Education Committee
Oral evidence: Teacher recruitment, training and retention, HC 119
Tuesday 12 December 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 12 December 2023.
Members present: Mr Robin Walker (Chair); Mrs Flick Drummond; Andrew Lewer; Ian Mearns; Caroline Ansell; Nick Fletcher.
Questions 235 - 301
Witnesses
I: The Rt Hon Damian Hinds, Minister of State for Schools, Department for Education; and Sue Lovelock, Director of Teaching Workforce: Candidates, Trainees, Strategy, Portfolio and Analysis, Department for Education.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– [Add names of witnesses and hyperlink to submissions]
Witnesses: Damian Hinds and Sue Lovelock.
Q235 Chair: Welcome to this fifth session of the Committee’s inquiry on teacher recruitment, training and retention. Today, we are hearing evidence from Minister Damian Hinds, the Minister of State for Schools, and Sue Lovelock, the Director of Teaching Workforce: Candidates, Trainees, Strategy, Portfolio and Analysis at the Department for Education. You are both very welcome back to the Committee.
Considering the initial teacher training recruitment data published last week, would you agree with comments the Committee has heard that the teacher recruitment and retention situation in England remains at crisis level? What, in your view, are the reasons for the problems we are seeing with teacher recruitment and retention?
Damian Hinds: We clearly have a lot of work to do, Chairman. We have the largest number of teachers in schools in England that we have ever had. We have more joiners than leavers and have done for a number of years. We have new routes into the profession and innovative approaches to try to attract people, but it is still true that it is a very competitive labour market overall. It is a particularly competitive graduate labour market, and then within that certain subjects are difficult—or challenging, as we say these days—to recruit to, and even more so for certain subjects within that. So I absolutely do not underestimate the scale of what we need to do. It is incredibly important work because the leverage effect that our teaching profession has on everything else in our society should never be underestimated. We have a great deal to do.
Q236 Chair: You were Secretary of State for the Department when the teacher recruitment and retention strategy was launched, I believe.
Damian Hinds: Yes.
Chair: What is your assessment of the progress that has been made through the life of the current strategy? I believe it is something you are due to refresh early next year. What are the priorities for refreshing it?
Damian Hinds: There has been good progress. The first important thing about the 2019 strategy was that there was one, and it brought everything together. There were a lot of lines of activity going on in recruitment—there still are—and having that integrated together into an overall strategy was really important.
When people think about recruitment, they think about what you are doing in the jobs market, but it is not just about that. Our recruitment and retention strategy was a lot about what happens once people are in the profession. We had a great deal of focus on those early years in teaching because we know that there is a risk of drop off—which you get in other occupations and other professions as well, but I care most about the teaching profession—so we came up with the early career framework, which I think has developed well, but there is more to be done to refine it and respond to some of what we hear from people going through it. Later in careers, part of retention in the profession is through NPQs and general continuing professional development.
The Department now talks about a golden thread running through one’s time in the profession through initial teacher training, the early career framework and then through the NPQ programme and so on. Let me stop there because I do not want to give answers that are too long.
Q237 Chair: You are absolutely right to say the Department talks about that golden thread but, having tried to discuss it with a number of different people, my observation would be that it does not necessarily seem to be currency outside the Department.
Damian Hinds: Every thread starts somewhere, Chairman.
Chair: Indeed, but there is a concern for people, particularly in terms of the CPD side of things, that that golden thread focuses very much on leadership and moving people up into leadership, which is important but not necessarily for every teacher. I have heard the argument that other countries do more in terms of CPD and career progression within subjects; do you think that is a fair challenge? Do you think that, particularly in terms of retaining subject expertise, we could look at having more opportunity for career progression within specific subjects?
Damian Hinds: I certainly agree about the importance of retaining great classroom teachers. Not everybody wants to be a school leader, and we should not want everybody to be a school leader either. We want brilliant people carrying on doing what they have always done in the classroom. NPQs actually cover a range of purposes and different career stages, but you should also see that alongside our programme around different subject speciality hubs, for example, which work on maths mastery, aspects of phonics or other subjects. In a broader sense, that is all also part of continuing professional development.
Q238 Chair: We have heard throughout the inquiry that in comparison to schools, the issue of retention and recruitment is even more severe in the further education sector. How is the Department going to address the need for specialist teachers to deliver on the demands of the advanced British standard, which I believe we are to hear more about very shortly?
Damian Hinds: It is true that there are particular recruitment challenges in further education, and in many ways even more so than in schools, because there are more things that young people—and not so young people—are doing in FE colleges than in schools. There is a bigger range of industrial sector expertise and experience that you are looking for and some can be quite hard to find because you are competing against really well-remunerated jobs in the private sector economy. So there are challenges there, but we are investing, and rightly so, more money into FE. From memory, I think it is £182 million this year, and I think £282 million—
Sue Lovelock: It is £285 million in 2024-25.
Damian Hinds: Sorry, I was three short, so £185 million and £285 million in the two years, on top of what we have already done to boost the 16-to-19 funding level.
We also have a specific FE recruitment campaign going on. I say specific FE recruitment campaign but we also need to make sure that we realise the synergies between school recruitment and FE college recruitment. They are separate and we are not trying to merge them, but there are synergies, and we need to make sure we realise those. The challenge on ABS, of course, in terms of more hours, applies in school sixth forms as well as in FE colleges. We are particularly going to need more maths and English tuition, as well as more taught hours overall.
Chair: I observe that a lot of the capacity for maths and English tuition at the moment in the post-16 space is taken up by organising repeated GCSE retakes. That may not be the most satisfying job for teachers, or indeed for students, who often do not get any result from that, so if there are opportunities with the advanced British standards to offer some alternatives to that path to progression, that would be welcome.
Q239 Caroline Ansell: Good morning. My questions are going to rest on financial incentives and bursaries. In fact, 30 years ago today I would have been at Canterbury Christ Church with an MFL bursary, so thank you very much to past Secretaries of State. Do you agree that the absence of bursaries for certain subjects deters initial teacher training applicants?
Damian Hinds: We have various bursaries, scholarships and some other incentives as well, in a wide range of subjects. Modern languages is one of them, and we have recently expanded the programme around modern languages.
Caroline Ansell: Reinstated, I think.
Damian Hinds: There is actually a lot of money that goes into these incentives, let us just be clear—a lot of money—and we need to make sure it is as productive as possible. Some subject areas that we are dealing with are particularly competitive in terms of recruitment.
Q240 Caroline Ansell: Are you thinking of maths and sciences?
Damian Hinds: Not only those. As I say, we do give bursaries and scholarships on modern foreign languages, but there are then different levels of bursary for geography, DT, RE—for a range of subjects. But yes, there are some that are particularly acute. Physics is at the top of our list. That is not to say we elevate it in importance above other subjects, but it is hard to recruit for. There are relatively small numbers of people doing undergrad, and it is a very competitive market as the jobs that those folks can go into can be really highly paid. With some subjects, we rightly put particular attention and investment in to try to make sure we are attracting people in sufficient numbers.
