Page 87 - SEN115 - November/December 2021

Fostering
Professional support
Sustaining the needs of
the 21st century educators
Feliciea Jibson and Josianne Pisani discuss the need for professional support tools for SEN learners, to help reduce the high turnover in the teaching profession and provide more fulfilling learning experiences for pupils.
We can all agree that every parent wants the best teachers and the most effective teaching for their children, and rightly so. But good quality teaching doesn’t happen by magic. As in all professions, it takes years to gain the skills teachers need to be effective in their roles. Yet on average, this profession loses around 8% teaching staff every year.
Education is very complex. Even experienced teachers are confronted with big challenges. They not only need to deal with changes in the content for the subjects they teach and with new instructional methods, but also get to grips with the constant advances in technology and changes to laws and procedures. Add to this the extra support they are expected to give their peers, parents and students and it is easy to see why 1 out of 3 teachers leave the profession within their first three years and half leave within their first five.
The effect that teacher turnover has on education is far reaching. Naturally, hiring and training new teachers is an expensive process. More than that, schools lose out on experience and
“Even experienced teachers are confronted with big challenges.
programmes get disrupted, not to mention the risk of burnout and fatigue due to the extra responsibilities that teachers that stay will need to take on. Ultimately, it is the learners who suffer the consequences.
Teacher retention is a global issue that is spread within all sectors of education, but studies show that in the field of special education there is a 46% higher predicted turnover rate. The demands are high but the formal training teachers receive does not reflect it. Could professional support make a difference?
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