Remember the feeling? It’s the week before you officially start as a teacher, your . You’re excited to finally be that person, you’ve worked so hard to get here. All the late nights prepping, all the early mornings planning during your placements. The terrible nerves of getting through observations.
But it’s all worth it as you hold your head up high - you’re a teacher now! You’ve spent your summer buying wee things to make your classroom perfect, you’ve sourced second-hand furniture and games for the kids. You bought a trusted paper cutter and laminator and those funky stamps, and you can’t wait to use them.
Then you start. And it’s not what you expected.
Jarring realities for new teachers
Sure, the class of 32 with rising additional support needs is overwhelming when you haven’t been adequately trained for it. The limited resources, shaky wi-fi, lack of support staff - all are jarring realities. But even worse, some colleagues have taken it upon themselves to make your life harder than it needs to be.
In last year’s General Teaching Council for Scotland of provisionally‐registered teachers, 11 per cent reported being bullied or harassed - a figure that rose to a shocking 30 per cent among minority-ethnic provisionally‐registered teachers.
I struggle to comprehend how anyone who remembers that precarious, nerve-racking first year could treat new colleagues this way. “Oh that’s not me,” many will say, and maybe it isn’t. But it’s everyone’s professional and personal responsibility to stand up, call it out and change the culture.
Almost 18 per cent of probationers on the 2023 in Scotland had left before January 2024, the highest dropout since before Covid, when the rate was 13 per cent. Only 17 per cent of primary teachers who completed induction had secured permanent positions by September 2023. Job insecurity, workload pressure, poor support, disruptive behaviour - these are all pushing good people out.
Impact on teacher wellbeing
A national of nearly 11,000 teachers, published in June, called out persistent, excessive workload demands at every level, from probationers to senior leaders, that pose serious threats to teacher wellbeing and health.
The 2024 , which surveyed more than 3,000 education staff (including Scottish teachers), found that:
- 78 per cent of teachers and 84 per cent of school leaders reported stress.
- 82 per cent of staff exposed to challenging pupil behaviour said it harmed their mental health.
- 77 per cent of staff displayed symptoms of poor mental health, and 50 per cent thought their workplace culture had a negative impact.
Bullying doesn’t just bruise confidence - it can end careers before they’ve begun. In the above wellbeing index, half of all staff said their workplace culture harmed their wellbeing. Harm can mean spiralling anxiety, dread before the working day and the slow erosion of the passion that brought them into teaching in the first place.
Being undermined in front of others, excluded from key conversations or subject to microaggressions - all of this is crushing for a new teacher. It is not the profession that we should be offering to our future workforce.
So what needs to change? Here are four big priorities:
1. Build a positive, protective culture
Younger colleagues must feel safe and trusted. Education Support’s data shows that feeling unsupported by management or distrusted, or working in a negative team culture, sharply raises the risk of burnout or leaving. Clear induction and allyship programmes must be actively lived, not just promised.
2. Tackle workload and job insecurity
Reducing bureaucracy, aligning probation workload with training capacity and providing realistic class sizes could significantly reduce stress, as both the EIS and Education Support recommend. Job security matters. If fewer than one in five new teachers nets a permanent post, it’s no wonder many choose to leave.
3. Address behaviour and safety
Abuse against staff must be taken seriously. The NASUWT and EIS teaching unions both argue for appropriate disciplinary policies, and better additional support needs (ASN) provision to support student needs and reduce risk. Teachers need training and institutional backing to manage classroom behaviour safely.
4. Provide mental health support and spaces
Most schools still do not provide counselling, dedicated wellbeing spaces or monitoring for stress, burnout and staff mental health, according to the . Access to workplace wellbeing resources, peer support groups and counsellors shouldn’t be optional extras, they must be foundational.
To every school leader, union rep, mentor and colleague: let’s strive to make probation a safe place. Let’s create an environment where new teachers feel valued, not bullied; can ask for help and receive it, not be shamed; know their commitment is supported, not dismissed; and are encouraged, not undermined.
To new teachers: hold on to that initial spark, the one that made you dig in and plan during placements; the thrill of being trusted with that first class. You’re part of something invaluable and you deserve better. Let’s make this a great year for our new teachers.
Nuzhat Uthmani is a primary teacher and a lecturer in initial teacher education at the University of Stirling. She is on
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