Multi-academy trusts could be doing “a lot more” to solve the problem of teacher retention, a senior sector leader has said.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), said that while the government has “an absolute responsibility” for teacher recruitment, school employers can make an impact on teacher retention.
Ms Cruddas was speaking at the Education Policy Institute event - School Groups and the Academy System: Where next? - against the backdrop of a worsening recruitment and retention crisis and uncertainty around the future of the school system.
On the issue of whether trusts should be held accountable for the retention of teachers and support staff, Ms Cruddas said that the sector should not be “scared of transparency”.
‘A lot more we can be doing’
And Ms Cruddas said that she was worried that “we look to government to solve all our problems”.
She said: “While it is true that government has an absolute responsibility around teaching recruitment, because it can pull those big levers of state, retention is possibly an issue for us.
“We are the employers. We set the conditions, we control the culture within our organisations. And I think there’s a lot more that we can be doing within our own organisations.”
Ms Cruddas also referred to a recent Education Endowment Foundation review on retention.
She highlighted three areas from the review that could help trusts to improve retention - by focusing on “how you build relational trust in an organisation, how you pay attention to working conditions and what good professional development looks like.”
She added: “So my challenge to us as employers is I think we can do more to solve the problem of teacher retention in the system.”
This year, the government missed its target for recruitment of secondary teacher trainees by 50 per cent.
Meanwhile, the number of state school teachers leaving the profession hit its highest rate in four years in the academic year 2021-22, with one in 10 (43,997) recorded as quitting the classroom.
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