“I’m so far away from having enough teachers for next year.”

So read a message I received over the weekend from the CEO of a school trust. And let’s face it, they could be speaking for so many more school leaders.

While teacher supply has rarely been rosy, I have never heard quite such extreme tales of shortage from leaders wondering how they are going to ensure quality teaching for the children in their care.

The data, of course, speaks for itself. As an article in Tes recently highlighted, just 58 out of an initial class of 100 graduating teachers will remain in the state-funded sector 10 years after entering the profession.

Meanwhile, recruitment targets for new teachers are routinely missed and school vacancy rates have surged.

In this context, it’s entirely appropriate that teacher supply has risen to the top of the to-do list for the new government, underpinned by Labour’s plan to recruit 6,500 new teachers.

However, it is clear that focusing on recruitment alone is just pouring more water into an increasingly leaky bucket. As Bridget Phillipson herself said recently, the best recruitment strategy is undoubtedly a strong retention strategy.

Improving teacher recruitment and retention

So, what can be done to achieve a resilient teacher workforce? For me, there are three themes that warrant concentrated attention:

1. Make routes into teaching more accessible

We need to widen the pathways into teaching for those with the capability and commitment to join the profession, offer more support for those returning to teaching or entering from other careers, and address excessive bureaucratic barriers.

With tens of thousands of initial teacher education applicants unsuccessful each year, we also need to better understand the recruitment pipeline as a springboard for improvement.

2. Prioritise professional development

Supporting school leaders and classroom teachers with high-quality, evidence-informed professional development not only helps to ensure that we have great teachers and great schools, it also equips leaders to create great cultures where teachers stay.

But despite widespread recognition of this, the relentless pressure on teachers’ time often gets in the way of the prioritisation of development.

Teachers’ time is a precious commodity, so we should be investigating the potential of generative AI to free up more of it from low-value tasks. We should also ensure that when teacher time is used for professional development, it’s for the best-evidenced options we have.

We also need to do more to recognise and reward the high-value role that mentors play in supporting new teachers.

3. Focus on core areas

Teacher shortages are not distributed evenly across the school system, so addressing local disparities in teacher recruitment and retention is crucial.

There are important differences in local demographics, employment markets, higher education provision and transport infrastructure that mean no one-size solution is ever going to fit all.

We’ve also seen an increase in hyper-localism from trainees, who want training options that are in and for their communities. If we start by looking at the circumstances of schools facing the greatest challenges with supply, we stand a better chance of meeting their needs.

Understanding impact

Underpinning all of this is the need to better understand the impact that teachers have in the classroom.

Although we know that a skilled teacher can have an outsized impact on pupil outcomes relative to a less effective teacher, especially for those children growing up with the greatest challenges, this fact is largely absent from our thinking on teacher supply.

Fundamentally, we need to shift the focus from counting “units” of teachers to maximising the amount of teacher impact in our school system, so we can power improvements in outcomes for young people.

It’s with this in mind that the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT) has launched the Teacher Education Dataset, an ambitious project to bring together a wealth of strictly anonymised data from the NIoT’s founding schools to explore how approaches to teacher training, classroom practice and CPD have an impact on pupil outcomes.

The research project, a collaboration between the NIoT and leading academics, will create an open data infrastructure allowing other researchers to analyse anonymised data from our partner MATs to identify the classroom practices of our most effective teachers and the professional development that can best support teachers and their pupils. 

The recently published feasibility study by Professor Rob Coe, director of research and development at Evidence-Based Education, and Dr Raj Chande, senior research associate at the NIoT, gives us good grounds for optimism.

If we can get these elements right we can not only bring in the number of teachers that the sector needs but also ensure that they are given the best possible foundations to learn and grow to support learners across the country.

Melanie Renowden is chief executive of the National Institute of Teaching

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