ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the macro forces of intensification and Government policy combine with personal and situational factors to produce an increase in teacher stress and burn-out. More experienced teachers are hampered in any quest for new positions because of their cost to schools, managing their own budgets and confronted, because of economic pressures, by the prospect of having to make some of their existing staff redundant. Teachers have suffered an assault on their professional status. Teachers lost a long and bitter struggle with the Thatcher Government over pay in the 1980s. The very nature of the beliefs, apart from their standing in opposition to government policy and preference, makes teachers vulnerable. The less skilled a headteacher is the more bullying might be used as a resource, as a kind of hidden survival strategy. The incidence of bullying among teachers in schools has indeed escalated.
