From the moment she first stepped into a college classroom, Abigail Osei Owusu was hooked.

When, in her final year at university, she heard about a work experience programme that offered the opportunity to learn about teaching in the further education sector, she jumped at the chance of satisfying her curiosity about being a teacher.

“I was thinking of a career which would help me to give back and help others,” she says. “[In college] I could teach students of any age, both younger people and adults, as well as people with different backgrounds.

“The students were eager to learn and their enthusiasm made it worthwhile for me. The college staff running the project helped me to feel like I belong - I was captivated by the warm welcome I received.”

Osei Owusu says she is now “definitely considering” pursuing a career as a college teacher in the future.

And with the FE teaching workforce having dropped by 20,000 since 2010, and the introduction of the new T levels qualifications just two years away, the need for colleges and training providers to attract new teachers grows more pressing by the month.

In a survey of principals by the Association of Colleges in partnership with Tes, a third of respondents (32 per cent) identified the difficulty in recruiting new teachers as being one of their more pressing concerns.

The number of people starting initial teacher education in FE has also dropped. In 2012-13 there were 38,730 teachers undertaking training compared with 24,170 in 2015-16 - a drop of 38 per cent.

The introduction of T levels will only add to the growing need for more teachers. The new technical qualifications will involve 50 per cent more teaching hours - up from 600 hours for equivalent courses now to 900 hours a year.

The first courses in software application development (the digital route); design, surveying and planning (the construction route); and education (the education and childcare route) will be taught from 2020 at 50 providers. A further 22 courses will be rolled out from 2021, which will cover sectors including finance and engineering.

So, in order for the sector to have the teaching capacity to deliver T levels, action is needed quickly. But what is being done to entice new teachers and experienced industry professionals into FE?

Since it was set up in 2002, Teach First has become one of the biggest names in school teacher recruitment. It has recruited and placed more than 10,000 teachers in “challenging” schools across England and Wales, and now accounts for around 5 per cent of the total number of new teachers trained in England each year.

Reuben Moore, executive director of programme development, says that while the charity has considered moving into FE, it currently has no plans to do so.

“We have discussed FE in the past and we wouldn’t rule it out for the future,” he adds. “At the moment we’re focused on schools as there’s still so much to be done. The demand for teachers is high in schools and in FE. It’s about where you put your emphasis, especially when we’re expanding our school provision to ‘cold spots’ at the moment.”

But while Teach First may be focused elsewhere, there’s no shortage of recruitment programmes being developed to address FE’s recruitment crisis. Recent initiatives to address the issue have included Teach Too, focused on getting industry professionals to teach part-time, and Further Forces, targeted at retraining military personnel for the classroom.

And more are in the pipeline: last month saw the launch of Get Further, a programme encouraging former teachers to mentor GCSE resit students. And Further Pathways to FE is another scheme offering college work placements to final-year and recently graduated students to raise awareness of teaching careers in the FE sector.

Attracting industry experts

The Department for Education, too, has got in on the act. This month it launched the £5 million Taking Teaching Further scheme, which will see 37 providers funded to recruit an initial 80 teachers from specific sectors and encourage them to retrain to teach the first T levels. The programme is being managed and delivered by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF).

The DfE says the programme is a key part of its £20 million investment in developing the T-level workforce over the next two years. “We have been clear that we want to ensure teaching remains an attractive and fulfilling profession, and this includes the further education sector. That is why we are working with the FE sector to introduce new development programmes for teachers and leaders,” a spokesperson adds.

One of the main issues that the sector faces is the patchy information about the most effective means of recruiting college teachers, according to Paul Kessell-Holland, the ETF’s head of partnerships. This is why the programme will also provide £900,000 for 20 projects to explore, as the DfE puts it, “how industry and the further education sector can work together to make sure students gain the knowledge and skills that businesses really need”.

Kessell-Holland adds: “One of the most important things here is fishing out the most effective practice. If a college has been successful somewhere, then we can see if it can be scaled up.”

Steve Frampton, president of the Association of Colleges, says that while he is delighted that its discussions with the DfE have “yielded a programme of this quality”, for it to have maximum impact it needs to be “scaled up significantly”.

“Colleges want to really excel, and this means backing them adequately,” he says. “We need a diverse range of experience and skills, especially in the subjects that are difficult to recruit in like engineering and computing. The average pay gap between college teachers and school teachers is £7,000 so, as well as recruiting well, we must pay well. If further education is to thrive, rather than just survive, it is imperative that we continue to develop training pathways as well as more innovative teacher recruitment strategies.”

This ambition is certainly not a new one. In 2014, the ETF and the former Institute for Learning produced a research paper looking at what needed to be done to promote teaching in FE as an attractive career option. The report’s author, Shane Chowen (now an area director for the AoC) wrote that there were two recruitment pools for FE teachers: well-qualified industry professionals and recent graduates.

“For most teachers in further education, teaching is a second career,” the report said. “The choice that people make to become a teacher comes at different points in people’s professional careers and for different reasons.”

It added: “Unlike other professions, further education teaching does not have a high profile and a well-resourced national graduate recruitment scheme, a single point of information including up-to-date career profiles or national pay scales or entry requirements.

“All of these points put further education teaching somewhat on the back foot when it comes to competing for top graduates.”

Former IfL chief executive Toni Fazaeli is no stranger to the issue. In this role, she pushed for the development of a “Teach Further” programme to replicate Teach First’s success in the FE sector. This was eventually developed as a pilot programme by the ETF, called the Premium Graduate Initial Teacher Education Scheme.

