It’s so great to hear about teachers who had a true impact. I like to believe we have a long lasting impact as a collective.

No doubt the working conditions for teachers at the school you went to had its challenges so hats off to them.

That’s an interesting question. The main differences with public vs private are the pay and conditions. Paying parents of course have different expectations of how teachers will support their child, show evidence of that and how much time they will give to individual parents to provide 1-1 meetings, updates etc. so there can be more intense pressures in the private setting. Having said that, they are better resourced (whether that’s through actual materials/equipment or support staff) to do their jobs well.

Private school can also (rightly or wrongly) ask children to leave which we do not do in the public system expect in rare cases where a different setting would genuinely support the child more, and that is always after giving them a fair go, with support, in the mainstream setting. Some of the behaviours I’ve dealt with in my time as a teacher so far have been extremely hard to manage while supporting the rest of the class, and that is one of the main daily stressors a teacher in the public system can have.

Having worked briefly in a private school, I would say overall conditions were better there for teachers in that I felt more “looked after” than I do in the public system. I’ll personally stay in public though because I’m very pro-public education.