Sue Lovelock: We look really carefully on an annual basis at which subjects we are targeting and what level we are setting bursaries at. We look carefully at the recruitment data and the labour market to make sure that we are setting them at the right level and targeting them in the best possible way to maximise the value for money.
Q241 Caroline Ansell: I understand that. That, of course, is also one of the criticisms: it is an annual adjustment, or an annual offer. Is there then a perverse response for providers and for would-be applicants looking to see whether there would be that financial support? There has been something of a challenge; could there not be more of a multi-year settlement in order to better secure more consistent applications?
Damian Hinds: Caroline, there is a balance. I understand what you are saying. On the other hand, it is really important to be able to respond and to adjust to the places we need to fill, and fill with not just anyone but really high-quality talent. When you add them all up, it is a lot of money so it is useful to do. Anybody looking over time would notice that it is rather likely that in any given year physics, maths and modern languages are very likely subjects to attract significant incentives.
Q242 Caroline Ansell: What would the Department be doing specifically to promote teacher recruitment in non-bursary subjects?
Damian Hinds: All the normal things that we do in recruitment. Our broad, above-the-line advertising, as it were, is about teaching everything. It is not subject specific; it is about that vocation that many people feel and trying to light that spark. That is probably the single most important thing. Again, I should stress that there are a significant number of subjects that attract additional incentives, and for those that do not, we are largely already attracting the numbers of high-quality, talented candidates that are required to fill those places.
Q243 Caroline Ansell: Overall in our inquiry, the connection between recruitment and bursaries was well made—and obviously that is very much the Department’s position, even if it is reviewed year-on-year—but what about the connection with retention? What analysis has the Department made?
Damian Hinds: Help me out a bit.
Caroline Ansell: With teachers who have come through on a bursary and entered the teaching workforce, do you see any correlation between retention rates for those who have come through with that financial incentive and those who have not?
Damian Hinds: That is a very good question. It is also a question that I had asked on my initial entry to the Department for Education and again on my return to the Department. It is a key question. It turns out the answer is that the retention rates are pretty much the same. I think there might be a two-percentage-points difference.
Sue Lovelock: It is one percentage point.
Damian Hinds: A one-percentage-point difference between those coming in on a bursary and those not.
Caroline Ansell: It is very marginal then.
Damian Hinds: Very marginal.
Q244 Caroline Ansell: I think you said at the very start that the bursaries represent a very significant investment in terms of bringing people in. Similar to perhaps the NHS workforce strategy, have you considered something of a golden handcuff, whereby the bursary is contingent on, say, a three-year or a five-year term of service? In one of our inquiry sessions, the witness particularly impressed upon us that danger spot, if you will, around the five-year mark.
Damian Hinds: Yes.
Caroline Ansell: Golden handcuffs.
Damian Hinds: First, you are right that people can fall out of the profession; that was where a lot of our focus was in the early career framework.
On golden handcuffs, Caroline, you and I clearly think similarly about things because that was something I was particularly keen on in a previous time at DfE, and I turned out to be wrong. Sue will remind me of some detail. We made the total higher over the period, with the initial bit a little smaller but still more in total, and then phased payments after periods. I had assumed that would mean we would end up with a better overall result, but we did not.
In marketing terms, the sticker price—the price on the windscreen as it were—really is quite important, and you can see why at that stage in people’s lives and so on. I am still not opposed to the principle of saying, “You’ve got to think about this over time,” but specifically when we made an almost like-for-like experimental change, it turned out not to do the thing that I had hoped it would.
Caroline Ansell: So it is not something you have in your vista. In that light, then, have you looked at—
Damian Hinds: No, no—I did say that I am not opposed to the principle. The principle is still an absolutely legitimate thing and totally rational. I am just saying that when you have a budget and you have to work out how to spend it and you are responsible for managing public money, you have to say, “I am going to use it in the way that we believe has had the biggest impact.”
Q245 Caroline Ansell: I understand that there is a review to come of recruitment and retention in the spring, so I guess my question was about whether it was something you were lining up to put to that particular review or to put out to consultation. There are other measures such as student write-off, debt write-off, or repaying bursaries; has the Department had any discussions about those?
Damian Hinds: If it is all right, Sue wanted to come back on the previous point.
Sue Lovelock: I was just going to draw out that we do have retention payments through the levelling-up payments, so it is not an either/or in terms of the way we are using the budgets that we have available. We put a strong focus on bursaries because we think there is really good evidence that they deliver an increase in both recruitment and retention, but we have the levelling-up payments as well—particularly targeted in those priority subjects—that add that additional retention incentive through the first five years of a teacher’s career.
Damian Hinds: We are increasing the levelling-up payments, of course.
Q246 Caroline Ansell: Can we come back to that one percentage point? You said that in terms of retention there was only a one-percentage-point differential between those with and those without bursaries. On what basis do you rest value for money for that very considerable investment? Is it simply on that initial recruitment rather than retention?
Sue Lovelock: It is the boost in overall recruitment numbers that is really significantly driven by the level you set the bursaries at.
Caroline Ansell: It is the initial years that you have secured.
Sue Lovelock: Yes, and you continue to retain them.
Damian Hinds: We are talking about value for money, but we are really talking here about attracting brilliant people into teaching. That is what we want to do. We want to get great people—great men and women—standing at the front of the class, inspiring children. We want them to want to do that, and we want them to stay. The way that you end up writing that down on a piece of paper is in terms of the expected number of years in teaching and, when we are looking at how we are spending public money, of course, that is what we are thinking of. It is not just about getting people in: it is about getting people in and them staying.
The one percentage point is not something I would want us to get hung up on. The key thing to take away is it is just not a material difference. In fact, I am not even sure which way around it is. It might be the other way round from what you are assuming.
Sue Lovelock: It is very slightly increased retention for those that go through with the bursary.
Q247 Caroline Ansell: Very slightly increased—one percentage point, you said. In terms of teachers and development, one of our witnesses talked about experience being absolutely invaluable, and the contribution that experienced teachers can make after three years was a significant point too.
Damian Hinds: Yes.
Caroline Ansell: Hence, retention is obviously very much considered as just as important as recruitment.
Damian Hinds: Absolutely.
Q248 Ian Mearns: I was going to talk about bursaries, but Caroline seems to have covered them quite extensively. The postgraduate teaching apprenticeship was launched in 2019; what is the Department’s assessment of its success so far?
Damian Hinds: The postgraduate teaching apprenticeship is, as the name suggests, for people who are already graduates, and it attracts levy funding, of course, which is significant. It is a relatively young programme. It is relatively small but growing and, we think, has an important role to play. One thing we need to do is spread awareness of it, both to people potentially going on to the programme and to schools as a way of developing people and getting great teachers into place.
Q249 Ian Mearns: You are saying it is quite small so far and that you need to spread the word, so what are the numbers, Damian, from that perspective?
Damian Hinds: I knew you were going to ask me that.
Sue Lovelock: Just under 1,000.
Damian Hinds: Thank you. Just under 1,000, but we are developing.
Q250 Ian Mearns: I understand that Teach First recently announced that it will be applying to deliver the teaching apprenticeship for non-graduates alongside its existing routes. Do you view this as the start of a larger trend among initial teacher education providers?
