forty years ago, there weren't universties like there are now. so many people who wanted to continue their education went to teacher training colleges.

Actually that's fifty years ago in my case. the drop out rate was high, even back then. many women dropped out to have children - the average length of teaching career for a woman was two years.

many of the schools didn't provide courses of any relevance to what children needed. the discipline was harsh and when the school leaving age was raised to sixteen (ROSLA)- it was envisaged by most professional teachers that trouble would ensue. It did.

The things that have really made teaching difficult, i would list:

1) Education being a political football. Endless reorganisation. POliticians simply can't be trusted with education.
2) THe national Curriculum - the idea that there could be one curriculum for a country as diverse as England was obviouly nonsense. THe money wasted on that idiot project could have solved many problems.
3) the lack of vocational training. Education needs to have cognisance and care for the world children will grow up in.
4) Educational Gimmicks. the number of times i have been in a school where they have funding for Language DEvelopment or some such, but where the textbooks are thirty years old and older.
5) the dreaded inspection - the threat of which which seems to chill the heart of every teacher and head teacher.
I was a professional teacher in the inner ring of Brum throUgout the 1970's. i had to give up my career when my wife became disabled. since then poverty has forced me into various temporary and supply teaching gigs - sometimes when i shouldn't have left my wife. so i've seen the inside of a lot of schools.

it genuinely grieves my heart to see the lack of will on the part of successive governments. the endless pretence that the solutions are political, rather than professional.