TTR0084

Written evidence submitted by NASUWT

Executive Summary

• The education system in England continues to be subject to a debilitating, deeply rooted and worsening teacher recruitment and retention crisis. The conclusion of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee 2018 Inquiry into teacher supply that the Department for Education (DfE) has ‘failed to get a grip on teacher retention' continues to characterise the Government’s teacher supply policy.
• The DfE has missed its initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment target in every annual cycle except one since 2011. Teacher wastage rates have also increased substantially over this period.
• While exit from teaching among those at the early stages of their careers is a significant concern, Government policy continues to downplay the negative impact of later-stage retention problems in maintaining adequate levels of teacher supply.
• The significant real-terms reductions in pay to which teachers have been subject since 2011 has had a profound impact on recruitment and retention into the teaching profession. The failure of the Government to restore the real value of teachers’ pay and rewards remains a significant contributor to the teacher supply crisis and deepening industrial relations problems across the sector.
• While acknowledging the impact of excessive workload on teacher recruitment and retention, the Government has taken no effective action to address the unsustainable pressures that the workforce faces in this respect. Teachers working hours remain excessive according to the Government’s own evidence.
• While reforms to the induction of new teachers through the Early Career Framework may have the potential to improve early-stage teacher retention, it is not yet possible to evaluate their impact in this regard. Implementation of the ECF has, to date, resulted in serious additional workload pressures for new teachers and their mentors which have not been addressed by the Government.

Introduction

1. The NASUWT welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee Inquiry into teacher recruitment, training and retention.
2. The NASUWT notes that the published scope of the Inquiry is relatively broad and addresses a wide range of complex issues. The Union’s submission, therefore, provides a summary overview of the principal issues relevant to the terms of reference. The NASUWT would welcome the opportunity to explore these and other relevant issues in more detail with the Committee in oral evidence.

Current situation on recruitment and retention

3. The education system in England continues to be subject to a profoundly debilitating and deeply rooted teacher recruitment and retention crisis. The Committee will be aware of the longstanding nature of this crisis. In 2017, its predecessor Committee described the scale and extent of the teacher supply problems facing the education system and their origins in policy decisions taken since May 2010.[1] The Education Select Committee’s concerns and analysis of this crisis were reflected in the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee’s 2018 Inquiry into teacher supply.[2] This Committee concluded that the Department for Education (DfE) had ‘failed to get a grip on teacher retention'.
4. Since these reports were published, no effective action has been taken by the DfE to respond to their recommendations and, consequently, the situation has continued to deteriorate. The NASUWT has previously recommended that the Government establish a Taskforce to secure implementation of the recommendations arising from these reports and to secure tangible downward pressure on teachers’ working hours. The Government is yet to commit to the same.
5. In January 2019, the DfE published its updated Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy.[3] This strategy acknowledges that factors in respect of the increasing uncompetitiveness of teachers' pay in comparison to other graduate professions and that declining levels of retention would need to be addressed to improve the current state of teacher supply. However, the DfE has failed to act on the basis of its own analysis.
6. Official data points towards a collapse in levels of active interest among graduates in entering the teaching profession over the past decade. By the end of the 2022/23 initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment cycle, 111,592 applications had been received,[4] a decline of 27% from the 153,850 figure reported in 2013/14.[5] The total number of entrants into ITT programmes for the 2022/23 academic year was 28,991, a decline of 20% on the previous year’s figure.[6]
7. Data on entrants to programmes of ITT serves to emphasise the concerns articulated above and confirm their longstanding nature. Overall teacher recruitment was above target in each year from 2006/07 to 2011/12 but was below target in each subsequent year up to 2019/20.[7] Recruitment into secondary ITT programmes for 2022/23 only reached 59% of the centrally-set target required to sustain teacher supply, following on from a 21% overall shortfall in 2021/22. Recruitment into primary programmes also failed to meet the set target.[8]
8. Levels of wastage from the teaching profession, other than for reasons of age-related retirement or death-in-service, remain extremely high. The School Workforce Census (SWC) confirms that between 2011/12 and 2020/21, the number of teachers leaving teaching annually for reasons other than age-related retirement or death-in-service rose from 26,282 to 36,232, an increase of 38% over the period.[9]
9. Successive DfE submissions to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) have asserted that retention concerns are centred mainly on the early stages of teachers’ careers. However, while early career-stage exit from the profession continues to be a matter of significant concern, such assertions fail to reflect the reality of the nature of overall teacher wastage. By 2021, over 40% of those who had entered the teaching profession 10 years previously were no longer teaching.[10] Data published by the DfE in 2022 confirmed that less than half of those teachers who had qualified 20 years previously were still employed in the state education sector as qualified teachers.[11] 30% of those leaving teaching for reasons other than age-related retirement or death-in-service were aged between 30 and 39, with 27% of those leaving aged between 40 and 49.[12]
10. In its consideration of recruitment and retention, the Committee is right to note the importance of the demographic composition of the workforce and the experience of particular groups within it. The NASUWT is able to draw upon evidence from teachers attending its conferences for women teachers, Black teachers, LGBTI teachers and disabled teachers all of which have expressed concerns about the systemic and everyday nature of discrimination experienced by teachers and leaders with protected characteristics and the impact this has on their recruitment into the profession, their pay and career progression as well as the greater likelihood that they will experience harassment, bullying and other forms of adverse treatment in the workplace. Data from the Union and other bodies indicates that teachers from Black and other minority ethnic groups experience higher levels of work-related stress, poor mental health and reduced wellbeing as a result of racism, stigma and negative stereotyping.[13]
11. The extent of discrimination and prejudice experienced by teachers is such that there are strong grounds for the Committee to conduct a dedicated inquiry into this issue. The NASUWT would welcome the opportunity to consider these matters in more detail with the Committee.

