TTR0122

Written evidence submitted by the Coventry Education Partnership

Introduction

The principles underpinning the Coventry Education Partnership place children and young people at the heart of everything we do, which ensures we operate with a collective moral purpose and accountability for all CYP across all Coventry schools and the LA. Our teaching teams are an integral part of our school’s partnership. However, Coventry, like other areas, have noted the increasing pressure placed on teachers and subsequently schools.

This evidence submission to the Education Committee’s inquiry into teacher recruitment, retention and training outlines the main factors impacting the providers of the Coventry Education Partnership drawing upon the experiences of our schools and teaching professionals.

The following content reflects the questions posed by the Education Committee as set out in the Inquiry notice.

What are the difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified teachers?

Pay and conditions

Pressures with the recruitment and retention of teaching staff is in part being driven by the level of pay offered to teachers. The professionals we need in teaching are commanding improved pay and terms in other sectors. The desire to teach and help young people fulfil their promise is a primary motivator for people choosing the teaching profession. But the role must be remunerated sufficiently, through pay and pensions, to ensure it is competitive and attractive to the right people. This should be reflected across all subjects.

In Coventry we have noted limited impact through the introduction of bursaries and scholarships announced in October 2022.

Assured Budget Allocations

With pay disputes ongoing and any additional amounts of money being provided to schools after budget planning for the academic year, it is hard for schools to future plan and mitigate some of the workload difficulties with staff.

Pressures of workload

The workload and time pressures for teachers is one of the frequently raised issues by schools when retaining staff. This is especially prevalent for Early Career Teachers (ECTs). The increased workload of ECT’s and their mentors to complete the necessary training modules for the Early Career Framework (ECF) is a huge drain on time and resources with little benefit for the effort. Completing the modules for the ECF adds stress onto the ECTs workload. This creates pressure on the ECT and their mentor that often leads to new teachers leaving the profession. There have been reports from Primary heads stating they are reluctant to take on ECTs in the future due to the additional workload involved, which will ultimately have a negative impact on recruitment. 

Schools also find it challenging to recruit mentors due to the additional workload this role entails, as prospective mentors feel unable to provide appropriate levels of support for ECTs. This is particularly prevalent in secondary schools where pressure of exam classes mean that teacher mentors do not want the additional responsibility of mentoring ECTs.

The profile and image of teaching

The wider public perception of the teaching profession has been detrimentally affected in recent years. The pressure placed on teachers during the Covid 19 pandemic and perceived lack of value highlighted the fragility of the sector. This is the consequence of too many years of underfunding within the sector.

The more recent teacher strikes, following the rejection of pay awards, has raised the public profile of the teaching profession in a negative light. Those young people we need to be the teachers of the future are looking elsewhere for their profession as they become adults. This trend must be reversed if the UK is to have the teaching workforce of the future our children and young people need.  The government also need to do more publicly to demonstrate the value that they put on the teaching profession.

Cultural barriers

The mix of teachers, especially at senior and executive level roles across schools does not reflect the demographics of those children and young people they teach. More needs to be done by the Government to encourage teaching professionals from minority backgrounds. This will not only increase equity in the teaching profession and secure a teaching approach that benefits all children through inclusion, through nuanced insights that will improve our children and young people’s perspectives and values, sense of heritage and identity and success academically. Also equipping them to be citizens of the future.

School teaching staff equalities data isn’t collated within local authorities which means they are not able to evidence, monitor or put actions in place to support schools to empower them to have a more diverse workforce.

Where are the pressures impacting most?

Subjects

The subjects most affected include Maths and Science. This can lead to specialist classes being taken by teachers who are not experts in these subjects.

Schools provision

The greatest impact of teachers leaving the profession and where schools struggle to recruit is being experienced in Secondary schools. However primary is also now seeing increasing numbers of teachers leave the profession. Both Primary and Secondary are also reporting smaller numbers of experienced candidates applying for roles, resulting in reduced quality of applications.

Children and Young People

Ultimately the lack of a well-trained, consistent and diverse teacher workforce impacts on our children and young people. Without the necessary funding, improved training capacity and diversity in the teaching workforce problems will persist. This will affect the whole school environment and impact the outcomes achieved by our children and young people.

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

The main areas the department should focus on are:

-          Ensure competitive pay that reflects the value of the roles.

-          Create greater flexibility around the training of new teachers, ensuring the ECF works for schools and ECT’s.

-          Raise the profile and recognition of teaching, bringing pride back to the profession

-          Create supportive school environments, including better school leadership, to ensure teachers feel valued and want to remain in the profession.

-          Empower schools to create a more inclusive and diverse school environment. This will require DfE to ensure teacher training is accessible, and encouraged, from within minority communities.

-          Review immigration rules to allow migrants to work in roles whose start dates are delayed due to immigration right to work processes which then impact the school further.

-          For certain school roles, develop a framework for on the job training so schools can remove specific qualifications as a barrier at recruitment stage.

-          Upskill internal staff by offering internal opportunities to bridge the gaps identified. Schools should be enabled to cover gaps in skill set across all internal staff as part of teacher training.

How well does the current teacher training framework work to prepare new teachers and how could it be improved?

SEND

There should be a greater emphasis on teaching children with SEND, and behavioural challenges in mainstream schools. The SEN training provision does not currently prepare teachers for the challenges these children and young people can present within their classroom, or the right approach and techniques to support these learners. This can lead to significant disruption for all children in the classroom, reduced outcomes and exclusion for children and young people with SEND and creates increased pressure on teaching staff.

This pressure could be reduced by engaging trainee teachers in placements within specialist SEND provisions. This has the potential to lead to improved knowledge and skills to support children with SEND and behavioural challenges in the classroom, reducing wider class disruption and improving the school experience of children with SEND.

ECF

ECF training is seen as 'restrictive' and asks as a 'straitjacket' with no flexibility. Schools report to us that they believe they should have greater flexibility in how they meet ECT’s needs. In addition, ECF modules are reported to be a repetition of ITT material.

April 2023