makes a primary school for me. And this is what, when I think back to when I was in primary school, what are the things that stay with me as core memories? Yeah, it's these silly things like we did an off school course in massive fancy dress. Do you feel like you're missing out then by being part time on some of these? Because they quite often happen on like Fridays, you know what I mean? Like we quite often do that.

3:42 It's to me, it's the paradox of part time. We, we touched upon this very briefly last week. We talked about part time in general and how a lot of the job doesn't lend itself to being part time. So whether you're 3 days in school or four or five, a big chunk of the job just requires you to have the very deep understanding of all your children. The provisions still need to be met. The planning in whatever situation you might be in your school still needs to be done. Yeah. But what I would say a big negative forgoing part time for me personally is you do tend to miss out on bits. And there is pros. There are pros and cons to being at the front of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or the back end of the week. And I understand that because, you know, my job share is always the first person to message me saying, oh, another bank holiday coming up.

4:22 Yeah, because that's got them on Monday. But I do I do find that all of those kind fun events that kind of expanding outside of the classroom and those staple what makes a primary school experience really good for the children. Yeah, does tend to happen towards the end of the week. And there's little things like this. This doesn't bother me genuinely. Like, you know, own clothes day, non uniform days and stuff, always on a Friday. Yeah, I can. I can deal with that. Wear my own clothes anyway when I'm not in school. That's not a problem. But it is the big things like the sports day at the end of the day, we missed out on sports day and I love sports day. I love being with the children and seeing them excel in something else and seeing a child who maybe struggles when I'm with them every day for maths and English shine and enjoy themselves doing sports.

5:06 So I do feel like I miss that. Is it enough for me to think on the balance part time's not worth it? No, it's just, it's just one of those things where that's a drawback of going. Yeah, there's, there's literally nothing in life, is there, where there's not going to be pros and cons, right? And that's just a con. Although we did have a cake sale recently and that was on a Wednesday. So I'm just saying, you know, we didn't miss out on everything. Plenty of cakes to eat. I had lots of children on that cake. This is where this is where you just know the pure innocence. And the reason why I love working with these kids so much is because there was a child who I brought in a pound. It was like 50 PS slice of cake, child brought in a pound so they could buy a couple. And well, I'm so excited. I'm going to give one to my little brother.

5:47 I'm going to keep it. I'm going to give my little brother. And I had another child who brought in like 5 LB, which is enough for 10 bits of yeah, yeah. Didn't get that much. But he was walking around then all day with his cap because he brought a cap into school, right? He'd taken it off and filled it with three different cakes, right? And it was for his family to take time all day. No, he didn't eat them. He was nesting them in his, in his little cap, looking after them. And then in the middle of teaching in the afternoon and he's I just I just had his tray open looking. They had making sure they little baby cakes. That's so lovely. But he had them in his, in his tray, just looking at them, just making sure they're okay, making sure they're okay, close his tray again. And there's little things like that where I'm just like, crack on.

6:29 Yeah, I think there's some people like, no, no, no, you can't. Every single second of the afternoon. You must be paying attention. May. He's just looking at his jam tart, making sure it's like not falling over. He's got to look after and nurture that jam tart so it produces more jam tarts. But one of them came up to me with a chocolate brownie because she'd asked me that morning what's your favourite cake? I went chocolate chocolate cake and she came up with a chocolate brownie. Got this for you and that and I found out later on that was the only cake she bought. I can imagine you not like pretending that you didn't immediately know why she was asking. Oh, I don't know what? Which one? Do you want to know why? My favourite cake is looking at the selection outside that's already been set up. I'll have that one. Cheers love. Right, Go on then, off you go. Why could you supposed to be asking? It's like the same time towards the end of the year when someone goes what's your favourite chocolate?

7:11 I don't know actually. Gillian Shells. Gillian Shells. What a random question. If I was to get chocolate, I'd probably say to that person, don't get me chocolate, get me a gift card for Waterstones. What I say, but my favourite chocolate other than Waterstones. Yeah, Gillian shells. What's that? What? I don't know. I think I really like the flavour of those bottle of gin chocolates. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, I do like that. Do like that. It's funny that isn't it. Sorry, whole class Ding, make sure they're all listening. I was just telling. I was just telling little Jimmy here. But I do really like that bottle of gin flavour chocolates. Just I'm just telling. I'm just telling him though, so don't.

7:52 Worry about it. Anyone else wants the one? But so I absolutely know what she's doing. But again, I said it not thinking and she offered it to me. And it's just those little little tiny things like that. I'm just like, oh mate, I just, I just love it. But in general, I'd say going part time, you do miss out on of those. And I think a lot of people who go part time, they end up with the worst end of the stick. Because I've spoken to a lot of people and I want to make it really clear right now I think we have a fantastic part time role, which is truly part time, where I work with another qualified teacher. I do three days a week, she does two days a week. And what's great about the our setup is that we are treated as one class. Yeah. So if we're splitting planning or have jobs to do, they're split between the classes. And then me and my job share will go away and say, okay, cool, right, let's split this up between us. So let's say even when it comes to reports, so report writing, we had to do the same amount as every class, but we sat there ourselves and just divvied it up. Yeah.

8:47 And I find that way more useful. And there's there's two other options that are worse, which is 1, where you're the only qualified teacher. Yeah, Yeah. And then maybe using ATA or a HLTA to fill the world. You've got to do all the planning still. Yeah. You've got to do all the reports. You. Wouldn't think that happens, would you? Yeah, you wouldn't think that happens. Would I not think that happens in this school system where people are taking advantage of every single time? You'd think it shouldn't happen, right? I literally, I don't know if you saw this as well, but I saw it online about two days ago, someone saying, oh, I'm naughty .6 Can anyone else tell me about their experience? Because they're obviously thinking, I don't know if this is right or wrong. You know, classic thing you see online all the time. Oh, I think my school might be taking advantage of me. Can anyone else help me? It's like, Oh yeah, they are, they absolutely are. And it's doing it to me as well. And it was someone saying that their their job share exactly what you just said there. Their job share was a TA. So they had to do 100% of everything except for the literal physical hours in front of the classroom that TA was doing and getting paid.

9:36 Not .6 Yeah. And they were like, is that right? It was no, no, absolutely. Of course it's not, right? Well, you absolutely not. You should not be paying nought points paid nought .6 when you're doing 100% of the work for like 2/3 of the job. Exactly. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, completely. And I think that's where it's, it can be kind of brushed aside, this extra stuff that teachers do. Yeah. I was like, Oh yeah, that's just part of the job, isn't it? But you've got of course, you've got to do planning a bit of market. When you're sick and you're off, you've got to do all the work. You've got to leave it there, aren't you? I think the big thing that's forgotten as well, and I really don't want to gloss over this, is the role of the TA, in that the teaching assistant is absolutely being completely mugged off as well. Yeah, let's be real about it, because at the end of the day, they're not being paid a wage as a professional teacher. To no way. And people, people always come back to me and say, oh, well, if they've chosen to be a HLTA, they've taken the extra money. Yeah.

10:19 Do you know why? Because in that situation, a bit of extra money is better than not. And it doesn't mean that they're not being taken advantage. Of absolutely. And also like if we're thinking about the scale that they're on, like in we live in Kent, so we've got a Kent pay scale. I'm sure other districts have or counties have their own ones. It's not much anyway. Like, it's not like, oh, you're a HLTA now. So you did a bit of teaching. You've added a good 10 grand to your wage. No, you've added about two grand to your wage, if that. Oh, but Hayden, they don't have to do any planning or any work outside of school. Yeah. OK. Really. Yeah. Have you met ATA? Do you understand how much work they often do outside of school? Again, I've got to big up our school because I do think on the whole, compared to other schools that I've heard about and other TAS that I've got in touch with us and they they almost speak as if it's normal that TA plans their interventions, that it's normal that TA spends 1000 hours afterwards doing like making groups or, or assessing children. Yeah, that's not normal.

