TTR0105
Written evidence submitted by Sheila Ball
Who am I?
I am currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Leeds Beckett University and a second year doctoral student.
I have over 25 years’ experience in education in Hertfordshire, London and Essex & internationally. This includes:
Why am I sending you evidence?
I am deeply concerned about the current situation regarding teacher recruitment, training and retention and wish to offer my perspective given my experience.
The current situation regarding teacher recruitment and retention
What are the main factors leading to difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified teachers?
Recruitment:
- perceptions of teaching: hard work, long hours, not valued, better pay in other fields
- some graduates or specialists e.g. in maths, computing, science can earn more in other sectors
Retention:
- lack of autonomy in what to teach and how to teach it (booklets, ready-made lesson plans which are decontextualised and obsession with testing whether low or high stakes)
- not being valued or properly listened to (by government, school leaders, Ofsted)
- not having one’s own extensive knowledge and lived experience of children, young people and teaching and learning valued
- not being able to do a good enough job (due to time, lack of resources internal or external, different priorities being set by others)
- no time to collaboratively plan, inquire, address own professional concerns with others, conduct own research
- exhaustion from relentless changes and chasing results, target grades, predicted grades, aspirational grades and the endemic blame culture
- seeing through the falsehood of the results drive agenda which fails 30% of young people every year despite how hard teachers work
- seeing through the falsehood of silver bullets of neatly packaged top-down policy fixes which rain down from successive governments
- tired, frustrated and angry at the increasing marketisation of education: e.g. exam boards and not having the resources to pay for a script to be remarked; being required to attend courses to teach to the test only to be told the next year you shouldn’t use that model
- having seen numerous education reforms and as many secretaries of state and the gap between disadvantaged and advantaged not closing regardless of successive reforms but being blamed for not achieving this.
Having not been in secondary school teaching since 2019 and seen my three children go through the school system, I have come to the conclusion that teaching and schools in England are largely inhumane and a key contributor to poor mental health:
For children:
- sat down for far too long in classrooms of 30+
- lack of access to natural light and nature
- few opportunities to think: explore, question, process, ponder
- constantly judged (testing, compliance to rules)
- even those who can easily comply are miserable (anecdotal evidence from parents)
For teachers:
- lack of access to natural light and nature
- lack of time/access to eat freshly prepared food and rest
- too much contact time – secondary teachers may teach 150 students in one day with different needs, concerns. It is not possible to meet all of their needs all of the time.
- 12 hour days/60 hour + weeks not sustainable in the long term
- immersed in an environment that is relentlessly judgemental
For school leaders:
- Pressure to get results even though nationally 30% of students have to fail every year
- Pressure to deliver CPD from approved DfE providers rather than choose what they think is appropriate for them. Particularly felt in schools in low Ofsted category.
- Competitive environment rather than collaborative. This stifles any innovation or sense of agency which is essential for nurturing children, young people and adults who care for them
- Constantly being judged
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Which subjects are most affected?
- as well as the usual maths, science & computing, an increasing number as commitment to MFL at primary was abandoned in 2010 and EBAC led to a reduction of teachers in D&T and performing arts leading to a reduction of HEIs offering courses in those subjects and then reduction in PGCE courses in those subjects.
How does the situation differ across the country and across different types of schools and colleges?
- This largely depends on quality of leadership, stability of school over time, resourcing and Ofsted judgement.
For example, in my local area, the local secondary school has been unstable for 20 years despite new leadership and academisation. Although it was a community school with a large sixth form of 200 when I taught there from 1996-99 (teaching a Y12 French class of 6), its reputation was divided in the local community. The gradual wave of parental choice established in the 1988 ERA, meant that year on year, the number on roll dropped with young people being bused to neighbouring schools. When I returned to the school to teach in 2017 despite the town having increased its population, the school was significantly below capacity. However, 8 miles away is a stable LA school with a sound reputation and a more affluent intake from local villages which has been able to weather the storms of varying government reforms with fewer students with SEND, fewer managed moves and healthy staff recruitment and retention.
