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Older teachers can cope better with workplace tensions, report finds - but some veterans are just 'knackered'
More teachers will have to work into their mid-sixties and beyond thanks to the rising pension age, but at least one report paints a positive picture for the ageing profession.
A Department for Education review has found that older teachers "report less stress than less experienced teachers" - and that they continue to improve pupils' results.
Reassuringly, the cognitive skills needed to teach "do not deteriorate significantly" before the age of 70, it adds.
But at a time when so many teachers are choosing to leave the profession well before pensionable age, having clocked up many hours of unpaid overtime (bit.ly/TeachersWorkFree), can this portrait of the calm, content senior pedagogue really be accurate?
For TES columnist Steve Eddison, a 63-year-old teacher at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield, it is the ability to work part-time that has kept him from leaving.
"I think it makes a massive difference in terms of work-life balance," he says.
"You get less stressed. There are fewer responsibilities to worry about. You are not under stress all the time."
Wasted talent
But attitudes towards flexible working vary "enormously from school to school", acknowledges last month's interim report from the DfE's Teachers Working Longer Review steering group (bit.ly/WorkingLongerReport) .
Health and wellbeing charity Education Support Partnership also fears that the talent of older, experienced teachers is being needlessly wasted because they do not feel supported by schools.
"[They] often feel that they are being pushed aside in favour of younger and cheaper colleagues," a...