11:10 If you're a teaching assistant and you're doing all the extra stuff, you are not paid for that and a teacher is. And it's not as putting teachers on a pedestal to say, well, teachers have to do all of this. No, we should be doing more. Teachers absolutely should be doing more than a teaching assistant. Just look at the amount of money and compensation we get for the job and even down to the the qualifications we've got on the way. Of course we should be doing more than a teaching assistant. It's not me degrading teaching assistants or saying, Oh yeah, well, you shouldn't be doing that, should you? Because you, because you're a teacher. And I said no, What I'm saying The thing is you shouldn't be doing it because you're not compensated. For it, you're not remotely compensated for it you're barely compensated to do the stuff that you should be doing that's the thing, isn't it completely. Yeah. Comparing teachers, comparing ATA to other jobs is, is more suitable saying OK, working as ATA is more like working a retail job or something like that, where it's just like, actually do you know what you're paid for a certain number of hours? That's it, an hourly rate and and that's all you should be doing.

12:02 Like if I was working at M&S, there's no way I should. I think I should be doing like an hour or two extra just to help out around the shop every day. Oh no, because if you didn't help around the M&S shop, the M&S shop wouldn't function. That sounds like an M&S shop problem to me, not a me problem. Given up my time for free. Exactly. Because there are children involved and because it's the state sector and because you only do it because you're a loving motherly type figure, which is what TA is seen as. It's just ridiculous. We see it all the time as even as teachers, the whole motherly aspect and like, oh, men in a job, TA is. It's that extreme. Again, if you work with a male TA you straight away, it's almost like a male nurse. It like it just jumps out at you as like, oh, why are you doing this job? This is for a motherly figure.

12:42 And I think a part of that, I do think there's a tinge of misogyny in there and I know it's against a man and people will be like, oh, it's always misogyny. Well, it kind of is in this respect, because what we're essentially saying is why is a bloke doing this job that's completely exploited for free work? Because they they shouldn't be caring about the kids. It's a motherly job to come and care about the kids and do everything for. Free. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, we're allowed to exploit women. Yeah, just not there. Just not men. Don't do that, man. Get exploit, we don't notice it when the man gets excited. Exactly. And I get the irony of two blokes sat here talking about primary school teaching, which is dominated by women. I understand it. But I just think it's just rife. And we just take advantage of these lovely motherly type figures, yeah, who step into that teaching assistant role, who go above and beyond constantly, who are the glue that hold together a lot of what goes on in the school.

13:23 If you walk into any school, if you ask someone, name the five people in this school who hold it together, name 5. And I've always done this thought experiment in my head. Name 5 people in this building who, if you took them out, they'd have the biggest impact on how the school is ran. And the majority of the time it's the people on the lowest pay. Yeah, Yeah, for sure, for sure. I don't think there's ever like I've watched in three different schools and there's absolutely no way that in my 5 that there's not any Tas in that five, despite there being like 40 members of staff at those schools. Like you could quite easily justify. Oh. The TA didn't make it to that top five. Absolutely. To do. Definitely do. Yeah, all the time. Because it's about impact. Yeah, it's not. It was just about pay packet. We have a different conversation.

14:04 And I think, you know, a lot of people do justify a bigger pay packet. I think teachers should be paid more than teaching assistants. I do think that leaders should be paid more than teachers because I get, I understand that the responsibility grows and a lot of leaders right now are still doing classroom jobs. We're going to get on to that later when we talk about how schools are being squeezed and you need to get as much teaching as squash squeeze, of course, sorry, teach squeeze repose. But I guess the yeah, the overarching point here, we've really gone on a tangent, which I've quite enjoyed actually, is just the consistent exploitation of kindness and niceness does seem to be something which is rife in schools. And it's it's such a shame that bringing this up often is met by oh, don't be negative.

14:46 These people just love the kids are doing it for the kids. What do you mean don't be that it shouldn't all be about the pay packet. It shouldn't should it? But when I'm on 7 lbs an hour it does become about the pay pack. It's like. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I want to know one thing before we play the Jingle, which is obviously been on my mind this whole time and I've not really been listening to you. Am I in your top five? I just need to know. It does depend. Top five what? Top five most annoying people on the planet? Yes. Oh, forget it, just play the Jingle. Right, with this new setup we've got here, it's just gives me a chance to get my iPad out. So I've got my iPad now. This is replaced our monitor because I don't know if people knew, but every time we would do a podcast episode previously we would just sat at your desk. Yeah.

15:27 And in one of the monitors we just have Word open. Yeah, very crude plan. With our plan. So it's on the iPad now and now I can't see it. No, you can't see it. So I'm really am like as if it didn't. Anyway, taking control of this podcast and leading the way are. You officially taking that role post and I'm the Co. Host. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, when we set up our personal Instagram maybe a good time shout this out Mr Dot, Dylan Price and Mr Dot Hayden Stevens and but but obviously you should go and follow the podcast Instagram first at teach that repeat podcast. But either way, we we made it and we wrote our BIOS completely independently. And I wrote host of teach the repeat podcast because I am I'm a host, your host as well, but they knew on your own without any input. And this wasn't from me if you wrote in. Your I wrote Co host because I acknowledge you. When I when I posted both side by side, it just naturally came up with the bio, so mine, said Denim Price host Hayden Stevens. Co host.

16:19 You just can't. I just can't not think of the office. I can't not think of assistant to assistant to the regional director of the podcast. Right. Anyway, let's dive into our main chat this week. This is something that's come up a lot in general and and I think it's finally having an impact on scores. And it's this idea of the birth rate, the fertility rate as it's also called. And I want to start off by talking about how it's dipped massively. So if you look at the headlines in general across the world, the fertility rate or the birth rate, the the amount of children we are having has dropped massively. Yeah. And I just wanted to start off by clarifying something because I think it's really important. And I fell into this trap and a lot of people fall into this trap and then down a conspiracy rabbit hole and they hear the word fertility rate dropping.

17:03 And I initially thought that meant the literal like rate of fertility of a man or a woman. You would suit. I, I can understand what you think because I literally thought the exact same thing, right? And I think a lot of people see fertility rate dropping and they suddenly get, get down rabbit holes of 5G and COVID and jabs and all this kind of stuff. And it's just like, it's the perfect example. I've just slowed down and actually look what something means. Because when we use the term fertility rate in all of these research and, and findings, what we are literally talking about is how many children are born. And that is down to so many other factors than simply how well your swimmers are working. OK. So, so when we say fertility rate and we hear fertility rate, don't go down a rabbit hole of thinking it's a biological shift that's happening massively.

17:45 Maybe there's there's something that's going on in general, but as a whole, it's a lot of factors coming into play. So I just wanted to clarify that for people. But first, Hayden, before we dive into how it's affecting education, what we see right now, because I'm seeing it in the news and headlines a lot, what's your understanding of the current situation across the world with this birth rate, fertility rate? Well, luckily, luckily for you Dylan, I, I, I went down a massive rabbit hole of this as well a few a couple of months ago now because I was fascinated by this. And firstly, to clarify for full context, when we're looking at birth rates to have what we call the replacement rate, we're looking at a rate of 2.1. What that means is on average people are having 2.1 children. Obviously one person is not going to have 2.1 children, but it makes sense. Two people having two children, in a very crude sense, is going to replace the population.

