In recent years, it seems we have become stuck in a state of permacrisis. Headlines are dominated by the cost-of-living crisis, the energy crisis, the climate crisis, the mental health crisis, the small boats crisis, the housing crisis, the student loan crisis, the social care crisis, the maternity care crisis and so on.
It’s easy to feel ‘crisis fatigue’: a sense of exhaustion, burnout and apathy from all this prolonged adversity. After all, in the last decade, we have endured Brexit; Covid; wars in Ukraine, Palestine and Iran; seven different prime ministers; skyrocketing interest rates; record levels of debt; record illegal immigration; and now record numbers of disillusioned young people not in education, training or employment. It’s easy to feel defeatist against this backdrop of negativity: yes, yes, I know things are really bad, but what can we really do?
For all of these reasons I hesitate to call what is happening in teacher recruitment yet another ‘crisis’, especially when it lacks the urgency or danger of other, more pressing domestic and geopolitical matters. Ultimately, no matter how bad things get, school classrooms won’t sit empty: classes can be merged, class sizes can grow, and pupils can be taught by teaching assistants, cover staff and other non-specialists. Of course, these compromises impact teaching and learning, but they also allow politicians to ignore the scale of the problem. Institutional denial has now become a long-term habit rather than a short-term necessity.
