SOT0040 - Evidence on Recruitment and retention of teachers

SOT0040

Written evidence submitted by the London Borough of Waltham Forest

Cllr Mark Rusling, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, London Borough of Waltham Forest

I am writing on behalf of the London Borough of Waltham Forest, where I am the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People.

Waltham Forest suffers unique problems in recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers, for the reasons set out below. While these issues are unique to us, they do reveal systemic problems in the ways in which teachers are remunerated, which impact on the education which children and young people receive in different parts of London and England. I would urge the government to review the school funding regime to ensure it is based on need.

The London Borough of Waltham Forest is in North East London, bordering the London Boroughs of Enfield, Haringey, Hackney, Newham and Redbridge, and Essex County Council to the north. There are currently 53,000 pupils across 76 schools in Waltham Forest. The proportion of children in Waltham Forest entitled to the Pupil Premium is amongst the highest in the country - 60% of our children reside in the 20% most deprived wards in the country. Mobility in the primary phase is nearly twice the national average and almost half of our children speak English as an additional language.

In recent years we have invested a lot of time, energy and investment to improve educational standards and outcomes for children. Attainment is now above national average at both Key Stage 2 and 4. The proportion of schools that are rated by Ofsted as ‘Good’ or better has improved from 67% in August 2012 to 86% in September 2014. This means that 7,599 more children in Waltham Forest are attending a Good or Outstanding school.

We could not have made these improvements without the hard work and dedication of our teaching staff. The 76 schools in the borough collectively employ 2,312 classroom teachers and 361 members of the schools’ leadership groups. [1] This breaks down as follows:

	Type of school	Total number: classroom teachers	FTE number: classroom teachers	Total number leadership group teachers	FTE number: leadership group	Teachers total number	FTE teachers total number
2014	All schools	2,312	2,171.10	361	355.10	2,673	2,526.20
	Maintained schools	1,458	1,360.10	230	226.10	1,688	1,586.20
	Academies/ Free schools	854	811.00	131	129.00	985	940.00

This headcount has been slowly increasing over recent years in line with the increase in pupil numbers: in 2014 the FTE total for all teachers was 264 higher than for 2012, an increase of around 1 per cent.

National pay scales for teachers incorporate payment of an Inner and Outer London Supplement. This recognises that the high costs of living in London could impact on teacher recruitment and retention. Under this mechanism Waltham Forest is classified as an Outer London authority. All of our neighbouring boroughs, apart from those to the north of Waltham Forest, are categorised as Inner London Boroughs. In addition, despite being further away from central London, some of our neighbours, like Barking and Dagenham, are also classified as being in Inner London.

This disparity in pay is coming at a time when Waltham Forest’s house prices are increasing at a much faster rate than for many of our neighbours. Land Registry data shows house prices in Waltham Forest have risen faster than in London overall, showing a 53.5% increase in Waltham Forest between March 2010 and March 2015, compared with 40.7% across London [2]. Indications are that this trend will only accelerate over the coming years.[3]

This is also much faster than Inner London boroughs based in North East London such as Newham, where prices rose by 36% over the same period, and Barking and Dagenham, where prices rose by 28.5% over the same period.[4]

This disparity in pay and the fact that home ownership (and, in many cases, renting) is becoming less attainable for teachers working and living in the borough is making it much more difficult for Waltham Forest schools to recruit and retain teachers and senior staff because of the higher wages on offer nearby. A 2014 survey of headteachers in Waltham Forest showed that over two-thirds of those who responded felt that not being able to offer the Inner London allowance had a ‘very significant’ impact on their ability to recruit and retain staff. Of the 204 teachers who left employment at these schools, 32% said that the inability of their school to pay the Inner London allowance was a factor in their decision to leave.

To overcome this, we know that some local schools have had to start paying staff the Inner London Allowance from their own budgets to ensure that they have the teachers that they want. This is obviously creating a strain on schools’ finances and is not a sustainable solution. Schools are having to take money from their teaching budgets in order to fund teachers’ pay.

As a permanent solution, we want to see Waltham Forest’s schools funded so that they can pay staff the same as our neighbours and ensure that they are able to recruit and retain excellent staff who will help us to drive up standards and deliver the education we want our children to receive.

This could be done by either designating Waltham Forest as an Inner London borough, or by increasing the Dedicated School Grant for the borough. A recent comparison of the School Block Unit Funding (SBUF – this is the total amount of money allocated to mainstream maintained schools and academies under local authorities’ basic funding formulae) for Waltham Forest shows that the Borough receives below the London average and below the funding allocated to our statistical neighbours. For 2015-16, the SBUF in Waltham Forrest is £5,197 per pupil, compared to a London average of £5,458.96. Although this places us 19th out of London’s 32 local authorities, our nearest statistical neighbour receives £5,503.52, the 7th highest in London. Clearly, this is unfair – funding is not being based on need.

In conclusion, we believe that for boroughs such as Waltham Forest, issues around teacher retention and recruitment are caused by our inability to pay teachers the same rates as our neighbours. Although the issues set out here are specific to Waltham Forest, they reveal a systemic problem in the school funding regime – funding is not based on need. This can be solved in Waltham Forest by funding us so that we can match teachers’ pay in neighbouring boroughs, either by either classifying us as an Inner London authority, or increasing our funding so that we the resources to do this ourselves. Until the system is based on need, it will disadvantage areas such as Waltham Forest, making recruitment and retention more difficult and endangering the improvements in standards which we are seeing in our schools.

November 2015