An academy in a large academy chain I worked at in its second year of opening had access to extraordinary resources including a £40 K lectern in the school hall. It also had 18 months to plan its opening, policies etc. Schools that need turning around, do not have this time and some do not have access to such resources.
The threat of and unfairness of DfE monitoring visits and Ofsted inspections is a contributory factor to stability or lack of. For example, I know of at least one school graded Outstanding in 2012 which has not been inspected since then. The academy I worked at was graded Outstanding having been opened for 3 months.
Schools graded RI or worse experience unnecessary instability and the quality of judgement is so uneven that schools cannot trust who is coming in to to inspect their school. Since 2010 and the onslaught of austerity measures and the demise of LAs, external agencies and support for CAMHS, Sure Start etc. have led to school not being able to meet the needs of children and young people whilst being told they are responsible for their mental health.
Lucy Crehan in her book Cleverlands points to examples from other countries of how better to support and monitor schools.
When I worked for the alternative provision free school as a deputy head and having been praised by one DfE adviser in our first monitoring visit for our work re curriculum, one of the the advisers who led the DfE monitoring visit in my last term there was rude, unprofessional and not interested in any evidence we had to give. Despite having enabled 97% of the Y11 cohort, all who had been excluded from mainstream education to transition successfully to education, employment or training, the school was forced to academise with a MAT whose CEO was responsible for a deficit of over £2 million K.
What impact does this have on pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND?
These pupils in particular need stability. Teaching is a relational practice: children need to be able to trust teachers to keep them safe and create safe classroom spaces in which they can thrive, be and become themselves. When teaching is reduced to a transactional relationship: teacher as knowledge provider and pupil as knowledge received, pupils are failed.
In the alternative provision free school, it was only when our students trusted us enough, that we learned about the stories they had kept hidden, stories they had never told, about being raped, groomed etc. Only then were we able to put the support in place they needed and sometimes it was hard to do that because of the changes in criteria needed to meet CAMHS support. If you are suffering from any trauma related issues, it is very challenging to focus on GCSE English or believe that anything is worth the effort
Kiran Gill’s The Difference programme is doing some good work here but it will be limited due to norm-referenced exam system and poor social care in the community and the educationalising of societal problems.
Social care, education, health, housing are all interconnected.
The extract below from my doctoral studies captures the issues:
Supported by powerful global institutions such as the World Bank and the OECD, neoliberalism has had significant impact on education systems around the world for the past four decades (Ball, 2003). Rather than seeing education as a public service, ‘essential to collective well-being’ (Davies & Bansel, 2007: 254), like health, education has become part of the market economy, its purpose being to create competitive individual economic agents who can serve economic needs. Schools and universities have become subject to market forces relying on monitoring systems and outputs to compete. In England, the pursuit of neoliberalism has resulted in marginalising the teaching profession with successive governments succeeding in controlling teaching through ever increased powers (Mahoney & Hextall, 1997; Wragg, 2005). Practice is packaged, de-contextualised and simplified as a series of techniques so that teachers’ role is reduced to one of technicians and pupils as objects subjected to being measured and controlled (Levin, 2000). More recently the knowledge rich curriculum driving recent educational reform has now seeped into teacher professional learning. The introduction of the Early Career Framework (ECF) in September 2021 has resulted in top-down implementation of a prescribed body of knowledge delivered by government approved providers. The idea that teachers might have different starting points, experiences or the opportunity for teachers to inquire and make sense of things for themselves are ignored.
