‘A lot of people are broken’: The mental health crisis crushing British teachers

Kate* loves teaching. She loves going to her primary school every day, standing up in front of her class, watching the children learn. It’s the job she’s always dreamed about having. Despite all this, she says that choosing the career is one of her biggest regrets. The prospect of work has started giving her panic attacks. She has so much paperwork to do that, outside of school, she’s hardly left the house for weeks. And now she’s desperate to quit. Where did it all go wrong?

“Being in the class is absolutely perfect,” she says. “But it’s everything else that takes over teaching, everything else on top of it, that’s made me hate it.” Whether it’s the mountain of admin on her desk, the torrent of emails, or all the meetings and worries for children’s care, it’s become too much. Kate is not alone. Teaching has always been one of the most rewarding professions, but it’s also one of the toughest. And it’s getting worse. A November study by the mental health charity Education Support found that teacher wellbeing is at a five-year low, with stress, insomnia and burnout all rising. In 2017, 67 per cent of schoolteachers were reporting feelings of stress – by 2023, that figure had risen starkly to 78 per cent.

The figures get worse everywhere you turn. This year, found that some had been driven to the point of suicide by the stress of the job. Among 12,000 teachers, 23 per cent reported drinking more alcohol, 12 per cent the use of or increased use of antidepressants, and 3 per cent said they for teachers at the union’s annual conference in March.