According to the Education Endowment Foundation, top-notch teaching stands as the most potent tool schools possess to enhance children’s learning experiences. Thus, how the education system attracts, prepares, supports, and retains teachers is a crucial discussion point for politicians and policymakers. This focus is arguably more significant than the structural reforms often dominating conversations in Westminster and Whitehall.
However, for over a decade, schools in England have grappled with worsening issues in attracting and keeping teachers, leading to rising pupil-to-teacher ratios, especially noticeable in secondary schools. Last year, the teaching ranks grew by less than 300, which is starkly insufficient. This shortage strains the current teachers further, escalating workloads and behavior management challenges, ultimately worsening the retention issue. Now, over a million students find themselves in classes exceeding 30 pupils, while shortages in critical subjects like physics, computing, and foreign languages persist. Consequently, teachers often have to cover subjects outside their specializations, forcing some schools to cut back on subject offerings.
The government is facing a formidable task in addressing this crisis. Their strategy centers on two main approaches: They have promised to bring in an additional 6,500 expert teachers in vital subjects, financed by extending VAT to private school fees. Additionally, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson advocates for teachers to have the right to work more flexibly, focusing on tasks like lesson preparation and marking outside the classroom. This initiative aims to make teaching a more appealing and viable career path. Just this week, a new children’s wellbeing bill was unveiled, proposing that non-academy schools should have the same discretion academies have to implement flexible working for teachers.
These initiatives are certainly steps in the right direction, yet they fall short of solving the recruitment and retention crisis on their own. It’s still unclear how quickly the government plans to achieve the target of 6,500 additional teachers. But in the face of more profound challenges such as pay and workload, reaching this goal will be tough—especially considering roughly 40,000 teachers leave the profession annually. Although increasing flexibility might make teaching more attractive (a growing number of teachers thinking of leaving cite rigidity as a reason), there’s a limit to how much flexibility can be introduced in such a highly interactive job.
To genuinely tackle the teacher retention crisis, fundamental issues like pay and workload must be confronted. Even after pay raises of 6.5% this year and 5.5% last year, teacher salaries are still 9% lower in real terms compared to 2010. Declining real pay inevitably hampers recruitment and retention efforts. Moreover, the government’s proposed 2.8% pay increase for next year won’t be fully funded, leaving schools to cover part of the expense from existing budgets. Despite some improvements, a heavy workload remains the primary reason teachers leave the profession. With teachers increasingly shouldering responsibilities typically outside school duties—like social and mental health services—due to cuts to other services and rising demands post-pandemic, workloads remain hefty.
This scenario echoes the broader dilemma the government confronts across much of the public sector. More resources are necessary, yet officials claim they’re unavailable. There’s no denying the challenging fiscal and economic state passed on to Labour by the previous administration. Nonetheless, investing in a skilled teaching workforce can’t be executed on a shoestring budget.