18:31 So 2.1 allows for, you know, death. I guess so, yeah. And, and yeah, I don't know. I don't know, but whatever. For whatever reason, it's 2.1 rather than just two. That makes sense. So that. That if we if we kept that 2.1 on average population would stay the same. Yeah, exactly. Our population in any, in any given country of the world just wouldn't. It wouldn't increase or decrease. It would just stay the same. We're just replacing the humans that we are when we die. We've replaced it with one other person sort of thing. Now, across the world in the last couple of decades, the the fertility rate, the birth rate has dramatically reduced on average across the whole world. It's gone way below 2. Yeah. So I've got I've got some facts here. So I'll tell you right now UK birth rates have declined to their lowest levels since records began in 1938.

19:14 So we are having fewer children now than we have in 80 odd years. Only 605,000 babies were born in 2023 compared to 725,010 years ago. So it's dropping 100,000 the total fertility rate in England and Wales right now. And when we say fertility rate, we just mean children born is 1.49 children per woman, far below the replacement level of 2.1. Yeah. So just based on what we've just said there, we're seeing a shrinking population. Yeah, there's a couple of couple of things to think about, right? Because I remember having a conversation with I think my granddad about this, right? And he was saying, well, it makes sense that back in, you know, backing like war ties and things, and even before then that people were having more children because health healthcare just wasn't as good.

19:56 Like people, people needed to have more children for reasons. I'm not going to go. Into. Well, then the replacement rate would have been higher than. 2.1 right, exactly that, right. But but ultimately, like when you get down to it, it just logically obviously makes sense that it can never be lower than 2.1, right? It can never be lower than that. If it is ever lower than that, then the population will decrease. Sure. OK. And population was never decreasing before. So that that's just worth clarifying that. OK, there might be other factors as to why it was higher back then, but ultimately population was always increasing. Yeah. And now it's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because as soon as you get below 2, you are literally replacing two people who give who who are involved in a baby making process with fewer than two people. Exactly. OK, now the, and the second thing I want to say is when I was looking all this up before, I remember, I think I remember seeing that it was when it gets to 1.8.

20:36 That was like a, that's like a worry level. That was like a, oh, a country should probably start being worried when their, when their birth rate gets down to 1.8 because your population is going to start decreasing. And then 1.5 was like critical level. Right, 1.49 then. Yeah, exactly. So that's why it was in the news a lot recently. It was like, oh, we finally went below the like critical level of like it will have drastic, drastic impacts on the on the future generations. It's not like our society to wait until something is drastically horrendous to try and try and address it. Or. Are we gonna try and address it though of? Course not. Probably not. No, because here's something I wanted to talk about that there's so many factors here as to why this is happening. And this is not down to just, oh, it just seems to have happened. And it's so easy for conspiracy theorists to point to something out of the control and say, look, it's the people at the top making all this.

21:18 No, no, no, no. Do you know what it is? It's people literally who are my age. I didn't have a child until I was 30. When I was younger, I wanted children earlier. It wasn't viable. I just, it wasn't viable for me because I didn't feel like I was in a position financially to have a child and fully support that child. So I waited a little bit. That was my decision. That's happening across the board are. You sure it's not because we're just a snowflake generation that don't want to take any responsibility? Because I've heard that a lot on Internet. As well. It's insane. It's just it's just crazy. It's just when both both partners in a household have to work essentially full time just to keep a household afloat. And then if you introduce a child to that, we talked about childcare costs, etcetera, it's going to squeeze you massively. It's not selfish to think, is it worth me doing that yet? I'm kicking, you're kicking it down the can because you're thinking, well, give me a few years and maybe we'll build up some, some some kind of ability in our household to raise a child in a way we want to raise a child. That's not selfish.

22:11 That's just people who are quite intelligent, I think, and being very rational, thinking what would be best my unborn baby. It would be maybe to wait a little bit and. And these factors aren't coming out of nowhere. It's not just that we're suddenly more lazy as a generation. So we're suddenly don't care as a generation. Yeah. It's that people have their own individual choices, and even those people come back and say we can all choose to not have kids if we want. Yeah, of course you can. I think that's completely fine. Yeah. But the reason this is dipped is not because more people are choosing, just they don't want to have kids. There's more people who feel like they can't because of all those extend. Yeah, definitely. And bear in mind what you're talking about there is just having one kid as well. Yeah, that's still below the two required to, to for the replacement rate. Yeah. Now I speak to a lot of my friends and I won't go back to that point you just made because I find it really interesting, right?

22:55 A couple of my friends, I'd say are probably in a position. Most of my friends don't have kids, just for context, which I know most of your friend group does and most of my friend group doesn't, which is really intriguing to me because I'm like, oh, I'm sort of alone. Now, and I tell you what, I'm 31, becoming 32 soon. None of my friends have more than two children. Yeah. OK, So even even when we're looking at this context, if you're saying my friends have more children, every single person who I know is below the replacement rate anyway. Of course. Exactly. Right. Which is which is just crazy. Now, when I speak to my friends about children and things like that, a lot of them, it's actually not the financial thing. For some of them, it is. It's like, oh, we just, we just don't think we're in the position. I've literally had that conversation where someone said we just can't afford to have kids. We'd love to have kids, but we just can't afford to. And that sounds like horrible, horrible. That makes people really sad.

23:36 And the other one is I've got a couple of friends who are like, yeah, I just look at the landscape of the world now and I just don't want to. And it's like that, that's the side to me where I'm like, oh, I wonder if that's, I wonder if that is more of a thing now where people are just like, yeah, I don't think I want to raise a child in in the state of the world right now. That is a thing, but I don't. Know that's always been a thing. I don't know if that's changed. That'll be interesting to me to know if people, people in 1944 were like, not sure if I want to bring a child into the world right now. Like, I don't know, do you? Know what I mean? I mean, look at the height of the Cold War for the 50s and 60s and things like that. It's like when nuclear Armageddon was literally on the doorstep. People thought it might happen. Maybe they didn't also want to bring a child, but maybe they just did it anyway. So I don't know if that's always changed, but it's always been an interesting factor to me that they've got the kind of money side and you've got the side side of people just being like, I probably like, I don't mind the idea of kids, but I just don't want to bring them.

24:22 Into this world. Now you're right. I've had the argument a few times, but the but the point being it's dipped so much. It has to be more than one thing. It has to be a culmination of things. And I do think it's so blindsided just to say, oh, it's the things that have happened from the top down. Government, of course. Government. Want more people. Yeah. Because do you know what people do? Pay taxes and sustain the state. Yeah. Ultimately, yeah. But how do you think pensions work? I was about to say, do you know what other people do? They pay pensions for the for the old generations. This is something I've, I've spoken, I've said this on the podcast before. I think when I say it again, we've got a lot more listeners since then. And most people don't really understand what a pension is and what it does. And that's not me degrading them at all. That's just, it's just one of those things. It's a blind. Spot, we don't talk. About it, we don't talk about it at all. And when you think of a pension, I know a lot of people and I've spoken to these people before who had the idea that a pension is essentially a savings account. So you put your pension aside every month and you're building up a part in a savings account of that money you've literally put in and you cash that money out eventually. And that is just not how saving, how savings accounts, all pensions work.

25:19 When you're putting that money aside, the bank invests it, the bank does what it wants, but it lends that money out. They're. Making their money. They're making their money and they're they're boosting the economy when they're investing in things, investing in businesses potentially. And then eventually the idea is that makes a return. And then when you get to retirement age, you can take money back. It's not the same money. And what happens is at the point that you're taking a pension, that money is coming from businesses, workers tax, etcetera, in that exact period there. So I'm not paying for my pension. Now by putting a pot away. I'm essentially paying for the pension from other people. When I get to retirement age, if there aren't enough working people and the the population decreases massively and those of working age of way less than those of pension age, there's less money in the pot for me to take.

26:03 Absolutely. What I find fascinating about the whole pension thing is that in the, generally in the Western world, now I'm going to generalise quite a lot here by saying the Western world, obviously there's differences between countries, right? But generally speaking, I think that, I think that the stat is you need approximately 3 working people to pay the pension for one pensioner. So that's roughly the ratio that you need 3 working people pays for one pension, which is why our pension system is completely built on a rising population. And, and luckily that's always existed. And this is the first time where it's like, oh, not having any more. Well, you know, the only thing that's been propping up that rising population is immigration. And people again don't want to have this conversation where we have been flatlining for a while now fertility rates.

26:46 And the only reason that we've been able to keep up with the rising demand in work and the rising demand of the state and the NHS and pensions etcetera, is because of working age people coming into this. Country, so our population. Is increasing, so our population is increasing, but it's not through replacement of birth, it's through immigration. And again, we can have this discussion about how immigration people don't like it or they do like it. They have this argument. And the bottom line is that that's currently propping up this country in terms of the money. They come in here and they scavenge off us. Okay, yeah, a very small percentage do. But also you are again, going to sleepwalk into an even bigger crisis. If we just completely shut the borders, this will happen quicker and we will end up in a dire situation sooner.

27:26 I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer here, I'm just explaining that's a fact. Yeah, yeah. We're doing the transition nicely, aren't we, into our new politics. But like, obviously, you know, we are going to get to a point. Here where we want to do the. Foundation, don't we? But yeah, and there's a couple more things I think to say, which is I think we should, you can kind of see the future a little bit in terms of how this is going to play out. Two things I want to say, firstly, there's a good reason governments don't really want to address it. It's because you're not in power long enough. We're talking about like lifetime change. We're talking about like you need to implement things now because it's going to impact it in 30-40, fifty, 60-70 years. And we there are other countries where this has been going on for a lot longer, particularly in the East where I think is it, is it South Korea? So South Korea their, I mean guess if you're at home now and all the context we've been saying about how 1.8 is or we should start thinking about it's a problem. 1.5 is critical.

28:15 Just have a little guess now before I tell the number what you think it might be in. This is a bad situation here. Yeah, South Korea's the lowest, right? The lowest. In the world, from what I could see, it's the worst in the world right now. From my research, they're on a replacement rate of 0.72. Insane. Less than one child, less than one child per per per per couple, per per woman. Per woman. Yeah, which which again, if you look at the population, that's half the. Population, yeah. And, and, and again, you know, I don't want to get it completely wrong, but I did watch a video on this as well months ago when I was looking at. I was thinking like, how is that going to work? And the video unfortunately, was a bit like, yeah, like South Korea is like is, is basically done like in 50-60 years, unless they there's some something drastic happens, which it's not, then they're going to be, they're going to be, it's just going to ruin. It's going to decimate that population. They can just, it's just, there's just, it's going to half and then half again and half again. That population is going to exponentially decrease. And I saw someone in the comments that was like, oh, I am, I'm from South Korea.

29:04 Just just before context here. Our government never want to address this because no one wants to tackle the problem because they'll be out of power in three years anyway. And it's, and it can only be a detrimental effect. We what we have to do. We have to do this. And we've spoken about this a million times before because I am all for the choice of people, and I'm all four people deciding not to have children. I I don't think remotely it should be played against you. Yeah. But what those people have to do, they have to be loud about this. And we do too, is we have to talk about how we, we have to incentivize having children because ultimately, at the end of the day, what is the thing that's going to continue the population? We have to have kids. We have to. So if someone's going to choose to have kids because they want to, that's great, fantastic. And they choose not to because they don't, OK, cool. But we have to incentivize having children. We have to give tax breaks for having children. We have to plough more money into education. We have to plough more money into childcare if we want to have a society where you get all the work that you do currently out of people and you still want that, You're going to have to make hard decisions to fund parents properly because at the minute parents clearly aren't funded properly, clearly. And all we get is people pointing at people who have are people on the estate have seven kids and they just pop them out because they know they'll be propped up. They're living in poverty.

30:21 Yeah. Then it's not like a life of luxury. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a lovely choice where they are. Let's have five more and then hope for the best. They're living in poverty. Yeah. And then the other end of the scale, the people who aren't doing that necessarily and are thinking it through, which is what this person wants. Oh, think it's through. Don't have kids if you can't afford them. They're not, they're not having kids and they can't afford it. And that's meaning that we have a lower replacement rate than ever before. So there's not a solution to sit there and complain. Okay, what? Yeah. All these, these kids being raised in poverty and these kids who don't exist, that's the two worst options, isn't it? That's the two worst options. So just moaning about it, that's what would come out of what you're saying. Yeah, just don't have kids then. OK, yeah, but Dylan, back in my day, we just sucked it up and we just got on with it. We had kids, we worked 5 jobs if we needed to, to put food on the table. Dylan, didn't you know that?

31:05 Oh yeah, I mean, I'm not going to get into this, but clearly of just, of course, it's just laziness. Obviously that's the only thing that we can possibly think about. It's just laziness, so. Let's just point the finger and not solve it, yeah? Exactly that. Exactly that. Just moan about people who do do it, and then people who don't moan about them as well. Yeah, they should be having kids. Should we make it, incentivize it then? Let's let's let's link this then to education, right? It was like it was a hell of a lot of context, but I think it was important to understand where we are in the world and where we are as a country. And, and just understanding how the birth rate does mean a decrease in population, which is ultimately going to be dire for the country, right? In every, in every way. So how is this link to education then? And what's what's the link here? Well, the, the, the main link here is essentially we have school places, right. As a country we have a certain number of school places and those school places directly fund the school.

31:50 So if if a school has 100 children in a year group they get roughly depending on needs etcetera, HCPS of course people premiums. So there is there is nuance to this, but roughly twice as much funding as a school with 50 children. Yeah, OK. So what we're seeing unfortunately is because we're starting to get to the effects now 1234 years down the line where students, children start going to school is that we're not filling up the spaces. No, in schools anymore, some places we are, yeah, there are obviously again there's more nuances. You might you might listen to this thinking. Oh, in my area it's still quite tough to get a space. Sure. There are lots of socio economic factors that might actually affect an area as to where whether there's lots of children or not. And you'd be unsurprised to know that it's inner City Schools that are being hit the hardest here because again, think about your normal working class person in living in London. The price of living in London is insane. Yeah.

32:41 All of these external factors we've talked about that clearly have having an effect, I think are backed up as being true because when you go to the places where it's had the highest cost of living, we're seeing fewer children. Being born. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So inner City Schools, boroughs like Camden, Hackney, Lambeth, pupil numbers are falling fast, right. And I think just as a, as a kind of side note here, the thing that frustrates me is that we knew this was going to happen, that children who are four and five years old going to school now. It's not like we've suddenly realised that there's going to be way A. Couple of them, yeah. More of them didn't just magic into existence like when they were. Three, they were born four years ago. So this is the thing where I look at it and just think, why is this? Why is this like creeping up on us? Why is schools closing potentially next year because of pupil numbers when we could have just looked at the census and been like, oh, that's going to be a problem. Let's let's mitigate it.

33:29 Let me think How does government work? Who was in power four years ago and are they still in power now? Of course they're not. They don't care. They didn't care because they knew they wouldn't. Because you know what they can do now? They can weaponize it. Yeah. When a school closes, they can point to it and go. That's because a private school tax, you put in it and then when the school next week closes, they can go. That's because the birth rate's low and you're not doing anything about it. Yeah, sorry. You, who was in charge for 15 years. Yeah, why don't you, Neki, just don't care. And you know what? I can't imagine there is going to be any government that cares, genuinely, because they are. They will all just pass the buck. Well, we're probably going to be in power for much longer, so you deal with it. Yeah, completely. Well, the the the end of the day as well, right. If if children, the number of children is decreasing, you know, should we, should we be funding 100 space primary school with the same level of funding as we do if there's only 70 children going? Probably not like like realistically, But this isn't where the issue lies.

34:18 This is where it's frustrating because you can get to this point now and be like, well, I can justify this school merger. I could justify this downsizing of a school, reducing the intake. I can justify this school for being forced to close because then there's just not enough money because there's just fewer. Children and all it means is a few people lose their jobs. But we didn't hear that bit. It just means a few a bunch of people gonna lose their jobs. But whatever, you know, because it's a good move, isn't it? It doesn't matter that a few people are gonna. Lose their jobs. Yeah, I know. So the BBC reported over 100 schools in England are at risk of closure in the next few years. OK. The I think the big impact we're seeing and the reason that's forcing these mergers and these closures and we'll come on to vacancies and redundancies in a minute, is because if you have 20 spaces all of a sudden and let's just say roughly ��5000 per children is your funding. Yeah, that's 100,000 lbs.

35:00 Yeah. That your school will be getting less of. Yeah. And we already know how tight funding is. Yeah. It's not as if that 100,000 lbs. Oh, because it's per pupil, we can just scale that down and be OK. Yeah. No, no, you're going to scale down a building, are you? And the cost of running a building, right. And of course you're not going to scale that down. That stays the same. Yeah. Or we can turn a few lights off now because the rooms not being used here, but come on. Yeah, that's not how it works. No, no, completely. And do you want empty classrooms? Yeah, really. Like it's just crazy. And what the schools that are closing doing just sat there, what they're going to become redundant, derelict. And then if, if, when pupil numbers rise again, hopefully in the future, are we going to open these schools up again? Yeah. Yeah, and have to spend tonnes of money refurbishing. Them getting ready, just waiting. I mean, it, it's, it's such a, what I would say about this is it's such a sad situation because it is probably the right thing to be doing, but it's because of a situation we've let stagnate and let come. And it's the direct result, I think of just the social collapse of this country and, and like the whole idea of just like the what is the point?

35:56 There are parents thinking, what's the point in having a? Kid right now this is really depressing, but it's true. I do. I think it's true. I think it's true. And look, let's be real for a second. You and I have left teaching. OK. So we we are leaving teaching at the end of this year. We've got the rest of this time left. And I'm going to enjoy it as much as I can. But then next year we're not teaching in our school anymore. Yeah. And when we left, I think looking at the census and the number of children around us and the intake and what's coming up to our schools or Junior School, that it was a bit of a relief for those in power that teachers were choosing to leave because we're going to have some really harsh conversations in the future. Yeah, definitely. Like, like, you know, just let's just be really real for a minute in our area. So we do live in an area where population is decreasing quite rapidly.

36:39 I don't know if it's like compared to other areas and if it's worse or whatever, but it but our population is decreasing. And I know because there was big conversations last year and the year before about it. All of the local schools were saying, right, we're going to have to really think about what we're going to do in two, 3-4 years because there literally aren't enough kids coming up through nurseries right now. There's not going to be enough kids in infant schools. I saw a couple of years ago infant schools starting to reduce their class sizes, Sorry, reduce the number of classes they have. They were going from three form schools to two form schools. There's one teacher made redundant, right? And it, and it is happening in our school. You know, we've, we've obviously left. And I do feel like it was maybe at the right time for them because I do think in the next couple of years, they're probably going to be looking at redundancies and getting rid of teachers because there's not enough kids being born in our area. Our school's going to have to have that conversation. So I do feel like it was, you know, a silver lining maybe to us leaving as our school maybe doesn't have to have that conversation for a bit.

37:28 Was our jobs weren't advertised. Yeah, we're not being replaced. So, so this this, this is what wound me up this week. OK, so I, I saw an article all about the the headline stats for teachers, number of teachers leaving. It's still over 40,000. OK, so still a huge problem. Dropped by like less than one percentage point. So, you know, some people out there were saying, well, it's dropping, isn't that good? I was like, it means negligible. Like, you know, it's still over 40,000 teachers leaving. And the thing that really, really frustrated me massively was the headline that there are fewer, fewer vacancies than ever for teachers because it's a headline. Doesn't that sound great? But we're filling, We're filling these places up, aren't we? The vacancies don't exist anymore. No, because do you know why vacancies are lower than ever And and we we're filling up more vacancies as a percentage because there are fewer jobs.

38:15 Yeah, me and Dylan and ours job, just to make it really clear, we just said it. Our jobs are not have not been advertised. We are not being replaced. Yeah, OK. And obviously like we might physically, but maybe shuffling around teachers in our school, but it but in our school there are two teacher jobs that existed this year that do not exist next year from us leaving. Yeah. And that is happening everywhere. We're not an anomaly. Yeah, so it mean it looks great, doesn't it? Yeah. Oh, 40 fans, you said. But the redundancies are cool that because that vacancy never existed. Yeah. It never existed in the 1st place. And I know for a fact again, and previously when vacancies were put up, they weren't being filled. Yeah. They weren't being filled because there wasn't enough people who wanted to do it. And now we're at the point where we're going to be squeezing it so much that it's going to overlap at some point the number of jobs in primary school, because the number of primary school teachers dipped as well. Yeah.

38:59 So secondary school rose. The primary school dipped because of what we're saying, of course. And I've heard of so many people being made redundant just saying, OK, that job can't exist anymore. Yeah, it's, it's for a combination of reasons which is funding is squeezed anyway and look into the future. We're going to have to say 50K and and you know, this assistant head job doesn't exist anymore. Sorry, they made redundant. Yeah, everyone, everyone else's workload goes up a little bit. It's a net loss in every way. Do you know what I mean? There's there's no gain to that. There's no win. It's, I see it almost similar to what we spoke about with part time, Jeremy said. When you go part time still a big chunk of the job is just you have to be working 100% sure if the children if a children children in your school were halved, it doesn't half your workload.

39:40 No, absolutely not. Remotely. No. The amount you know, you still got to do all of the stuff that comes with running a school. Yeah, maybe there's fewer children to go through and you have fewer children on your SEND list and there's fewer children to account for. But at the end of the day, there is a baseline level of work that needs to be done, whether you're a school that's one form or a school that's four form. That's why working in a school that's one form is just so much more work. It's a bit like the tax system, isn't it? It's like if you if you drop to 50%, you don't lose 50% of your pay because of the way you've always got a guaranteed chunk of your income that's tax free. It's the same sort of analogy, isn't it? Like the idea in the head. Yeah, it doesn't work like that. Do you think at all the move to ECT from NQT? So NQT for anyone knowing if you could qualify teaching and NQT be like one year, kind of like a final step where you are qualified, you're getting paid, but one year of just like probation almost. Your first year of being.

40:24 Your first year of being a qualified teacher, newly qualified teacher changed to ECT, which was early careers teacher and the point being that it moved from one year to two year. I've heard a lot of chat about how that move is masking over the the kind of retention crisis because a lot more people are choosing to see out the two year. So they're getting halfway through their ECT. Yeah. Like when it's NQT, you'd finish your NQT. Yeah. And be like, it's not for me, I'm out. But a lot of people now with ECT are getting one year into their ECT and they're making that choice to be like, OK, just one more year, let's get the ECT done, Let's get this. I can't. Imagine that being a fact that would change my mind. I suppose the only thing that could be is if there are perks for being an ECT in terms of like time. Yeah, because I know when I was in NQT and I really don't know if this is the case to anyone. We're very naive here because we haven't actually spoke to many ECTS in the last few years.

41:08 But but when I was an NQTI did get like an extra 10% out of the classroom to because I was an NQT. And I don't know if that's still a thing of being an ECT, but that might be a might be enough to sway someone to be like, well, you know, I don't mind it too much right now. I'll stay the extra year. But next year when I'm losing that 10%, no way. I'm done. Yeah, I can barely manage it now. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I don't know much about that. Just a few people mention it just from talking to us basically be like, oh, I'll just do my ECT. And then then we'll see. Right. OK. And yeah, I just think that's going to mask it basically because what's going to end up happening is that teachers leaving the profession in the next two, 3-4 years will actually be a good way of masking the issue of fewer teaching jobs, redundancies, etcetera.

41:48 And I do worry and I do, I do get frustrated that it will be politicised into a positive. Yeah, of course it will. That's what disappoints me the most in all honesty about it. Not maybe not the most, but it disappoints me with Labour because obviously we were, we were, we were, you know, well up for them getting into power and maybe again to get rid of the Tories. But but I was well up for Labour and I really hoped they were going, they were going to be great. And they are doing lots of good things, don't get me wrong. But they are, they do absolutely capitalise off of stuff like this like they have. Absolutely. They're not stupid. Yeah, they absolutely know exactly what we're saying right here is true. And they've gone. Should we spin it this way, though, so it just looks positive? Should we just think, should we just not tell everyone that it's because birth rate is so low that like teachers aren't even being replaced and actually people who made redundant, that's why there's not as many vacancies? Or should we just say, oh, vacancies are down, look how good we are?

42:37 They're like, yeah, do that one. And I get why they do it. It's a whole thing is a game, isn't it? But it's like it's just exhausting. It is frustrating. I think again, as we getting older and older, you know, as we getting older and older and we see more of this cycle come through, I'm seeing a lot more, I, I understand a lot more people who have been through this and they say, yeah, just hold off because, you know, don't get me wrong, tomorrow if there was another election, I'd vote for Labour. Yeah, I'd vote for Labour tomorrow because I do think their attitude in general towards education is better. And I do think their attitude to fixing things that are important to me personally, Yeah, aligns more with what I'm saying. Yeah, I do still think that. But it doesn't, don't get me wrong, I'm really frustrated. I'm really frustrated. And when when you get the education secretary basically, you know, talking against the union, classic rhetoric that if the Tory ministers were doing it, we'd be sat here saying ridiculous, you've got a side of your teachers. The unions are the teachers.

43:31 They're not this separate BLOB that are just infiltrating our minds. We very much are the unions. We are part of the union and they speak for us when we vote yes, that's our vote and our voice. So when you're disregarding the unions as just like not thinking about the kids or caring about the kids, you are saying that I don't care about the kids and that's disgusting. I'm wrong and it really winds me up and I'm just just just, you could have your rhetoric, just tone it down a bit, just be on the side of the people who actually, you know, are your strongest supporters. Just just do it. Just just just back us a little bit. And that, that really frustrated me and really annoyed me. And when I'm seeing things like this happen now, I would be OK with a, with a Labour government coming out and saying it's because of this, it's because of this decline in birth rate.

44:12 And that's because of, you know, the, the, the rates of children is dropped because of all of these problems that we've seen over the past how many years. And here's our plan to help tackle it. Here's our incentivization for people to have children so that as a society we move on because all that's happening at the minute is a lot of dog whistling. Yeah. We're going to reduce immigration. We're going to reduce immigration. Yeah. OK. We're going to. We're going to talk about the whole replacement theory. Like, not replacement theory, that's some right wing conspiracy thing. But. But what I mean is the replacement rate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to talk about how. That's going to impact that. And then we're not going to have enough working people in the future in this country because. Because actually, if I just say we're gonna reduce immigration, it might get me a good headline in the Daily Mail, which is the people we're trying to convince. Yeah. What about me? What about the people who you've already convinced are already part of this job? Don't care. We just want to swing some voters away.

44:53 From from the right to our side completely. You gonna lose us. Yeah, it's happening already. People are walking away. That's why there's a huge rebellion of Labour MPs right now about the the disability and welfare cuts, because that's fundamentally why they got into. Politics. Yeah. And there's a comes a point where you don't just sit there and go like, oh, well, they're the red team, so I'm going to back them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There comes a point where playing the game, which is what the politicians generally do, playing the game can actually just lose all your supporters. You can actually just switch sides because I'm just playing the game so well that no one actually backs me anymore. Yeah, yeah, maybe don't do that. That's probably not the best way. You're not convincing people and you're losing your base. So well done. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. So realistically, they're probably looking at this. Thinking we probably won't be in power next time anyway because we're absolutely decimating ourselves. So do we need to worry about this thing now, kick it down the road another three years. They can deal with it then.

45:35 And then they'll do the same. And then they'll do the same. And then we'll suddenly be like South Korea and we'll be like, oh, it's, it's 15 years down the line now. It's completely too late to do anything. Our, our birth rate is at like an uncontrollably downward spiral. Like we've already raised a like an entire generation's worth of children. Whether the birth rate, whether the birth rate is tiny, they already won't be able to pay for pensions for 15 years in the future now, which will absolutely decimate our country. It's too late. Oh, oops. But luckily I'm 65 and I'm a politician, so I don't care. Yeah, yeah, I've got my trust fund from. Earlier, I want you to talk about something because I know you're passionate about it. I love doing that. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. It's podcast after all. I want to put it to you now about how all of this, all of this kind of background is massively exacerbating a problem that already existed because of squeezed funding, which is the experienced teacher is just disposable, completely disposable.

46:25 Because the experienced teacher, it doesn't matter anymore that they've been teaching for 15 years, doesn't matter anymore that they know the curriculum inside out, doesn't matter anymore what kind of outcomes they get. They cost ��15,000 a year more than an inexperienced teacher. How do you think this is going to play out in the next few years as this problem inevitably becomes more and more of an issue? I think. I think we'll see an issue that we already have being even more exaggerated, which is, and I'm seeing it online already because it's a lot of people who are saying that oh I can't get a job now unless I agree to cut down like 2 pay points because I'm on M6 or I'm on UPS. I'm on the upper pay scale. So I mean paid a lot more, significantly more compared to a newly qualified teacher on ECT. So basically I either don't have a job anymore if I I either stick at the school I'm at and they have to put up with me because they can't fire me.

47:15 So I've just got to stay here forever if I want this job, but if I want to move, I have to take a pay cut or just not get a job, right? I think that's going to happen more and more and more. And I think older teachers are going to leave the profession and we're going to have as many Ects as possible and cheaper teachers as possible. And we're just going to drive away experience because we can't afford it anymore. And we're going to go, oh, well, that's what we have to do. And everyone's, everyone will know. Everyone will know. Obviously there's, there's a reason we pay people for experience is because they're experienced and they're good at their jobs. Like it does. Actually, there is merit in that and it is worth the experience, but we simply can't afford it because oh, people numbers are dropped. We can't afford it anymore. We can either let you both off or just let you off. Oh, let's maybe get rid of you and and have two, two cheaper teachers. I don't know.

47:56 So what? What would you say to someone who comes back to that? And says, are you degrading EC TS? So many of our listeners, Hayden right now are EC TS who are listening to this and you're basically saying they're worst teachers. What's wrong with an ECT? I think it just goes back. To what I just said about experience like the the I just do the counter. Are you degrading what 10 years of experience in teaching are you saying that's worth literally nothing? Did you get nothing because I tell you what put me up against my NQT self. I am world better at every single element of teaching than that, than that guy was. I just am because I've because of my 10 years experience. Yeah, It doesn't mean I'm if you, you can't put me up against a different NQTA, different ECC, because I'd be much better you because obviously you're you're insanely good. You know, everyone praised you as you walk through the school. So that's that's what people like to do. They're saying, oh, you're putting yourself against other people.

48:41 No, no, no, I'm not. I'm just saying in general, yeah, we can use generalisation sometimes for the good. Oh, OK, we can. We can. Generally, if you've done the job for, you're generalising a hypothetical. Don't do that. You know more stuff. You know how to. Do things more efficiently. Better doesn't mean you everything's better. I'm sure I'm more complacent in some areas than I was. I was going to come back to you and say this. Do you not think? OK, be honest, be brutally honest. Now, was your attitude better? Yeah, absolutely my attitude. Was better, Was I more malleable? Yeah. Great in the eyes of SLT. Did I work longer hours? Great in it? Yes. Right. When I use better very loosely in that. Time, you know exactly what I mean exactly. Better, right. But again, does that not fall into the trap of that's why it's happening right now?

49:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the older teachers like I sit there and say that's ridiculous. No, whereas the newer teachers in general, and I do think this, we're bucking the trend now in a really good way where we ECT's are standing up for their rights, etcetera, are more likely to be like, yeah, sure, I'll do that. I'm I'm young, I don't have a family. I want to just finish off maybe this discussion about experienced teachers, because I think you made your point very clearly and it's happening and it's a shame. But in a in a if you were to walk into a an amazing school, what kind of mixture of teachers would you see in terms of experience? What would you want to see? What do you think is a good because you don't do you want exclusively 15 year plus in a school? Yeah, I think if you were being. Idealistic, you might say. On paper that might be the best outcome because everyone's the most experienced they can be. Doesn't work in the real world though, does it? Because we do need training, we do need new teachers. It's like the replacement rate thing, but in teaching, right, I do need it.

50:11 So I think you, I think you should see a honestly a really good balance all the way across the spectrum. I think a really good school if again, if we're generalising and we need and our country needs to develop over the next 20 years and have more teachers that also become experienced, they do need to start somewhere. So we do need every school realistically on average should have a bunch of Ects all the way up to a bunch of really experienced teachers. The Etts can learn from the really experienced teachers and the really experienced teachers can also learn from the Ects. Because like we've just said, there are perks to being an ECT compared to being maybe a complacent tenure in teacher like I probably am right now in a lot of aspects of my job. It's pros and cons, pros and cons and. Cons And when I think back to being a newly qualified teacher, I would, I'm going to go as far to say is that every single thing that I learned that has stayed with me as good practise has come from watching experienced teachers.

50:58 Yeah, I think that's invaluable. I think that link between experienced teachers and newly qualified teachers is invaluable because you just see things you don't get out of a textbook, you see things you don't get out of university lecture. And ultimately when you're doing your placement and you're with one class teacher, you see one class teachers teach and then you're just doing it yourself. Yeah, Yeah. I was incredibly lucky and I, I talked about Fran a lot. Fran was my class teacher when I trained. We work for now still. I was so lucky that I, I've said this before, I just copied her. She was such a good teacher that I could sit there and watch. And then I thought to myself, cool, well, I'm brand new, so I'm just going to, that seems to work. The kids are happy and they're learning a lot, so I'm just going to copy her. And then from then on, when I went out to observe different people, I observed a teacher called Lynn.

51:43 She was unbelievable with the kids, had a smaller group, children who struggled to read. Experienced, very experienced teacher. Taught some of my friends when they were in school. Yeah, unbelievably good. Again, I I got loads of behaviour management from her just from watching her for honestly, 15 minutes. Yeah, Yeah. And I do think that we're going down a very, very bad Rd at the minute where these experienced teachers are being lost from school. Newer teachers are going to lose their experience and newer teachers are going to rely on trial and error, which will get which will improve them, obviously, but they're going to miss out on them. Golden Nuggets of that person's been a teacher for 25 years and she does this unbelievably well. And she's got a track record for the last 15 years getting out of the kids. Go and watch her.

52:23 She's so good at that. One of the huge, I want to finish with this. One of the huge. Catch 20 twos. I think this whole thing right is a really good thought experiment is comparing to the private industry, right? When you when you're paying for experience in the private industry, you're quite often paying for efficiency. You're paying someone more because they can do the two hour job in one hour now because they're just so good at it right. And the the catch 22 in education is this huge part of what makes experience worthwhile, which is efficiency. There are other elements, like you said, of just literally knowing just knowledge and stuff. Yeah, of course. But a lot of it is efficiency. I can do things way I can do things in a lot, a lot of time, which means I can do more jobs now in school than I could have done when I was an ECT. Yeah, that part doesn't matter. Do you know why? Because we've built this perfect system of time doesn't matter because you'll do it all in your own time. So schools that well, I say schools, that's a very loosely point.

53:11 It doesn't matter now if you're efficient or not because the NQT will just spend 3 hours doing it and I'll spend one hour doing no one cares. They paid the same, do it your own time. No one cares because that's what this system is built on. It's built on martyrdom. So, so don't care. Efficiency. There you go. There's half of what makes experience worthwhile gone. Now I can justify. Do I really need to pay this much more for this teacher? Yeah, because they're because they they could. They're way better at doing these jobs. They can get them done quicker. Yeah. I don't really care though, because the ECT will just do it anyway in the evening. So that doesn't persuade me such a Why else do I want to pay 15 grand more for a teacher? They know more. That's all right. We'll just doesn't matter that much. 15 schemes in. They're just going to. Copy Yeah, we change the schemes every year anyway, so that doesn't. Matter because we don't actually value the knowledge at all.

53:52 Oh the the experienced staff. Member in in staff meetings will talk out and say, well this might not work because Oh no we don't want them challenging us we just want. EC TS that are malleable. So hang on a minute. I think we'll just, I can't see any drawbacks in only having EC TS and no experience teachers to learn from. Let's just save money and have EC TS. That's one like really sort of negative, pessimistic way of viewing it, but it does happen. I I think it's a realistic way of viewing. It I think that's what's happening. And again, I'm going to now vouch for those amazing leaders out there who have such a headache right now, those unbelievable leaders who are sat there knowing they have to make people redundant. And I don't want to come across here Willy nilly and say, like, oh, yes, people, they're licking their lips to get rid of those experiences. Pessimistic, by the way, because not everyone thinks like that. I completely agree with you.

54:34 And I'm saying I think what you're saying is goes through the minds of some people. And it has to. Yeah, it has to because they're thinking it's going to save money at the end of the day. Yeah. But realistically, for the vast majority of leaders out there who are unbelievable people, genuinely, they are sick to the stomach with this. Yes. This is the kind of thing that keeps heads up at night. And this is the kind of thing where heads earn their money. And I want to want to back them up a little bit here and just say it's it's easy to sit here and go, well, yeah, you're the one making the redundancies. Isn't that easy? It's horrendous. You any head teacher working in a school has made personal relationships with all of the staff. And the idea that that head would have to make someone redundant who has a family and a mortgage, I wouldn't want to be in their shoes in a million years. So I want to shout out those leaders right now who are in this situation, who couldn't think of anything worse, who have their hands tied for funding because it's just from the top down.

55:24 And they're the people who, despite being at the top, are really in the middle. They're in the middle of a systemic problem in the country, which we spoke about earlier, which then feeds down to the funding of schools, etcetera. And the actual teacher staff themselves. And I, I don't, I, I really don't resent them at all. And I, I think really highly of them. And I want to just, like, reserve a spot here just to talk about leaders for just a few minutes. And and how I can't fathom how we get to just sit here on a chair and talk about stuff sometimes from our soapbox and our high horse and say this is a huge problem. It's ridiculous. How could this happen in schools? Do you know what the people on the frontline are trying to do the best they can?