Fazaeli, now chair of North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College and a visiting professor at the University of Wolverhampton, believes teacher recruitment is even more challenging for colleges than schools. “If someone is thinking of becoming a teacher, there is that familiarity around schools - everyone will have been to one,” she says. “Then when you look at funding for training and the bursaries available, that can lead them towards schools, where the financial support is better.”

Some incentives are available for FE teaching, however. A tax-free bursary of £25,000 is available to graduates with a 2:2 to a first to train as a maths FE teacher, and a £15,000 bursary is available to train as an FE English teacher if you have a first or a 2:1. However, bursaries are not available on a national basis for other subjects, as is the case for secondary school training.

“In shortage areas like IT and engineering, the sorts of jobs associated with those subjects command pretty high salaries in the commercial sector,” Fazaeli adds.

“Unlike schools, we are attracting people from industry. The average age of a teacher starting out in FE is older than those in schools. You need significant expertise to be able to pass it on to the next generation, and they will already be earning a lot of money.”

The other group of potential FE teachers being targeted is current students and recent graduates with an interest in teaching. Further Pathways to FE - the project that Osei Owusu took part in - aims to give university students an insight into teaching in colleges. “The shortage of teachers in FE - and, indeed, the whole education sector - is one of the most, if not the single most, pressing issue that needs addressing,” says programme lead Julia Richards. “These placements are set up with a view that some of those young people taking part will then want to go into FE to teach, or might consider it later on in their careers.”

She adds: “One provider informed me that they are keeping in touch with all seven students placed with them as they have no doubt that at least a couple of these will return to the college to take up positions with them. In their words, the programme has ‘created an interest’. The outcome may not always materialise immediately, but there will be an outcome, albeit just a little bit later.”

The most recent programme to emerge is Get Further. Its focus is specifically on linking GCSE maths and English resit students with teachers who have left the profession. It was set up by government policy adviser Sarah Waite, a former maths teacher and Teach First ambassador. The mentoring scheme, which is still in its pilot stage, is not a recruitment scheme per se, but it could encourage teachers to consider coming back into education. It won a Teach First Innovation Award this year.

Get Further will broker volunteering days with the ex-teachers’ current employers and aims to bolster post-16 English and maths education, explains Waite. “It will give these former teachers the chance to broaden their skills and have a welcome to the FE sector and hopefully fall in love with it and return to teaching,” she says. “It would be great to get more people to consider teaching in FE.”

But while this flurry of new programmes may pique the interest of some of FE’s teachers of the future, David Powell, the consortium director of the department of initial teaching education at the University of Huddersfield, says a more fundamental overhaul of the profession would have more far-reaching consequences.

“You’ve got to look at making it an attractive career,” he says. “It’s about workload and pay, and giving them that support when they start. If we’re going to get enough teachers to teach T levels then the government will have to reimagine how they will recruit, train and retain lecturers and teaching staff.”

George Ryan is an FE reporter for Tes. He tweets @GeorgeMRyan

‘Colleges can’t compete with pay in industry’

When I first came to further education over 30 years ago, and for at least a decade afterwards, it was comparatively simple for colleges to attract public services professionals into teaching roles.

For example, in the early 2000s I managed medical technology courses for people wanting to become technicians in specialist areas of healthcare like audiology and respiratory medicine. The rewards for working in FE made leaving the NHS to teach in a college an attractive proposition for many.

The college took care of the incoming professional’s teacher training, and the person brought their industry experience to the role. It was an ideal fit for both parties.

Fast-forward to now, and there is a widening pay gap between salaries in the FE sector and what a professional can earn if they stay in industry - and those who we do recruit tend not to last long. There are many possible reasons why retention is poor. Perhaps some still perceive teaching to be a simple and less stressful job than the one they have just left, and are unpleasantly surprised by the reality of low pay and long hours.

Also, we are a central London college and so it’s possible that London’s stratospheric property prices and high cost of living are another barrier to people applying.

The problem doesn’t just affect public services teaching roles. Construction and plumbing are growing fast and the industry is crying out for people to teach the next generation of labourers. Not surprisingly, these courses are very popular, but this growth has created a demand-supply imbalance, which is driving up wages and making it harder to recruit lecturers with those skills.

For example, if you can charge over £100 just to replace a tap, why would you give that income up to teach plumbing in an FE college?

Kim Caplin is principal of Westminster Kingsway College

Forget Teach First: recruitment programmes for the FE sector

Teach Too

A scheme formed as a result of recommendations in the 2013 Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning report, aimed at increasing the number of “dual-professional” teachers and trainers. These combine occupational and pedagogical expertise, and are trusted and given the time to develop partnerships and curricula with employers. It is run by the Education and Training Foundation.

Premium Graduate Initial Teacher Education Scheme

A pilot programme aimed at getting highly skilled graduates to teach in FE. It combined on-the-job learning with professional support and off-the-job training, leading to both teaching qualifications and Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) over two years. It trained 40 teachers.

Further Forces

This project targets armed forces personnel working in technician fields, such motor vehicle maintenance and construction, and supports them to move into a career as an FE teacher. The programme was set up in 2017 to run for two years and the aim is to recruit and train 110 new teachers in the sector. The scheme is a joint initiative run by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Education and Training Foundation and the Ministry of Defence, in partnership with the University of Brighton and the University of Portsmouth.