Sue Lovelock: Over the weekend, Teach First was indicating an interest in being a partner around the teaching degree apprenticeship, which is a new model that we are developing with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. We think it has lots of potential to offer a new route into the teaching profession for candidates who do not yet have a degree and would like to earn and learn their way through to becoming a professional teacher. We know we have partners in the sector that are interested in potentially offering that.
I know Teach First is one that thinks it is a really exciting potential model, and the National Institute of Teaching is another. At the moment it is very much at the development stage, with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s trailblazer group meeting to develop the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed, and to agree and approve the standard that will then be used by providers to develop the courses and start to recruit potential candidates on to the teaching degree apprenticeship.
Q251 Ian Mearns: It sounds like a strategy that Minister Halfon would be interested in promoting as well, I gather.
Damian Hinds: Yes, absolutely. He is a great advocate for apprenticeships—the ladder of opportunity, he would say, were he here, and he would be right. It is a great developmental thing. We were talking earlier about shortage subjects; I should also say, of course, that on the postgraduate teaching apprenticeship it is possible to attract those very significant grants. There is £28,000 if you are doing it in physics, for example, as well as the apprenticeship levy funding to the school. I do see a lot of potential in this for growth.
Q252 Ian Mearns: In 2022, just four bursaries were awarded under the Troops to Teachers scheme; what are the figures for this year?
Damian Hinds: We have replaced Troops to Teachers with a different approach, which is the undergraduate veteran bursary. The numbers are small, Ian.
Ian Mearns: Right.
Damian Hinds: I think you and I were on this Committee together once upon a time when we first talked about—
Ian Mearns: We always anticipated the numbers would be more.
Damian Hinds: Yes, when we first talked about it. I still think it is a worthwhile thing. I would like the numbers to be bigger—you probably would as well—but I am not going to try to bluster through some answers and say it is bigger than it is.
With this new approach, again, it is an opportunity. The undergraduate veteran bursaries are big. It is £40,000—I think it is £20,000 over the last two years of the degree if you are doing ITT for those target subjects. I do not think it is ever going to be listed in the top five routes into teaching by volume, but we can grow it and it does have a role.
Ian Mearns: Thank you very much.
Q253 Chair: Can I just come back on that? There are some areas where you can have real value from people coming out of the military and bringing their service ethos, but outdoor education and sport—these sorts of things—are obviously not the bursary subjects. Surely there is a mismatch in that there are not that many physics specialists coming out of the military, but there are lots of people who can contribute a lot to education—and in the independent sector, they do, actually.
Damian Hinds: Yes.
Chair: Is this something that we are missing out on by not having a scheme targeted towards those groups?
Damian Hinds: What you have just said has an awful lot of value to it, Chairman. I do not think it is always and only about bursaries and teacher training. Big life transitions are quite often underestimated, shall we say. Leaving the military is a massive life transition. I do not want to be introducing ideas that we have not fully talked about, but we can look more at how we do the support, the communication and the discussion of the opportunities that can be there for people who are, for example, leaving the military.
Chair: That would be good.
Q254 Nick Fletcher: We heard concerns that the initial teacher training market review has increased regional disparities, but the Times Educational Supplement has said that this has not happened. What are the next steps for the review, and how will the Department ensure that provision does not decline in quality or quantity?
Damian Hinds: When we announced the market reform, there were concerns. I understand that. The article you mentioned is helpful in outlining some of what has happened. We have so far accredited 179 providers to operate in 2024-25, which is a very significant number. For those that have not been re-accredited, we are encouraging them to look at partnerships with others, and I know that a number of those partnerships are already taking shape.
Q255 Nick Fletcher: The Committee has been told by initial teacher training providers that there were applicants rejected due to a “mismatch” between initial teacher training requirements and the applicant’s quality. What is the Department doing to encourage more high-quality candidates into teaching? Do you think the bar for entry into the teaching profession is set at the right level, or is it too high? I cannot believe it is too high, but there you go. What do you think?
Damian Hinds: We want the brightest and the best to come into teaching because they are the ones who are then going to instruct and inspire the next generation. The Department for Education does not decide which individuals come into teaching; that is rightly a decision for teacher training colleges—providers. What we can help with is publicising and communicating as much as possible this opportunity, so that really high-calibre people apply. We have probably the most talented generation of teachers ever and our job is to keep that being so.
Q256 Nick Fletcher: I will have to get on to my pet subject. Do you work directly with DWP with regard to the people who are over 50 who we could get into teaching?
Damian Hinds: I have only been in this role for three weeks, so I have not had that meeting yet. But as it happens, I used to be a Minister at DWP, and one of my responsibilities was the Fuller Working Lives strategy, so I think you are going to find that we are possibly in wild agreement about the opportunity.
Ian Mearns: Have a word with yourself, that’s what you need to do. [Laughter.]
Damian Hinds: People coming into teaching later in life—people coming off the tools, as they say—and into FE is a big opportunity. We know there are some sectors where it becomes a bit harder to stay in exactly the same role as people get older. One could then think about teaching full time or part time.
There is also a really big cohort we need to think about and that is returners. In fact, last year over one in three of the people coming into teaching were not coming in for the first time. This is a really important point. We often talk about R and R, meaning recruitment and retention; I talk about R and R and R, meaning recruitment, retention and return. Relatively small changes in how quickly people come back, or in their propensity to come back, can make quite a big difference. As I think Ian was saying earlier, there is this huge value of experience, and we need to make sure that when people have experience, we can get the most out of that. So Nick, I think you and I agree, and if you have specific ideas on what more we can do, I would love to hear them now or separately.
Q257 Nick Fletcher: There is definitely a conversation to be had.
Last week I raised the lack of male teachers in schools, and the Secretary of State said she would look into that, as well as the attainment gap between girls and boys. Girls are 6.5%, I think it is, ahead of boys at pretty much every level, so that is huge. We have had these big schemes where we say, “This girl can,” which is great. I am only repeating what I said last week, but if I have a Minister in front of me from the Department for Education, it is important that I repeat it over and again: we definitely need a campaign to get men into teaching.
With regard to the over-50s, there are an awful lot of tradespeople out there who have an awful lot to offer. They are very clever people, they just use their hands. As it is such a hard-work job—a physical job—when they get to their 50s, they are getting tired, and if we could get those people into teaching, it would be a wonderful thing.
Caroline Ansell: Teaching is quite tiring.
Nick Fletcher: It is a different type of work though. It is not climbing ladders, knocking walls down, working with big heavy cables or whatever it is. It is a different type of tiring. I have done it—only for a day, but I have done it—and it is a different type of tiring.
There is an awful lot that we can pass on. It would be great to get as many 50-plus people, men and women, with that experience that comes with age, back into teaching or into teaching. It would be an amazing thing to do.
Damian Hinds: I agree, there is a lot of talent to tap into. We want to have a diverse workforce in the teaching staff, and in other staff, and make sure that opportunities are there for everybody. You mentioned “This Girl Can” which is a really positive and important thing in making sure that girls and boys have equal access to sport. We need to keep working on all these things.
