Teaching can be a tough industry to enter.
I sit on the Commons Education Select Committee and hear week in, week out about the challenges teachers and school leaders face and the reasons why many are sadly turning their back on the profession, despite the huge rewards that a career in teaching can bring.
I recently met with secondary headteachers from Southend to discuss the issues that they are experiencing, and how best we can solve them.
Their message was simple: we need more teachers, both to join and stay in the profession. Too many are leaving teaching, and not enough are entering it.
The benefits of flexible working for teachers
A third of new teachers leave within five years of first stepping into the classroom, and the biggest single group of leavers are women in their thirties.
This problem is felt most acutely in schools serving the country’s most deprived communities, where great teachers are needed most.
The solutions are complex. Forgiveness of student debt for those going into teaching, as well as extending London weighting to schools within the commuter belt, were both mooted.
But one area that has been significantly underexplored is flexible working.
I’m the third generation of my family to have worked in education. My mother was a teacher, my grandmother was a dinner lady, and I set up a national online academy delivering tutoring programmes across the country.
I know many are discouraged from joining teaching because of the perception that a teacher’s workload is incompatible with a good work-life balance or starting a family, and concerns that they’ll not be able to take on demanding leadership roles.
The data couldn’t be clearer. New polling commissioned by education charity Teach First finds that female teachers are twice as likely to be held back from considering promotion due to concerns about starting a family.
It also shows that female teachers are more likely to believe that headship is incompatible with parenthood.
Other sectors are fast moving towards more flexibility in the workplace, but uptake remains stubbornly low in schools and colleges.
Flexible working provides people with the ability to manage their lives alongside their working arrangements, This applies to caring or parenting responsibilities, which today still fall largely on women.
Improving staff wellbeing
Teach First’s data shows that teachers overwhelmingly back the benefits of flexible working. Four-fifths believe it would improve teachers’ mental health.
Over half think flexible working will help to recruit new teachers into the profession, and the same number think it will help to retain female teachers.
With current teacher shortages causing huge challenges, particularly in schools serving disadvantaged communities, where high-quality teaching can make the greatest difference for pupils, more flexibility for teaching staff couldn’t be more important.
Invicta National Academy, which I co-founded and which provided face-to-face tuition to thousands of students across the country during the pandemic, proved that flexible models of teaching can work successfully.
Flexible working was, and remains, at the heart of Invicta National Academy’s success. The staffroom is virtual, teachers can prepare their lessons whenever they wish and teachers can choose which and how many lessons to teach.
Crucially, however, the quality of teaching was first rate.
Headteachers will need support to embrace the change towards flexible working; in particular training for managing more complex timetabling, whether that be two teachers job-sharing one class or allowing staff different start and end times.
But the dividends will be worth it if it means more experienced staff stay in the workforce and more are attracted to join in the first place.
The government is doing its part, backing the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill, which I spoke in favour of in Parliament last year. The bill will make sure that employees have greater rights and an easier path to request flexible working.
While legislation is important, so is the work of individual schools. Already-stretched headteachers and senior leadership teams will need support to embrace flexible working if we are to create a culture where individual teachers feel they can ask for it.
There are huge challenges facing the education system in this country, and this is just one of the practical steps we can take to make sure that every child gets the best possible start in life.
Anna Firth is Conservative MP for Southend West and a member of the Commons Education Select Committee
