The Conservative government needs to make good on its manifesto commitment to attract industry professionals to work in FE colleges, David Corke from the Association of Colleges has said.
In their 2017 manifesto, the Conservative Party promised to “create a new national programme to attract experienced industry professionals to work in FE colleges”.
Mr Corke, director of policy at the AoC, said funding constraints were holding back colleges from attracting and retaining the best talent. “Bursaries and initiatives like TeachFirst are great but we need an FE relevant initiative - as per the manifesto commitment made by government.”
Cuts have hit colleges
He added: “A major part of the AoC case for better funding to government is to allow the reward packages to be competitive. Every institution wants to attract and retain the best people, but it is clear that cuts to FE funding over the last decade have disproportionately hit colleges, impacting directly on their ability to reward staff.
TeachFirst is a two-year graduate scheme, which places trainee teachers in schools in deprived areas after a five-week intensive training course.
The Education Policy Institute (EPI) highlighted problems around staff retention and recruitment in their latest teacher labour market report, published this week. It showed that across education, four of five teachers who left their jobs in 2016 also left the profession - or at least the state sector - altogether. This was up from 60 per cent in 2010.
Focus on retention
Exits also appear to be concentrated early in teachers’ careers, with only 60 per cent of teachers working in a state-funded school in England five years after starting training.
The EPI report suggests that rather than funding tax-free training bursaries for teachers in shortage subjects, where the is “no evidence” these lead to an uptick in recruitment, instead efforts should be focussed on financial incentives to retain staff.
The report states: “With about approximately 8 per cent of teachers leaving the profession each year for reasons other than retirement, there are potentially big gains here. Furthermore, there is solid empirical evidence base from the US where targeted financial incentives have improved retention in shortage subjects in North Carolina and Florida.”
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