The biggest factor in the success of a young person in school is the quality of their teaching. So it follows that the job of school leaders is to ensure that we have a good teacher in every classroom, every hour of every day.
Any government that is serious about improving schools and improving outcomes for young people must do everything it can to help leaders to do this.
But the elephant in the room is that we simply do not have enough teachers.
We have a retention crisis that is driving the recruitment crisis, and it’s not hard to understand why. One out of every five new entrants to the teaching profession has left by the end of year two, and one in four has gone by year three.
The experiences these teachers have had that have led them to leave have been shared with prospective teachers, and too many prospective teachers never apply to train.
The first three years of a teacher’s career are crucial. Research shows that performance improves rapidly in these years, and we also know that, generally speaking, teachers who remain in the profession at the end of three years stick around for much longer.
Enhancing the Early Career Framework
The launch of the Early Career Framework (ECF) was a serious attempt to ensure that we retain more teachers.
Early career teachers (ECTs) and mentors report that much of the content is helpful and the additional non-contact time and structured mentoring is welcome. But they also report that, on the ground, the ECF can be inflexible, sometimes repetitious, and often leads to more workload.
Following the announcement of measures to address some of these issues, we should give credit to the Department for Education for recognising the challenges and being willing to make changes. Indeed, there is nothing much to dislike in what has been announced. However, the fact remains that a huge opportunity has been missed.
More on the Early Career Framework:
At The Education Alliance (TEAL), we are far from perfect and there are loads of things that we need to do better. However, the feedback we have had from ECTs and mentors bucks all national trends - 100 per cent of our ECTs disagreed that given the choice, they would opt out of the training and support they are getting.
And crucially, by August 2023, 100 per cent of our ECTs remained in the profession after two and three years.
Yet damningly, only 14 per cent of ECTs and 9 per cent of mentors think that the training received as part of the ECF so far is a good use of time.
So, what do we do differently? We run our own programme.
We follow the ECF, but we deliver it in our own way, using our own materials and training our own mentors. We are among a tiny percentage of schools and trusts that take this approach, not relying on a national provider or a Teaching School Hub.
We have done this despite the DfE putting barriers in our way. We have had to forgo extra funding for mentor training and subject ourselves to additional scrutiny from our appropriate body. It is very clear to me that, as a matter of policy, the DfE did not want schools and trusts to do what we have done; instead, it wanted us all to rely on national programmes.
When other trusts hear what we are doing and the amazing impact it is having, they often express surprise that this is even an option. The DfE did a great job at keeping it a secret.
Giving schools and trusts freedom
If the DfE really wants the ECF to improve the quality of teaching and, more importantly, retain a higher percentage of new teachers, it must make it easier for schools and trusts to implement their own programme, for their own staff, in their own context.
On top of what has been announced, the DfE should have made it clear to schools that developing their own programme is a real option, and support a network of schools and trusts that are willing to help others with this work.
It should provide the same level of funding for mentor training to all schools and trusts, regardless of whether they use a national programme or deliver their own.
And they should make the fidelity checks that the appropriate bodies make sound less scary. We know from working with two appropriate bodies that these bodies are skilled, professional and want to help us do the best for our staff.
Recruiting, training and retaining great staff is the key to building a school system that works for every young person in the country. The ECF is a good start, but the way it is delivered is often inflexible. The missed opportunity this week is not supporting or encouraging schools and trusts to do it their way, knowing what works best for their staff and their context.
It is a real shame because this is what a real school-led system could look like.
Jonny Uttley is chief executive of The Education Alliance, a trust that runs schools in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire
