More than third of school leaders would not recommend teaching as a profession, a new survey of headteachers reveals.

The NAHT school leaders’ union has described its findings as shocking and warned the government that urgent action is needed to both retain existing leaders and ensure that teaching is an attractive career in order to tackle a retention crisis.

The union has produced a major new report on pay and wellbeing, which recommends more support for heads and a return to national pay scales to make the career more appealing.

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Tes can reveal that in a survey of NAHT members more than a third (34 per cent) of people leading schools said that they would be unlikely or very unlikely to recommend teaching to those outside of the profession.

Fears about headteachers’ wellbeing

And another one in five said they were neither likely nor unlikely to make a recommendation either way.

Less than half (44 per cent) of those polled said they would be likely or very likely to recommend teaching.

The new report examines leader’s views on both pay and wellbeing.

Four out of five heads reported that their work had impacted negatively on their sleep.

Almost three-quarters of school leaders said they were aware of at least one member of staff leaving the profession for reasons other than retirement.

Paul Whiteman, the NAHT’s general secretary said: “There are urgent issues to address here. Clearly it is false to say that pay is not a factor for those considering taking on a leadership role. It’s a demanding job.

“Most school leaders earn relatively modest salaries when you compare them to other senior roles, with comparable levels of responsibility and accountability.

“Graduates emerging from university with £50,000 of debt or more understandably don’t see teaching as a career pathway to paying that back easily.

“It is leadership where we’re in the most difficulty. In our report, 59 per cent of new leaders said they had received no induction training in their first role as a senior leader.”

He said the NAHT would like to see the government providing an “Early Leadership Framework” alongside the Early Career Framework already being trialled.

The NAHT has made a series of other recommendations about how to improve the wellbeing and retention of teachers and leaders.

It calls for the introduction of national pay scales and to restore losses to leaders’ salaries since 2010 by reversing a decade of real-terms pay cuts.

In the NAHT survey, more than half (57 per cent) of respondents indicated that returning to national pay scales would have a positive or very positive impact on recruitment and retention.  Only 5 per cent thought it would have a negative impact.

The Department for Education has been approached for a comment.