Q258 Chair: You mentioned a substantial financial commitment to bursaries and bringing in subjects. Obviously, there are certain subjects like DT, modern foreign languages, and particularly physics, where, despite very significant incentives, we continually failed to reach recruitment targets, or even, in the case of physics, get close to them really. What further action do you think can make a difference to meeting the need in those spaces?
Damian Hinds: We continue to work on existing programmes and continue to try to get everything we can out of them, but we are doing new things as well. In particular, we are opening up incentives on modern languages but also physics to international students. That is an important route. Subject knowledge enhancement is important as well, Chairman, for people who have A-level but not degree-level qualification in the subjects, who can then go on to do a PGCE. Again, perhaps later in life there could be opportunities as well.
To come back to the question we were talking about earlier, you have people who have worked in engineering and electronics and so on, but we know we need to work harder and harder because these are really important roles to fill.
Q259 Chair: You just mentioned a couple of the additional incentives on MFL. We have heard that teacher shortages within MFL have resulted in unequal provision, and particularly the choice of modern foreign languages dropping away in certain places. We have seen a precipitate decline of both GCSE and A-level German, which I know is of significant concern from an economic perspective but is also a concern of the German embassy. They have their own programmes; I do not know whether you have been briefed yet on the GIMAGINE drive that they have to support German teaching and so on. How do we make sure that we tie in those overseas funded programmes and arrangements with our own incentives and make sure the whole package is available to people who might want to teach?
Damian Hinds: I have not come across GIMAGINE yet. In a previous time at DfE, I met the Goethe-Institut and a brilliant programme run by Arsenal football club called the Double Club, which was the brainchild of Jens Lehmann when he was playing and discovered how few kids in England spoke German. Double Club does not just do German: it does other languages as well. It is a great programme working with schools.
We need to be creative about this. Yes, I do agree that tapping into overseas cultural institutes and other Governments’ programmes can be part of that. Exchange programmes are really important too, and international teachers coming across. There are lots of different aspects to it.
Languages are not just a subject: they can promote an increase in empathy and give somebody awareness of the world and cultural curiosity—all these things are incredibly valuable. I do not privilege or preference any one subject above another but, having said that, there is a really special thing about languages and making sure that they are available. That is one of the reasons why we put so much work into getting modern foreign languages teachers, including through this international route. It is a fairly obvious point, isn’t it, but that is a big potential opportunity for us.
Q260 Chair: In the legal migration package, one of the things that was talked about was getting rid of the shortage occupation list. On that shortage occupation list were language teachers and language assistants. In its absence, how would we go about attracting them and making sure that they can be available to our system?
Damian Hinds: Are you speaking speculatively?
Chair: I think it was something that was highlighted as a potential step being taken.
Damian Hinds: If you will forgive me, Chairman, I will not get into scenarios. I will say that international recruitment is important to us, and it is particularly important and has a particularly clear and, I might say, obvious role when one talks about modern languages teaching. Of course, we have had a very long tradition of student mobility and then teaching that follows on.
Q261 Chair: It would certainly be welcome to see student mobility agreements with the likes of France, Germany and Spain, for instance, to support that. But that may be a job for other Departments to secure.
Damian Hinds: We have never stopped having student mobility, one way or another.
Q262 Andrew Lewer: Building on this theme of subject shortages and so on, is the Department open to changing the subject knowledge enhancement system to increase initial teacher training in shortage subjects, allowing people to do them in a second science discipline or reopening the older short subject knowledge enhancement booster courses that there used to be?
Damian Hinds: I do not know whether Sue might want to say a word about this. We are open to thinking about all these things. Subject knowledge enhancements are already quite flexible. I think it is a minimum of eight weeks up to 28 weeks.
Sue Lovelock: Yes.
Damian Hinds: The initial teacher training provider assesses how much extra learning an individual needs and they can do it in the summer between finishing their undergrad and starting a PGCE. We offer tuition support, and there are bursaries available as well. It is already quite flexible, but I do not think we are ever going to be closed-minded to how it could be improved in that or any of these other programmes that we do.
Sue Lovelock: SKE adds an important element to our approach to recruitment and gives candidates who would not otherwise be able to go on and teach in some of our priority subjects additional time to develop their subject knowledge. As the Minister says, if you think there are particular barriers to candidates in different circumstances in accessing it, I would be really happy to take a look at those because we are keen that it works as effectively as possible.
Q263 Andrew Lewer: That is what we are doing with the report: we are taking evidence from people involved in the sector and playing it out to you ahead of us coming up with that, so that will obviously be part of what we are doing.
On a slightly broader point, it is getting more common for non-specialist teachers to be responsible for teaching subjects where there are recruitment shortages. Is it an acceptable strategy to have non-specialist teachers teaching where you are short? Or is that something that needs to be phased out or discouraged?
Damian Hinds: We want specialist teachers to be teaching subjects where possible. We do a measure of the proportion of hours that are taught by teachers with a relevant above A-level qualification in those subjects and, obviously, we want those numbers to be as high as possible. In the case of mathematics, for example, 87% of hours are taught by somebody with an above A-level qualification in maths. In physics, which we have talked about a number of times, it is 72.5% with an above A-level qualification in physics. As I say, we want those numbers to be as high as possible.
Q264 Andrew Lewer: Obviously, there is within teaching the duality of the skill of teaching and the academic knowledge, and ideally the two combine, but they do not always and some people have more of one and less of the other. We have heard a lot about, and there has been a lot of support across the Committee for, financial education; are there opportunities, for non-maths teachers, for instance, to do that using their other skillsets?
Damian Hinds: Your Chairman and I, in earlier times, have both taken a very close interest in the subject of financial education. I think it is important. Of course, we now have financial education, as you will know, woven into GCSE and so on. When we looked at RSHE in the broadest sense, and PSHE, one of the things I was very keen to consider was the role that financial education could play in post-16 students in particular, with more young people going away for further study than previously and so on.
When the advanced British standard comes in, obviously there is quite a lot of development work to be done about how post-16 mathematics works. We have always said this is about taking forward some form of mathematics for everybody through to 18. Clearly, it has never been the case that everybody has done exactly the same approach to any of these subjects all the way through.
Your question was specifically about non-maths teachers and financial education. One has to be a little careful with the materials and so on that are used. I do not want to go too far down this corridor, specifically on financial education, but some materials can be provided, for example, by the financial services industry. I am trying to say it is good to have a maths teacher doing financial education.
Nick Fletcher: Or a Yorkshireman.
Damian Hinds: Both are available. They can be combined, I gather.
Q265 Andrew Lewer: It is an interesting approach, because I am more than a little sceptical about maths through to 18, both as a concept and in terms of availability, so I think there is a scope for that to be slightly broader than a non-maths basis in terms of financial education—
Chair: There is also an argument that you can teach numeracy without a maths degree. If you are talking about functional mathematics, you do not need—
Damian Hinds: Absolutely, I was not disputing that at all. On maths to 18, it is what happens in the world, and we are a bit of an outlier. The advanced British standard is a fantastic opportunity to take the best of what we do really well with A-levels and T-levels now. Of course, T-levels already have English, maths and digital skills taken up to 18 for everybody, so that is a broader offer. We have a great opportunity to have that breadth of education up to 18, including English and maths, and break down the distinction between the academic and the technical.
