We all recognise the need to recruit more teachers - but the question of how this will be achieved remains elusive.
Ahead of a general election next year, all eyes have been on Labour for new thinking in this area and its promise to recruit 6,500 new teachers if it wins power.
Details on how it would hit this target were touched on at its party conference and in its 5 Missions document, but these proposals are not set in stone. I think there are three key areas where it could make an impact, however.
How Labour could boost teacher recruitment
1. Early career bonuses
One notable but possibly overlooked proposal was to award a £2,400 teacher retention bonuses to all those who complete the two-year Early Career Framework (ECF).
That potentially sounds like a good idea to ensure that trainees stick the course through those tough first years and receive the benefits of the ECF as they do so, and then are ready to grow from there in year three of their career.
However, for me an ECF completion bonus would come too early for new teachers - they are already being supported during this time on the course and so are perhaps less likely to leave.
A more effective model would be to distribute the payment over years three, four and five on the pay progression scale as part of an annual increase to encourage retention over a longer period.
That way, once they leave the support of the ECF, they would have the financial enticement to remain teaching, helping them to push through those tough early years.
Of course, they could still leave at the end of that period, but having been teaching by that point for five years, I’d imagine many would be a lot more confident and comfortable and so would stick around.
2. Keep a close eye on the ECF
Talk of the ECF, though, raises another issue that Labour has talked about - a desire to revise delivery of the ECF to boost retention of new teachers, based on the fact that the ECF has not been widely popular since its inception.
For example, fears around mentoring capacity have been played out and, even with funding, staff mentors are often not available as their first priority is the children in their care.
However, while we must be honest about issues with the ECF and consider refinements where feasible, talk of further significant change to the ECF so soon after it was rolled out could be a knee-jerk reaction.
A full independent evaluation of the ECF, looking at cost, return on investment and impact, should be commissioned after five years’ delivery. Only then should Labour, or any new Conservative government for that matter, start to tinker with the ECF.
3. Consider bursary and student loan changes
Finally, another area that needs consideration for enticing new teachers to the profession is bursaries.
Labour has said it will review how bursaries are being used to ensure that the £181 million a year the government spends on them is being utilised as best as possible.
Certainly, bursaries have remained a key policy tool and as recent research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) shows, they clearly have their place in the system to attract more people to enter teacher training, particularly for high-priority subjects that might otherwise struggle to recruit.
However, other NFER research has shown that physics and maths teachers leave the system at the same rate with or without the bursary, so while we know that bursaries get them into profession, they are not a factor in retaining them.
A bigger game changer would be student loan forgiveness for new teachers working in state schools for a certain number of years.
This would need modelling, of course, to see how it would work in fiscal reality - but if nothing else, it would signal to the profession that the government values the role of teachers, understanding that teaching is so important that teachers should not have to pay for their tertiary education.
Clearly, expecting that Labour would have instant solutions for the teacher recruitment crisis is not reasonable. But if it does win power, this is a struggle that those overseeing education will have to tackle.
New and big ideas will be needed - but they will need to have real benefit, rather than simply being a case of tinkering around the edges.
Emma Hollis is executive director of the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT). NASBTT is holding its annual conference, which this year is themed Mind the Gap, on 28-29 November