56:04 Yeah, definitely, definitely. No, I agree. And I'm just thinking now like a back to an alternate reality of let's say we weren't, let's say we weren't leaving, right? And our school didn't make. And we said maybe it was a bit of a bit of a relief for them because they're like, Christ, OK, that's two less teachers we have to replace now. 2 fewer teachers. Sorry, before you crank me now, I was just going to say it, but you know, you teach podcast. You have to get it right. You live rent free. My head when I say the word. Less or you're a teacher, but I. Think, OK, you should get it right, you're going to comment on your reel. You wrote the. Word practise with an S instead of AC. Yeah, because S is a verb, right? So S is correct when it's a verb. Thank you. OK, so I. Love your little rants. We need to do more rile up Dylan sections. But yeah, go back to an alternate reality where we didn't quit right. An affect is with an A of this. Oh yeah, sorry. Please interrupt me honestly. Honestly, this noun you're a.

56:45 Co host now I'm the affect you're a. Co host. I'm the host. Sorry, I won't affect your talking anymore. Don't affect my talking anymore because you have to. Practise this so imagine we didn't quit. I wouldn't feel how much from I put into practise like what you're just saying. And I think this is true. I would not feel angry at my head teacher if he had to make me redundant, you know what I mean? Like my anger would not be at him in any capacity because I know, because I know how hard that decision would be for him. I know it wouldn't be personal and I know it's not his fault. He doesn't want to do it. He doesn't want to do it. It's not his fault. So I wouldn't be angry. And I think that just proves that like what you're saying is true. We're not here saying head teachers, what are you doing? No, it's not that at all. And I think we summed that up perfectly before we.

57:27 Were saying this is the right thing to do in this situation. Of course schools are gonna have to close. What do we do? Just prop them open? Prop up the spate like with what we can't paying. A teacher to. To teach, not to each. Like, I get it. I understand it. It's just really frustrating that it's got to this point. Yeah, because it's not something that has just happened overnight. We've known this for a long time. And yeah, I think going back to what you just said again, I am. So how do I put this? I feel relief for my school that me leaving, I was able to lighten that load slightly of the long term picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of Oh my gosh, what we're gonna do in the next 3-4 five years if the birth rate continues in this way. Yeah, exactly.

58:09 I do like the idea of that not being a problem and I don't want I would rather that than it been looking bad. Politicised. Yeah, yeah. Oh, look, there's more vacancies now because I've left and I'm part of that statistic. Isn't that awful? No, no, I'd you know, I'd rather it look a bit better for the headline, even if it masks over the problem, because it means the literal people who I really like and have worked with for a decade have an easier. Ride, Yeah, who aren't in a position. Like us, fortunately. To be able to make this move willingly anyway, Yeah. Who? Who like they wouldn't then have a choice. They're now. There are some people who are teaching right now. Who, if they were made redundant, would struggle? Yeah, of course they would struggle with most people. Yeah, because they could go. Of course they go and get a job. But immediately not going to get a job at the same at the same, Yeah, same pay as well. Like not immediately in a long time. Maybe you could you could leverage something and it might work for some people.

58:57 But immediately wait, you know, no way. And it's your profession. Like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. That's it anyway. But yeah, in general, just kind of culminating everything we've talked about in terms of this lower birth rate etcetera. Do you think there's anything we can actually do immediately in this situation? Or is it unfortunately one of those times where we always try and think what the solution would be? Is it one of those times where we just say, guys, this is going to happen and we need we what we can do is control ourselves and think about the future? I think you've kind of already said it in this. Podcast, I think it's relatively simple. There are two things immediately, immigration is the only answer. How we can't magic people into existence, right? So if we need more people in the country, it has to be immigration.

59:41 But if we want to improve the birth rate, which is really what we're talking about here, then it's obviously it takes time and we need to incentivize it. And what, how else can we do it? How else can we do it right? Clearly people in the past forever basically have wanted to on average have enough children where the birth rate, where the population was increasing, right? I'm not saying everyone individually, I'm just saying as a population, we've obviously had the desire to want to continue reproducing, right? I don't think that desire has just suddenly disappeared and humanity's completely evolved and changed and that overnight. So clearly there are external factors. So what can we do? Oh, we can maybe help those external factors by incentivizing having children again. Let's reduce some of the bad external factors as a as a nation, as a world, as the in the world, you know, whatever. And I don't know, I don't know what else we could do. You know, that's it.

1:00:25 We just incentivize having children, tax breaks, whatever, make it make it more affordable. What I would say to anyone in. Any job in any walk of life ever, but I'm going to talk directly to teachers now is just start thinking about how you can leverage what you do. Just start thinking about your personal leverage and and just spreading yourself a bit more than having all your eggs in one basket. Now I don't want to be the person sat here on a podcast where we do a podcast and have tutoring and do all these other things as well as teaching to say to someone, why don't you just do 4 things? Why don't you just do 8 things? Just spread yourself out because it is not that simple. And I vehemently believe that you should be able to just be really good at your one profession. It should sustain you in life. Unfortunately, that is not what is happening right now. And when you're looking over the edge of a Cliff of the birth rate and how we are going to have fewer children around and that will mean that teachers are being made redundant, you can't control that big machine.

1:01:18 No, something I've learned the hard way over the last few years of education in general, we're not going to be able to control that big machine. So if that is the way it's going, and it certainly looks that way, we have to start thinking about what our future options would be. So if you're in that position right now where you think, oh, sorry, I've got two or three years and before that's the problem, start thinking now. Start thinking about doing some tutoring. If that's what you want to go down, start thinking about retraining. My friend was an estate agent. He worked so many hours as an estate agent. He knew it wasn't what he wanted to do, but he needed a job. He worked his way up. He did amazingly well in that job. Amazing person. And he he trained in the evenings to become a cloud software engineer. Yeah. And do you know what he's got now? A job doing that?

1:02:00 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Less hours. Yeah. Few hours. I don't know. No, I'm ready. Few hours. And yeah, you're getting more pay. Yeah. More secure job, more future proof and enjoys it more and that's only because he made that plunge to do that a couple of years ago, a couple of years ago, but it. Took two years. Definitely. So it's not something you can say I'll be, I'll just find something else overnight. All I'm saying to you guys is just start thinking about it where you can, even if it's one or two hours a week and it might not even happen, but have that backup. Plan in your head. Basically, exactly what you don't need to do is quote short. I'd hate for anyone listening to this to be like, oh, yeah, OK, that's cool. Two years down the line, sorry, you're redundant. You've got to go and find another job somewhere. You're doing something you hate, has to pay, struggling to pay your mortgage. Yeah, just.

1:02:41 Get. In touch if you want some advice as well help, but just start thinking about it for sure. Thank you for that, Dylan. Where can they get in touch? They can get in touch on Instagram at Teach, Seek, Repeat. Podcast they can e-mail us at not at the outcomes later, they can e-mail us.teachseekrepeatpod@gmail.com and yeah, if you follow us in there, send us a message. We should be able to pick it up. And just one thing, if they did get this far into the episode, Aiden, yeah, what could they do? They could leave us a review. They could, specifically a. Five star review. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely right. We do. We do like them. Once, Yeah, they do really, really help us. Jokes aside, and we'd love to hear from you. So if you have any experience of anything we talked about in today's episode, do get in touch. Let us know about your potential redundancies, your school's squeezing. And do you know what I want to know as well? Anything you want us to talk about in the future? So if you have any ideas for episode, I'd love receiving messages from you guys.

1:03:28 We've got a whole bunch and we'll talk through some of those messages I think, next week as well. Brilliant. See you next time. Bye, guys.