TTR0005
Written evidence submitted by the University of Roehampton
The current situation regarding teacher recruitment and retention
- What are the main factors leading to difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified teachers?
- Which subjects are most affected?
- How does the situation differ across the country and across different types of schools and colleges?
- What impact does this have on pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND?
Response
Issues affecting recruitment of teachers onto ITE courses
- Candidates’ and trainees’ perceptions of workload.
- Candidates’ and trainees’ perceptions of pay being low with media stories of teachers accessing food banks.
- Industrial action is giving rise to anxiety and concern about entering the profession with negative coverage of the pay and conditions teachers face.
- Candidates’ and trainees’ are aware of the lack of resources in schools, including additional adults.
Subjects:
- Most affected subjects - Science, English, Geography, RE, D&T, Mathematics. The chart below compares candidates accepting places in March 2020 with March 2023 (excludes PE as numbers have previously been capped). Science figures are comparable but challenging across the time period.
| Accepts 2020 | 2023 |
Art and Design | 5 | 5 |
Computer Science | 2 | 4 |
Design and Technology | 5 | 4 |
Drama | 6 | 4 |
English | 9 | 4 |
Geography | 3 | 0 |
History | 11 | 8 |
Mathematics | 10 | 6 |
Modern Languages | 5 | 5 |
Music | 1 | 7 |
Religious Education | 3 | 1 |
Science with Biology | 5 | 4 |
Science with Chemistry | 2 | 3 |
Science with Physics | 1 | 2 |
Total - March 2020-2023 | 68 | 57 |
- Fewer specialists are trained and an increasing number of cover teachers affecting the quality of provision. This in turn will have a longer-term impact on recruiting teachers to some subjects in the future.
- Difficult to recruit high quality candidates which has an impact on provision in schools.
What action should the Department take to address the challenges in teacher recruitment and retention?
- What has been the impact of the new bursaries and scholarships announced in October?
Response
- Remove the cost of training to be a teacher. Expecting candidates to take on large amounts of debt to work in a low paid job that is serving the nation is not sustainable as we can see from the current recruitment crisis.
- Salaries need to be attractive to attract graduates who may also be considering other career paths
- Trainees who have accessed a bursary should be required to remain within the state system for a minimum amount of time e.g., 3 – 5 years to stop an exodus from the state sector in some subjects particularly physics
- Reinstate the expectation that trainees spend 2 weeks in school prior to starting the course so that they come onto courses with realistic expectations of what the course involves.
- SKE for science – any science subject trainee should be able to do a SKE in any other science subject.
- Funding for SKEs should be increased.
- Consistency of bursaries – the changes of bursaries year on year does not allow for proper financial planning for candidates or teacher training institutions.
- Less negative briefing against the profession in the media.
- Reconsider the requirement in the Market Review of ITE, that all mentors need 20 hours of mentor training. We are seeing reduced offers of placements for schools because of the burden of the ECT mentor training., Adding in a large amount of mentoring for ITE students will greatly exacerbate this problem.
How well does the current teacher training framework work to prepare new teachers and how could it be improved?
- What has been the impact of the Early Career Framework implemented in September 2021?
- Are there ways in which teacher training could be improved to address the challenges in recruitment and retention?
- How does teacher training in England compare internationally, and what are the benefits and disadvantages of the English system?
Response
- The new provision for ECTs is often reported by trainees (in their first year of teaching) to be repetitive. There are also additional workload pressures reported by mentors and trainees.
- School should be required to work with trainee teachers and this should influence Ofsted judgements to secure more high-quality training places.
- As things stand the ECF reduces the capacity of schools to be involved in ITT as mentoring demands in school are extremely high.
- The focus on high quality mentoring across the first three years in the profession is a very good idea, but the practicalities of its delivery are challenging for schools and ITT providers.
- There is an increasing lack of professional autonomy in teaching in England. This is ue to a range of factors including the rise of multi-academy trusts some of who are making curriculums very prescriptive.
- Inspection is deemed much more collegiate in other countries in the UK than it is in England.
How do challenges in teacher recruitment, training and retention compare to those being faced in other professions/ sectors of the economy, and is there anything that can be learned from other professions/ sectors of the economy?
Response
Comparable issues with other public sector professions.
What particular challenges exist in teacher recruitment, training and retention for teachers from different demographic backgrounds?
- How well does the demographic makeup of the teaching workforce reflect that of the pupils they teach?
Response
Retention of trainees from less affluent backgrounds (which often intersects with ethnicity) would be supported if training was paid for / had an accompanying bursary.
March 2023