Q266 Andrew Lewer: Any new qualification takes a very long time to bed in and for people to understand. We are just getting to the very foothills of employers and people who are not in the Westminster policy bubble getting T-levels, and then there is suddenly this announcement about an advanced British standard. Does that not concern you in terms of both the recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in FE, and the idea that we should suddenly come up with changes to internationally recognised gold-standard qualifications for a conference speech?
Damian Hinds: No. With the advanced British standard we are going to build on the best of T-levels and A-levels. In fact, you can see an evolution there, as I was saying about the taking English and maths, and digital in the case of T-levels, forward to 18. The other evolution you can see is about teaching time, because the big thing about T-levels, which sometimes gets overlooked, is the increase in taught hours, time in college and, critically, the industry placement.
Chairman, I realise we may be slightly drifting off recruitment and retention, and I know you will look at me sternly in a moment, but when you talk to employers and people doing T-levels, it is the industrial placement that people talk about a great deal. From an employer’s point of view, not only is it an opportunity to develop that person and to impart workplace skills, but it is like a nine-week interview for seeing who is the great talent coming through. I apologise: we are off subject.
Chair: We are, but it is relevant in terms of the specialist teaching.
Q267 Andrew Lewer: It is relevant, Chairman, in the sense that T-levels are a big change in terms of the skillsets and learning that teachers need to be able to communicate T-levels effectively. They are a single package, whereas A-levels are more à la carte, yet now, just as we are trying to get that level of teaching for FE, and already having shortages and problems, we are coming up with something that seems to combine the two of them but no one really seems to know how.
Chair: We will look forward to the Department publishing its consultation so we can get more clarity on that.
Andrew Lewer: How does that assist with recruitment?
Damian Hinds: In terms of recruitment and retention, we know there is going to be a requirement for more great teachers as a result of the advanced British standard. I welcome that.
Q268 Ian Mearns: Why did the Department reduce its target for recruiting maths teachers? I do not understand that.
Chair: In fairness, this was before your time.
Ian Mearns: Yes, it was.
Chair: The target for maths teachers was missed, and then the next year it was lower, which is odd because the way the model is supposed to work is that if a target is missed it should be higher for next year. We never really got to the bottom of why that happened.
Ian Mearns: I was wondering if there was a lack of a mathematician in the Department.
Damian Hinds: On a serious point, the model is a complex multifactorial model. I know this is sometimes a bit frustrating because one wants to be able to say, “What was the target for recruitment? Did you miss it or hit it? What are you going to do about it?” Postgraduate ITT is our single most important route, but that is still only one route. It does not include undergraduate ITT. It does not include returners, who we were talking about earlier, who are 35% of people coming into teaching. Of course, there is a lag too. On ITT, there is typically a one-year lag; for other types of route there is a bigger lag. It is a much more complex thing than just, “How come you missed it and then you cut the target?”
Q269 Ian Mearns: The only rationale I could see or understand for the Department reducing the target was that it knew it was going to miss the target and it wanted to miss the target by less.
Damian Hinds: Ian, no. The model is there. It is not there to be a consumer-facing thing; it is there to guide where we are really concentrating effort, resources, and incentives.
Q270 Ian Mearns: Well, Damian, you are back in the Department now. Could you possibly write to the Committee, do some digging, and actually find the reason why the Department reduced the target for maths teachers, having failed to hit the target the previous year, and the previous year before that.
Damian Hinds: Ian, I will do that, but just as a spoiler alert, I can reassure you that we are trying to recruit math teachers, and we have put a lot of effort into it.
Ian Mearns: I accept that.
Damian Hinds: We have put a lot of money behind it but yes, I will write.
Ian Mearns: Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you. Can I bring Caroline back in?
Q271 Caroline Ansell: Thank you very much, Chair. On the early career framework, the evidence we have heard has highlighted issues around three principal areas: subject specificity, additional workload for participants and their mentors, and inflexibility. Why do you think these issues have arisen?
Damian Hinds: It is a new programme, of course, and we will evolve it over time. There is a lot of money behind this as well: £130 million invested in the early career framework. At the centre, it is about having that little bit of extra time off timetable in the second year of teaching. In terms of workload, if you think about it that way, that is what enables you to do the extra professional development. If there is a mismatch in how much time the professional development is taking relative to that extra time, then of course we need to address that.
The things you mentioned are important. We also hear people talk about repetitiveness from what they covered in initial teacher training, and not enough flexibility for an individual school circumstance, but all of this we will absolutely reflect on because the whole point of this—and investing £130 million—is that we want to make it work as well as it can, so we will listen to that feedback.
Q272 Caroline Ansell: You talked about it evolving as a new programme, so what are the immediate plans to respond to some of these glitches—shall we say—and the long-term plan, if this is a really important vehicle?
Sue Lovelock: One thing we are doing at the moment is looking to strip out some duplication between what trainees learn during their initial teacher training and what they learn during their ECF. We have had clear feedback that there is a bit of repetition we need to strip out, so that is something we are actively doing in the light of feedback at the moment, to improve that experience for teachers in their early years.
Q273 Caroline Ansell: For my own illumination, what would that repetition be? What have you looked to take out?
Sue Lovelock: In practical terms, it is looking at the core content for initial teacher training and for the early career framework, and looking at areas where there is duplication between the two, so working very practically with stakeholders.
Q274 Caroline Ansell: Was the original idea consolidation and the revisiting of certain aspects of professional development?
Sue Lovelock: Yes, and it is about getting the balance right between the handing off between one framework and the next, and making sure they are working as well as they possibly can be and candidates are getting that reinforcement but not feeling like they are getting too much repetition.
Q275 Caroline Ansell: Is there any movement on time? Because obviously, if opportunities for reflection and engagement are actually creating a time burden, that obviates the very sort of timetable remission you are talking about. Is there any notion that that might change and that there might be more recognition that the programme requires more time?
Sue Lovelock: More time off timetable, do you mean?
Caroline Ansell: Yes.
Damian Hinds: We need to make sure that the programme is tailored to what it is meant to fit, and we will reflect on all this. You are right, by the way, Caroline, to identify that tension between saying, “Do not have repetition, but do have consolidation,” because consolidation does have an element of going back to stuff, but you need to make sure it is at the right level and it is complementing and building on what is there. It is not necessarily that simple a thing, because one person’s repetition could be another person’s consolidation, so we need to make sure we have reflected fully on all that.
Q276 Caroline Ansell: Are you actively soliciting feedback on that? In terms of evolution, that is all happening?
Sue Lovelock: Yes, we have been engaging and consulting with a wide range of stakeholders over the past few months in a really granular level of detail, and going through the frameworks and getting their feedback on the drafting of particular elements of it and that sort of thing.
Q277 Caroline Ansell: How does the decision making around changes happen?
Sue Lovelock: It goes to the Minister, I think, for advice and final sign-off on the basis of the feedback we receive from partners and stakeholders.
Damian Hinds: With all these things, there is a time lag because we have to make sure people have time to prepare for what we are asking them to do, so it is an ongoing process.