Addressing the causes of the recruitment and retention crisis

12. The NASUWT has identified three broad systemic barriers to improving teacher supply: pay and rewards; excessive workloads; and the quality of teachers’ working environments.
1. Pay and rewards
13. Research commissioned by the Office for Manpower Economics confirms the central role played by pay in securing adequate teacher supply, particularly among more experienced teachers.[14] Teachers have been subject to over a decade of national policies of pay freezes and severe pay restraints. The impact of these policies on teachers’ real-terms pay has been profound. For example, a teacher on the maximum of the Main Pay Range (MPR) will have experienced a real-terms reduction in net pay of 25.5% between 2010 and 2022.[15] Given recent significant increases in inflation since mid-2022, implementation of the STRB’s recommendations on pay set out in its 32nd report would have resulted in a 35% real-terms reduction in the pay of teachers at the top of the MPR since 2010. Teachers and leaders who have remained in the profession since 2010 are between £35,801 and £216,963 worse off in real terms due to the cumulative shortfall in pay.[16]
14. The position of teachers’ pay relative to other graduate employment sectors has deteriorated. Research commissioned by the NASUWT confirms that in 2022, average starting salaries for secondary teachers were 12% below the average for comparable non-teaching occupations. Salaries offered to graduates across the UK are much higher than teachers’ salaries in England. Research confirms that the median starting salary for graduates across the UK on completion of training is £34,500, higher than the mid-range MPR M3 pay point of £31,750.[17]
15. Further, the STRB’s 32nd report, published in 2022, confirmed that teachers’ median earnings were below those of other professional occupations in all age categories apart from those aged over 60.[18]
16. These constraints have created significant hardships for many teachers. In March 2022, the NASUWT carried out its annual Big Question survey of members’ attitudes to teaching.[19] The survey highlighted an increase in the number of teachers concerned about their pay and it is clear that many have suffered privations as a result of their pay not keeping up with the cost of living.
17. The survey found that:

• 87%  of teachers and leaders reported being worried about their financial situation;
• 75% believed that graduates are deterred from entering teaching because of pay;
• 78% had cut back on social activities due to costs;
• 71% had cut back expenditure on clothing;
• 61% had stopped saving;
• 52% had cut back expenditure on food;
• 84% of teachers thought that teaching is not competitive with other professions; and
• 78% of teachers believe their pay is not commensurate with their skills.