I argue that cultures of performativity characterised by judgement and comparison to incentivise and control are stifling both the potential of children and young people as well as the adults (Ball, 2003; Kulz, 2017). Those who do not fit into these ‘cult-like cultures’ are ejected (Collins & Porras, 1997). It is interesting to note that the steady increase in pupil exclusions since 2013 (Timpson, 2019) and the rising numbers of teachers leaving the profession (DfE, 2019) in the last few years have coincided with the increasing commodification of education, high stakes accountability and narrowing of the curriculum (Thomson, 2020). It has been argued that norm-referenced high stakes testing is institutionalising failure (Seldon, 2021) and the most vulnerable children and young people, that the neoliberal cause purportedly seeks to support are further traumatised, marginalised or excluded (Fine, 2018). The pandemic of the past two years has highlighted how damaging and unfit for purpose the current education system in England has become.
The desire to make a difference is found to be the key motivation in becoming a teacher alongside wanting to work with children (ATL, 2015). However unsustainable workload due to constant curriculum and examination reforms (ATL, 2015) compounded by a lack of autonomy (Worth et al., 2020) are cited as the drivers for recently qualified as well as experienced teachers leaving the profession. The recent pandemic in which we are still living has not helped. According to a report by the NAHT union December 2021, ‘lack of professional recognition and trust, unsustainable workload and high-stakes inspection drive attrition rates and undermine aspiration to lead’ (2021: 3).
Recommendations include ending the centralised diktat from Whitehall and drivers of fear and poor mental health to allow school leaders to respond to their own particular contexts and circumstances (NAHT, 2021).
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?
I don’t know about the impact of new bursaries and scholarships except that there is evidence that healthier and more humane working conditions are more important than higher salaries. Regarding action the Department should take ot address the challenges, I suggest the following:
- widen the purpose of education to something more than achieving GCSEs and A levels. Priestley et al. (2015) in their book Teacher Agency, suggest 3 purposes: qualification, socialisation and subjectification
- change Ofsted immediately so there are no labels/judgements and work with schools, particularly those which are struggling. Until Ofsted becomes a body which supports school leaders working with them over time, retention will remain an issue.
- ensure that vocational and academic learning are equally valued
- remove norm-referenced exam system or stop pretending that all pupils can pass and therefore that all schools can improve their results and stop blaming schools for not improving.
- question why it is necessary for all children to meet a required level at a certain age. In whose interest is that?
- reduce contact time for all teachers so there is time for collaborative planning, reflection & inquiry
- treat all school leaders and teachers as valuable human beings and create and maintain an ongoing dialogue to listen to their lived experience (not just the ‘chosen ones’)
- develop a cross party approach to a long term plan for education (see FED’s work on this https://fed.education )
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?
Anecdotal evidence from colleagues involved as programme leaders and mentors suggests that whilst the ECF is in part welcome, the content repeats some of what is already included in PGCE courses, is burdensome, wholly prescriptive conveying a very limited perspective on what it is to be a teacher.
Are there ways in which teacher training could be improved to address the challenges in recruitment and retention?
- Ensure the system and process for providers to be eligible to offer teacher training is equitable and not restricted to those approved DfE bodies
- allow trainees the space to critique, question and make sense of the craft of teaching
- enable mentors to have the time to mentor
How does teacher training in England compare internationally, and what are the benefits and disadvantages of the English system?
- much more developed than in some countries such as Egypt, Kazakhstan
- much more prescriptive and centralised than countries such as Canada.
- The benefits are that the English system recognises the importance of teacher training and the importance of mentoring and supporting new entrants into the profession
- The disadvantages are that it does not allow time for new entrants to make sense for themselves of the knowledge they are receiving and using and the craft of teaching they are honing.
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?
It seems that there are similar challenges in health with practitioners not being valued, inhumane conditions and a lack of dialogue between practitioners, unions and government. It also seems that there are many more layers of management now within MATs than there used to be in LA schools. I wonder how in touch some CEOs might be with the daily reality of being a classroom teacher?
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?
Not well at all but this will not improve until curriculum and behaviour policies embrace the varying contexts from which all children come and teaching values critical thinking rather than regurgitated knowledge.
April 2023