I am, and always will be, of the opinion that teachers are one of our society’s most undervalued resources. A study by the University of Manchester in 2025 revealed that around one third of new teachers leave the profession in their first five years, and recruitment and retention has been an issue for at least a decade. A profession and vocation, teaching has direct and measurable impact on society, but is that reflected in the kudos and respect you receive in your everyday life? If you throw in the fact that people make endless jokes about your long holidays but still want you to sign their kids’ passport photos, it’s not hard to see why many teachers feel down-hearted, panicked, stuck.

If you’re a teacher, I would be willing to bet you could give me a pretty detailed summary of why you think this is: long hours, no work-life balance, administrative work that sucks up time that you’d prefer to use on your teaching, endless data requests, buying supplies from your own pocket because the school can’t or won’t, inspections and observations, changing syllabuses, managerial decisions that don’t translate well to the classroom, budgets, data, reports, more data….. The list is different for every teacher and every school, but the pressure is universal. 

And that pressure exists because the enormous majority of teachers just really want to be good at their jobs – to do their best by the students in their care, and to pass on their knowledge of a subject that means a lot to them.