TEACHING has become more stressful than ever due to "punitive and crushing" surveillance of teachers' performance, NASUWT president Dan McCarthy said today.

Mr McCarthy, an English teacher from Essex, told delegates at the union's annual conference in Birmingham that teachers "change lives."
 
But Mr McCarthy warned that "observation overload" and excessive workloads had "very clear outcomes: mental ill-health for the teachers and the children. And more money for consultants."
 
He said teaching was an “intrinsically" stressful profession, but it had become "more stressful as the challenges of poverty and inequality have worsened."

Teachers, however, have been made subject to increased monitoring rather than being supported, he said.