Q278 Caroline Ansell: Will there be a slightly new look—a refresh—for next September for the new cohort going through? What is the timeframe on this evolution? Might we see some changes to it in the next academic year?
Damian Hinds: I need my notes to answer accurately on that; let me write to you.
Q279 Caroline Ansell: Related to that, on continued professional development, we have heard those in our inquiry offer up challenges around low-quality, limited time allocated to CPD because of the constraints on schools around staffing and, notably, limited opportunities for development that is non-leadership related—we are back to those higher-order classroom-type skills that people were looking to pursue rather than jump track to a leadership role. Again, why have these issues arisen?
Damian Hinds: I am going to ask Sue to come in on NPQs, but on your previous question, I have found my notes and we are looking to make changes from 2025. Sue, do you want to come back on NPQs?
Sue Lovelock: Yes. National professional qualifications—NPQs—are a really important part of our framework for CPD for all teachers. We have four that are concentrated on leadership because we think school leadership is a really important part of our focus, but there are other specialist NPQs and we are developing an NPQ for SEND co-ordinators—SENCOs—to make sure we are giving teachers that opportunity to specialise in different areas as they can think about how they want their career path to develop in a school.
Q280 Caroline Ansell: If there are four on leadership, what is there on classroom teaching and learning?
Sue Lovelock: I would have to write with the detail.
Damian Hinds: There is leading literacy and there is a maths one as well, I think, which are the two that are particularly subject focused, but there are not many others.
Q281 Caroline Ansell: Just the two core subjects? On the challenges, what are the Department’s development plans around ensuring really good, high-quality CPD and that schools are in a position to be able to release staff for these training programmes?
Damian Hinds: Well, NPQs are a fundamental part of our CPD, but we also have very extensive networks—plural—of teaching school hubs, maths hubs, English hubs, modern languages hubs, computing hubs, behaviour hubs, attendance hubs. So it is quite a complex web of where you take schools with particular strengths in some areas and, through a hub-and-spoke network, spread it through the system. That has been really important for things like maths mastery and phonics.
Q282 Caroline Ansell: Can I come back to recruitment and retention from earlier in the session? One of the things the teaching workforce will talk about is real opportunities to develop and the satisfaction in continuing their own learning path. Back to the issue of time, we talked about repaying bursaries, golden handcuffs and what have you, but is time a currency that the Department could engage in? I know that in other countries, at milestone moments there is an opportunity for sabbatical, which is obviously a very, very high-octane investment in terms of supporting teachers. If one of the challenges on CPD is that teachers do not feel they have time to engage in it, and it leaves a trail of supply behind them, are you looking at how you create the time for teachers to really develop their skills?
Damian Hinds: You are absolutely right that all these things need time to do, and they are an important part of professional development. I think there is an important role for sabbaticals as well. Of course, some teachers do go on sabbaticals; some go on to study more, and some go and work in a completely different education establishment for a period of time.
In my last role as Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation, I was very keen on presenting an opportunity for people to come out of mainstream education and work in prison education for a year as a way to break down some barriers between different parts of the sector. It is all the wider education sector at the end of the day, and those teachers from mainstream education would bring something important to prison, but they would also learn something—derive something—important as well. So yes, I agree that in the more mature stages of people’s careers, having a range of different opportunities and working experiences has value.
Chair: Thank you very much.
Q283 Ian Mearns: On recruitment and retention, it is not just about pay, but pay is important, and the NFER has done some research and is suggesting that teacher pay will need to increase by more than average earnings in the economy as a whole in order to improve teacher recruitment and retention. Have you any views on that, Damian?
Damian Hinds: Well, we want and need to make sure that we pay an attractive, fair and competitive salary to teachers. We had the 6.5% increase last time around, and we will have the STRB—the pay review body—process to go through again. For starting salaries, we have now met our manifesto target of having a starting salary of at least £30,000. For some it is more because of, for example, the levelling-up premium payments, but there is a starting salary of at least £30,000.
Then there is the TPS—Teachers’ Pension Scheme—which is, as you know Ian, a very, very good pension scheme. It is one of those things where you are always trying to find better ways of expressing how good a benefit the TPS is. Of course, career starters aged 22 are not necessarily thinking about pension provision, but it is a really important part of the remuneration package.
Q284 Ian Mearns: Yes. The thing is, though, there has been a reform of pension schemes across the public sector, so with that in mind it is difficult to sell that as a package when we have a Government record of reforming pension schemes to make them not quite as attractive for many people.
Damian Hinds: Well now, Ian, fundamentally, the employer contribution to the pension is the actuarially calculated cost of the benefit being given to the employee. At 23.6% today—and it is going to go up with the actuarial calculation—the TPS compares extraordinarily well to a typical private sector pension employer contribution. That is what I mean: it is a really important part of the benefits, and later in life people see that and appreciate it but we need to find a way to express it well to younger people.
Ian Mearns: A newly qualified teacher starting in their 20s is not thinking about the pension scheme.
Damian Hinds: I agree with you. We are saying the same thing from different sides of the table.
Q285 Ian Mearns: On a slightly divergent tack, we talked earlier about the difficulty in recruiting teachers in specialist subjects. One area that I am particularly interested in is qualified special needs teachers, and that is another area that is having difficulty recruiting. Is there anything that the Department is doing specifically on that? Something I often hear people say is, “It would be good to have a bit more focus on special educational needs in initial teacher training,” so has anything much been thought about within that area, Damian?
Damian Hinds: You are right: we do hear that a lot, and I absolutely sympathise with the point. We use the phrase, “Every teacher is a SEND teacher.” We have had the review of the core content framework, but we will keep an open mind and keep it under review. There is also the SENCO NPQ approach that we talked about and, Ian, you are right: overall there are now many more children in school than a few years ago with education, health and care plans, and presenting with special needs of one sort or another. There is never going to be a one-off answer to that; we are going to have to keep on developing our approach in mainstream. Alongside, we have a special school sector, but in mainstream we are going to have to keep on developing our approach, including our workforce approach.
Q286 Ian Mearns: You are absolutely right that there are more youngsters now getting EHCPs, but it also seems as though there has been a significant growth in youngsters who are presenting with what we used to call non-statemented special educational needs, and it is a question of helping teachers gain the experience.
Damian Hinds: I completely agree.
Q287 Ian Mearns: You have talked about what the Department is thinking about doing; is it something you are going to look back and focus on?
Damian Hinds: I do not have an announcement to make today. What I have said is that we have done the core content framework review, but it is right that we keep it under review, partly because of prevalence—prevalence, diagnosis and awareness together—because we have had, and continue to have, these growths in numbers. We need to make sure we optimise the support we give and where children can have that support in a mainstream setting, particularly if help earlier in diagnosis or earlier in their school journey can make a big difference later on. Of course, there is a knock-on effect on things like reading and therefore one’s ability to access the rest of the curriculum. All these things are really important, and we need to keep an open mind and keep it under review.
Q288 Ian Mearns: This has been mentioned, but I would really like to get an answer from you on record. The early career payments for teachers and the levelling-up premium have been welcomed. What is the Department’s initial assessment of the impact of these measures? Does the Department have plans to extend the measures for a longer period of time, or expand the eligibility criteria, so that more teachers can benefit from such initiatives?
