TTR0036

Written evidence submitted by Turing House School

The current situation regarding teacher recruitment and retention

What are the main factors leading to difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified teachers?

• Lack of funding (why teach computing, when you can work for a company for a lot more money)
• Long hours
• Constant fear of inspection
• Lack of regard for the profession in the public eye & government
• Challenging parents
• Muti-faceted role – The job outside the classroom has grown exponentially over the last 20 years. Yet the classroom role has not changed. This is not sustainable.
• Fixed holiday times with vastly increased travel costs in those times

Which subjects are most affected?

• Currently computing, technology and music. Previously maths and science

How does the situation differ across the country and across different types of schools and colleges?

• Local schools are all facing the same issues. Those with inner London pay do better than those on the border with outer and fringe.

What impact does this have on pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND?

• Lots of supply staff (who can be incredibly poor), deploying support staff to cover and support in areas when they should be with vulnerable students. Poor relationships with students who require consistent stable relationships with adults. Needs cannot be met (statutory) with supply staff. They simply cannot read the plans for these vulnerable students.
• Emotional and mental health issues hugely affected as young people have vital reasonable adjustments missing from their lessons being managed by temporary staff.
• Long term impact of funding issues will result in redundancies. Starting with the staff that support the most vulnerable.
• Less choice during options in Year 10 and 12, again this may impact the least academic students as the breadth of curriculum is likely to be reduced.
• Recruitment of support staff such as LSAs is significantly impacted because the role has become extremely demanding. It is a low paid role and staff are having to ‘pick up the pieces’ where there are inconsistencies and where the demand is too great on teaching staff to adequately meet the needs of disadvantaged students.
• Students spend time out of lessons, refusing due to the stresses and anxieties driven by temporary staffing and the fact that their regular classroom teachers are too overloaded to fully meet the students’ needs and make reasonable adjustments. This leads to student total school avoidance in some cases.

What action should the Department take to address the challenges in teacher recruitment and retention?

• Fund schools appropriately
• Pay teachers appropriately.
• Ofsted should go into a school make judgements then stay in the school for a period of time to support the school with moving things forward. The report to parents should simply summarize the findings and what Ofsted did to move things forward.
• Address the teacher pension which used to be the market leader.

What has been the impact of the new bursaries and scholarships announced in October?

• No impact seen.

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?

• Feedback from the move to a two-year ECT programme is poor. The workload demands are excessive and have encouraged people to leave the profession. The impact on current staff being mentors is huge. Staff do not want to be mentors next year.
• The financial issues impact on the non-contact time available for ECT’s and mentors

Are there ways in which teacher training could be improved to address the challenges in recruitment and retention?

• The issue goes beyond teacher training. ITT needs improving but this will not solve the recruitment issues in the education system.  How can teaching be made a desirable career? Education must be funded properly.

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?

• There are distinct parallels between the NHS and the Police. These areas are underfunded and lack value in our society. Everyone in these fields do the jobs of two people due to a lack of funding. We are all highly criticised when things go wrong. Yet there is a total lack of acknowledgement that these people are doing the jobs of two. How can you shut police stations in London and expect to control crime in that area. The level of demand from parents and other external bodies such as local authorities adds a huge amount of stress to staff in all these sectors; communication can be highly critical and damage the well-being of staff who have no control over their workload due to lack of resource.

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?

• There is still a lack of teachers in our borough from ethnic minorities. The challenges are the same. The job is not desirable anymore. This is heart-breaking.

March 2023