18. It should be noted that this survey was conducted before the significant increases in inflation that occurred later in 2022 and that have persisted in 2023.
19. The NASUWT notes the Committee’s interest in the new bursaries and scholarships announced by the DfE in October 2022. While it is not yet possible to evaluate the impact of these reformed incentives, the use of similar approaches has been a persistent element of the DfE’s recruitment strategy since 2010.
20. Notwithstanding the focus of such schemes on trainee teachers in a limited range of subjects in a context where no phase or subject has remained untouched by the teacher supply crisis, the Committee will note the lack of evidence on their efficacy.[20] The DfE's implicit acceptance of the limited value of training bursaries and scholarships is reflected in its proposal to defer part of the awards made to trainees until after they have taught in the state-funded system in England for a defined period. However, it should be noted that post-qualification incentive systems have had limited positive impact when they have been used previously.[21]

2. Workload

21. Workload remains a significant contributor to retention problems. The DfE’s 2019 Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy identified workload as a key driver of exit from the profession, a position confirmed in the OME-commissioned research on teacher retention.[22] 
22. The extent of these workload pressures is confirmed in the results of the DfE-commissioned Working lives of teachers and leaders study.[23] The study confirms that teachers’ average working time continues to be unsustainable, averaging over 51 hours per week for a teacher on a full-time contract. Almost one-in-five teachers working on full-time contracts reported working in excess of 60 hours per week.[24]
23. These pressures are compounding the recruitment and retention crisis. The NASUWT has highlighted the implications of excessive teacher workload since 2011 through its annual Big Question survey. The thousands of teachers responding to the survey have consistently reported workload as their principal concern about the quality of their working lives[25]. The Working lives of teachers and leaders study found most teachers and leaders disagreed that their workload was acceptable (72%) and that they had sufficient control over it (62%).[26]
24. The DfE insists, without credible foundation, that it is taking effective action to improve non-pay drivers of the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.[27] For example, the DfE continues to claim that it is supporting schools in reducing unnecessary and excessive workload.

25. In this regard, the NASUWT notes the DfE-commissioned Independent Teacher Workload Review Group’s reports on the unnecessary and excessive workload burdens associated with marking, planning, data and assessment.[28]

26. While these reports, published in April 2016, set out helpful recommendations for practice, the DfE has left the implementation of these recommendations to the complete discretion of schools. As a result of its failure to take purposeful action to require all schools, by a clear deadline, to adopt the Group’s findings, practices of the type challenged in the Group’s reports remain prevalent across the system. Similarly, although the Workload Reduction Toolkit produced by the DfE contains some potentially helpful advice and guidance on identifying and addressing the causes of unnecessary and excessive workload, schools are under no obligation to make use of it.[29] For these reasons, the Union, therefore, remains concerned that the report on the use of data referenced by the DfE in its evidence to the STRB, Making data work, continues to have a comparably limited impact.[30]

3. Working conditions

27. Growing feedback from NASUWT teacher and headteacher members suggests strongly that the quality of employment practice is having a considerable impact on teacher retention.

28. Relevant factors in this respect include:

• a lack of regard given by employers to teachers’ job satisfaction;
• a disregard by employers for good personnel practice;
• poor pupil behaviour and ineffective school-level approaches to behaviour management;
• a disregard for, and the active flouting of, statutory and contractual protections for teachers and leaders;
• a significant sense of professional disempowerment across the workforce;
• a lack of knowledge, skills and commitment on the part of too many employers with regard to the management of good industrial relations; and
• a lack of fairness and concern in relation to key aspects of teachers’ working lives, including their pay and career progression as well as their physical and psychological welfare.

29. The debilitating employment environment experienced by many teachers, if unaddressed, is likely to have a sustained negative impact on the attractiveness of teaching, particularly for those teachers at the early stages of their careers.

30. Research into graduate career aspirations continues to confirm that younger graduates are more likely to enter and remain in professional occupations that offer flexible employment practices, permit inclusive and collaborative-decision making and eschew crude ‘command and control’ management structures. In too many instances, schools do not provide working environments of this type.[31]

31. Many teachers are further demoralised by the way in which schools often place pressures on teachers that undermine the wellbeing of pupils.

32. In this context, it is important to note that the demographic composition of those entering teaching is changing significantly. In particular, more new entrants to teacher training are aged over 25, from 39% of recruits in 2014/15 to 47% in 2022/23.[32] It is likely that these entrants have gained experience of work in other contexts and are more able therefore to compare poor employment practices in schools with the better practice they may have experienced previously working in other sectors. These teachers may be less inclined to tolerate such practices and elect to leave the profession.