Damian Hinds: We do have plans to expand—as in double—the levelling-up premium for specific subjects. As you will appreciate, Ian, in terms of overall programmes we run by the spending review period timetable, just like every Government ever has, but I hope I have given you a sense of where I am coming from, and where the Department is in terms of the role of incentives and, critically, not just getting people into the profession but the real importance of retaining experience and keeping talent in these roles.
Ian Mearns: From my perspective, if we are talking about trying to build a competitive economy in the world context, clearly the investment must be in education, and that is an argument that needs to be made at the Cabinet table, as it were.
Chair: Very good, thank you. I will bring in Andrew again.
Q289 Andrew Lewer: Thank you. We have had evidence about some problems with the working lives of teachers and leaders survey and its inability to capture non-working time but also non-teaching time—the curse of 21st-century life—with the layers of process and form-filling. Is the Department interested in changing the way that survey is conducted in order to better capture the true figures and the information that we were getting during our sessions, which it is felt the survey does not capture very well?
Damian Hinds: The first thing to say about the working lives of teachers and leaders survey is that it gives us a very important measure of total working time. Teacher workload is too high, and it is a top priority of mine to reduce it: we want to reduce it by a further five hours a week. There has been some success, so this is one of those areas where it is simultaneously bad but better. It is too high, but it was even higher, so it is down from the peak. Between 2016 and 2019—between the two teacher workload surveys—there was about a five-hour-a-week, so an hour a weekday, reduction in workload, and that is very much to be welcomed. But, as I say, it is still too high and we need to bring it down.
We know from international studies that our teachers are working longer hours, but it is not because they are teaching longer hours: it is all the out-of-classroom stuff. We know from previous surveys what the big components to that have been and endemically, it is lesson planning and prep, marking, data entry and so on.
Your question was about whether there is enough granularity in the working lives of teachers and leaders survey about what they are doing. I have some sympathy with your line of questioning, because it is a line of questioning I have made myself. I would like to know exactly what it is that we need to address but there is a balance to be struck, because we need teachers to fill in the survey and if you make it too onerous a task, you would not get the response rate.
Andrew Lewer: You are on 13% at the moment in terms of a response rate, so you are absolutely right.
Damian Hinds: I do not think that undoes the point, Andrew. It is difficult. These things are inevitably self-reported and unless you are doing a literal hour-by-hour diary study, which would be incredibly onerous, for any of us it is difficult to look back on a period of time and say this is exactly how much time I spent on this, that and the other. I am not arguing with you, because the point you make is a really good one, and I would like to know more of that granular detail, but there is a balance.
Of course, we have other ways of finding out what are the things that are taking up time, and we spend quite a lot of time with different groups of teachers and leaders asking that question. We also now have our workload reduction taskforce, which includes practitioners and teaching unions coming together to make recommendations about what more we can do. I totally agree that the question about workload is a really important one for retention and, by extension, for recruitment.
Q290 Mrs Drummond: Apologies for being late: they put me on the Criminal Justice Bill to go along with my two Select Committees. I would much rather have been here so I apologise for missing the start. I shall read the transcript with care.
A third of senior leaders have never heard of the workload reduction toolkit; another third have heard of it, but not read it; and a third of those who actually read it said they found it helpful. What are you doing to address this?
Damian Hinds: The number I have in my head might be wrong, but I think we have had 30,000 downloads of the workload reduction toolkit, so it is not a trivial number, but I would like it to be more. It is the case that we are talking about workload, so trying to get people to do another thing, which is to download a toolkit, is itself an extra task, but we think there is a lot of value to it and we do hear from schools who have used the toolkit, which itself is made up of suggestions that come from schools—schools that have had success with reducing workload saying to other schools, “Here is a thing we have done, here is a resource we have used, so you do not have to reinvent it.”
We have found, through using inset day time and so on, that some schools have had a material impact on bearing down on workload. Now, it is not perfect. It is not perfect and it is going to be refined into a better, more digital, slicker, if you like, and therefore quicker-to-use, version. I hope that is part of the answer to your question on how we get more people to use it, but over time, more and more people talking about workload reduction is a useful thing, and it will create interest in these ideas. Again, I stress that these are suggestions from other schools, and teachers like to hear from other teachers—their fellow professionals.
Q291 Mrs Drummond: We have heard suggestions during this inquiry about reducing data and accountability, holding employers accountable for hours worked overtime by teachers and reviewing teachers’ directed time. I asked you a question yesterday in Education questions about Ofsted, which also puts a huge amount on teachers’ workload. What is your response to these suggestions, and why are you not allowing headteachers and schools to sort this out themselves?
Damian Hinds: On the last question, I do not think we are disallowing, in fact I know we are not disallowing, schools from taking steps to address this. Different schools have quite different policies. If you take marking, for example, there are markedly different approaches and some are an awful lot more time-consuming than others. Some approaches that are much more time-consuming do not have evidence behind them to suggest that the extra time is really productive in terms of the value of the feedback to the child. So a lot of it—not all of it, do not get me wrong, but quite a lot of it—is at individual level and, sometimes, policies in individual schools. There are also wider cultural factors.
We are taking numerous steps. I talked already about the workload reduction taskforce and we talked about the toolkit, but another big development is Oak National Academy. That was born out of the pandemic but it now addresses a wider point. We are talking about the breakdown of what is taking all this time. I can tell you that quite a lot of time is spent on a Sunday night, trawling the internet—this is not everybody, but this is what some people say—looking for particular materials and so on. Oak is an optional thing. It is not trying to replace the judgment of anybody, but it makes materials of a high standard, produced using evidence-based approaches, available for use. And they fit together, rather than being individual, which is an important point. These are all parts of the approach to try to address workload.
Q292 Mrs Drummond: Are you quite happy that teachers are spending their Sunday evenings going online to plan their lessons for the next week?
Damian Hinds: No. That is the opposite of what I just said.
Chair: You’d rather they weren’t.
Damian Hinds: I am saying that quite a lot of the time—it is not the only thing. To repeat: marking, lesson plan and prep, and data take up big chunks of time. Then, there is a broader thing that people talk about in terms of the pressures—I get that—and how pressures create work and some endemic cultural questions. In each of those three big things there are practical steps you can take to reduce workload. As I just mentioned, the Oak National Academy is not the only way of addressing it, but it is one way of being able to reduce lesson planning and prep time.
Q293 Andrew Lewer: What you are touching on in terms of what the workload is being spent on, as well as what the total quantum of it is per se, is very important. Data, reading forms and receiving emails, and so on, seems to me a less productive route than the issue over lesson preparation.
The problem with the mission creep of Oak National Academy is that it has gone from its initial idea during covid, when it was very valuable as a collating and signposting tool—which is what it can continue to usefully be—to becoming a sort of nationalised state EdTech publisher, which is a reason why the Department is now under judicial review from the Society of Authors and the Publishers Association. If there is something I would urge you to take away, it is to ensure that Oak National Academy is focused on signposting and not taking over sectors of the economy that are quite productive and useful, particularly when the autonomy for teachers to choose their preferred teaching materials is a useful part of their time rather than data entry and the other things you mentioned.
Damian Hinds: Andrew, I totally agree with that. Agency is really important. Actually, a lot of teachers say that one of the most important things in their professional lives is that judgment for this group of children: what am I going to use? How am I going to structure the time so I absolutely get the most out them, and they get the most out of the lesson? It is absolutely right, I have no dispute about that at all and we must only ever be supporting that in what we try to do.
What I am saying, though, is that if we are going to get five hours a week off the workload, we are going to need to address planning and prep, and marking and data. You cannot say, “Well, let’s just get it all out of data,” because there are all these things that are taking up time. Addressing those does not need to be in conflict with teachers using their brilliant judgment, which is absolutely at the heart of what it is to be a teacher. It absolutely does not need to be in conflict with that at all. It absolutely does not need to be in conflict with giving children good feedback, and it does not need to be in conflict with addressing the progress of children and making sure that everybody is progressing as we would want them to. We need to find ways of doing it better that take up less time out of the classroom.
Q294 Mrs Drummond: From what we see and hear, workload is one of the biggest issues. Forget pay and things: workload is the biggest issue that all teachers talk about.
Let us come to the flexible working toolkit that you launched this year. Again, only 15% of senior leaders have heard of it, and even fewer—4%—have found it useful. It is quite interesting, and I was going to mention this myself: is the reason why nobody is reading it because you send so much stuff? Flexible working is something that a lot of other careers are doing, so how are you going to address this?
Damian Hinds: If I am honest, I am less worried about my brand awareness score than I am about it happening. Flexible working is a really important part of attracting and keeping people in any occupation. We talked about this earlier. We are predominantly a female profession, and we have lower rates of part-time working than the female population as a whole. Sometimes you get a bit of cultural resistance to flexible working in the teaching world. People say it is because it is timetabled and so on. I do not agree with that. Actually, in many ways, it is more suitable to have flexible working because it is a timetabled occupation.
In any case, in the modern world, in our modern society, we need to offer flexible working to attract the full range of talent. The good news is that the prevalence of flexible working has increased in the last few years, but we need to be able to go further. I forget the exact numbers, but we would be happy to write to you with those.
Q295 Mrs Drummond: Have you done any research on how it is working in best practice? That is something that I suspect really will help to recruit and retain more teachers.
Damian Hinds: I am sure there is research.
Sue Lovelock: We have good case studies and examples of different ambassador schools that are doing flexible working really well, but it is definitely something we want to raise the profile of to ensure that more schools learn about practical changes that you can implement to make flexible working a reality. I think the latest data shows that four in 10 teachers report having some form of flexible working available, so it is tangible.
Damian Hinds: That is not just part time, of course: there can be different aspects.
Sue Lovelock: No, it is some form of flexibility.
Q296 Chair: Just to double down on that, I went to the Now Teach conference earlier in the year and it was very clear that it was a culture shock for people coming out of other professions and going into teaching as to how inflexible it was compared to other professions. People felt strongly that a greater degree of flexibility, recognising how the rest of the workplace has changed, could make a big difference, particularly for the group you were talking about earlier, Minister—the returners. It is going to be particularly important for that group of people, whether they are men or women, to make sure there is a recognition in schools of how the rest of the world has changed.
Damian Hinds: Yes, quite right.
Q297 Chair: I heard in what you were saying that there is an ongoing piece of work around showcasing best practice and identifying and streaming that back. Is that just the flexible working toolkit, or is there something beyond that that is feeding back into the system?
Sue Lovelock: The toolkit is at the centre of it, and it is very much part of our overall communications with colleagues in the sector. It is something we talk to our engagement groups about and continue to emphasise. We will want to think about it really carefully when we refresh the teacher recruitment and retention strategy in the early part of next year, given what a significant change there has been in workplace standards and practices around flexible working over the past few years.
Q298 Chair: Is there any guidance as to how to make this work financially? Obviously, one of the issues is you have schools spending quite a lot on bringing in supply teachers to fill gaps when people are sick and so on and so forth. If they have a more flexible workforce, potentially there are savings to be made in doing that effectively. Has any work been done through the resource management side of things to look at what the best approach to flexibility is?
Damian Hinds: I do not know if we have done that calculation, but that would be a splendid thing, among others, for you to highlight in your report.
Chair: One of the things the Department did recently is change its guidance on the proportion of school funding that should be spent on staffing costs, and it raised that proportion slightly. I have to say, in my neck of the woods it is still significantly below where most of the schools tell me they are, but building flexibility into that would be a really interesting study and something I would recommend. Do you want to come back in, Flick?
Q299 Mrs Drummond: I was just going to ask a rather cheeky question. You mentioned the teacher recruitment and retention strategy; will you be doing it after we have produced our report?
Damian Hinds: It depends how quickly your report comes out.
Chair: This being our last session, I hope so.
Damian Hinds: We are progressing at pace, as they say, but it is also really important we get it right. We have the extant teacher recruitment and retention strategy 2019. We always said we would come back to it and refresh it, and we will. We are working through that process now.
Q300 Ian Mearns: Five years ago, in 2018, the Department released a statement of intent, setting the case for a diverse teaching workforce. Since the withdrawal of the equality and diversity fund in December 2020, what action has the Department taken to improve equality and diversity in the teacher workforce, particularly at senior leadership and governance level, and what further action will be taken going forward?
Damian Hinds: We need to improve our diversity. As in many walks of life, it has improved, but it has not improved to the level of the working population as a whole and, by the way, still less than the pupil population, which is more diverse than the adult population.
There are a number of different aspects. One of them is time. Over time it does improve, but it is also important to ensure that, particularly at leadership levels, people from whatever background are supported on their journey. Sometimes you get particular support networks that work with that. I remember speaking with Steve Chalke—probably around the time of the 2018 statement—about some very good work he was doing then. We need to make sure we are a very open profession.
It also comes back to what we were saying just now about flexibility, by the way. To attract the full range of people to enter and stay, we need to make sure we are offering as much flexibility in as broad a sense as we can.
Q301 Ian Mearns: That sounds like a good intention, Damian, but I suppose it is about the brass tacks of how we actually get down to doing that. The withdrawal of the equality and diversity fund in December 2020 was not a good signal from that perspective, was it?
Damian Hinds: I will be really candid and say that I am not in a position to comment precisely on the circumstances at that time and what the other financial line items were. What I can tell you, Ian, is that this Department is absolutely committed to making sure we have diversity in our workforce, and we are supporting everybody who can make a contribution to teaching to be able to do so. Furthermore, it is really important that the kids coming through the schools see—not only in teaching positions, but in leadership positions—a workforce that reflects the full diversity of our brilliant country.
Chair: On that note, I was with a group of PGCE students recently at the University of Worcester, and one of them was making the point about the need to have more teachers with visible SEND because of the increasing number of pupils in that cohort, so it is an interesting point. As we look to address that need, we need to make sure that that is also reflected in the group.
Thank you, Minister. You have been generous in your answers. Apologies that Members have been coming and going but, as you will appreciate, we are under pressure from a number of Bill Committees at the moment, so I am grateful for the time you have taken.
Damian Hinds: Thank you. Thank you all very much.