33. The DfE has noted, correctly, that enhancing teachers’ ability to work flexibly can provide important support to sustaining adequate levels of teacher supply[33]. The NASUWT has drawn attention to the fact that levels of flexible working in teaching are significantly lower than in other comparable professions. The DfE has produced non-statutory guidance for schools that reflects many of the Union’s concerns about current unacceptable practice and sets out how more effective approaches to supporting flexible working might be established.[34] However, the NASUWT‘s experience of representing members seeking opportunities to work flexibly confirms that even in circumstances where schools are aware of the guidance, the DfE‘s failure to take steps to secure their compliance with it has constrained whatever positive potential the guidance may have to a significant extent.

Efficacy of Government initial and early career-stage training policies

34. The findings of the OME-commissioned research, noted above, highlight the role that effective teacher professional development and training can play in supporting retention[35]. In this respect, the DfE’s evidence makes reference to the introduction of the Early Career Framework (ECF) in new teacher statutory induction arrangements. While the NASUWT has welcomed the positive potential of the ECF to improve upon the variable quality of induction provision new teachers experience currently, it is not yet possible to draw definitive conclusions about the impact it may have on early career stage retention.

35. However, it should be noted that the independent review of the national roll-out of the ECF concluded that problems have been evident in a significant proportion of settings in which new teachers were deployed.[36] In particular, the excessive and unnecessary workload demands made of mentors and early career teachers have been significant in many instances. Given the impact of excessive workload on the quality of teachers’ working lives and on their propensity to leave the profession, such findings give rise to concerns that the potential for the ECF to support higher rates of retention will be offset, at least in part, by the workload demands its implementation has generated.

36. The Committee will be aware that the DfE has continued to take forward the outcomes of the ITT Market Review.[37] The DfE has sought to relate the outcomes of the review to their potential to secure enhanced rates of early career retention.[38] However, it should be noted that the Market Review did not have improving ITT recruitment and retention rates as a core element of its remit and that the DfE has offered little evidence on how it would contribute to securing sustainable improvements in this respect.

37. Nevertheless, as the NASUWT and other stakeholders anticipated once the Government had set out its intention to implement the substance of the Review’s recommendations, the impact of the approach to the reaccreditation of ITT settings adopted by the DfE has resulted in the exit from the system of a substantial number of long-established and successful ITT providers.[39] This disruption risks a significant and unplanned reduction in the availability of ITT places and may leave some areas of the country with no local provision in any form, with consequent negative impacts on the recruitment of trainee teachers.

Tackling teacher supply concerns

38. The NASUWT has proposed the following measures as an initial basis for addressing the teacher supply problems noted above:

a)      a national joint ministerial and trade union forum to tackle workload and working time, with an initial target to reduce by five hours per week the average working time of teachers and school leaders;

b)      an independent review of the unintended impacts of inspection on the workload and wellbeing of teachers;

c)       strengthening existing statutory provisions and guidance on teachers’ working time rights, including lunch breaks, weekend and bank holiday working, work/life balance, planning, preparation and assessment [PPA] time, and entitlements to time for leadership and management;

d)      publishing a statutory requirement and deadline for the implementation of  the 2016 Independent Teacher Workload Review Group reports on marking, planning and data and the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter;

e)      requiring all DfE Regional Directors, Trust leaders, National Leaders of Education (NLEs), teaching schools and other system leaders to demonstrate best practice on workload reduction;

f)        restoring and updating statutory guidance on PPA time, cover, leadership and management time and dedicated headship time;

g)       improving the contractual rights for teachers undertaking leadership and management roles;

h)      strengthening the provisions on Directed Time and removing the open-ended working time clauses in the teachers’ contract set out at paragraphs 51.7 and 51.4 of the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD);

i)        requiring the conduct of workload impact assessments of new policies introduced at school level and nationally; and

j)        requiring all schools to consult on and publish a flexible working policy.

39. Further, consideration should be given to the:

k)       removal of performance-related pay requirements;

l)        re-introduction of statutory pay scales;

m)    enhancing the ability of teachers to progress from the MPR to the Upper Pay Range; and

n)      restoration of pay portability rights.

April 2023 

NASUWT

The Teachers’ Union

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