The chief executive of the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT) has warned that leadership knowledge and skills must not be “frozen in time” and need to “evolve” in response to new challenges in the workforce.
NIoT boss Melanie Renowden said leaders need to be equipped with the evidence to respond to new challenges around pastoral demands and behaviour.
Speaking in a webinar after the launch of the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) labour market report this week, Ms Renowden also called for the education sector to have an NHS-style “long-term workforce plan”.
The NFER report says that “little progress” had been made on reducing high teacher workload.
And it highlights that teachers now say pupil behaviour is driving higher workload, and that behaviour management and pastoral care are key priority areas for workload reduction.
School leadership knowledge ‘must evolve’
Experts have called for the government to set up an independent review focusing on how to cut teachers’ workload related to behaviour management and pastoral care, saying this should consider the role of external support services, such as for special needs and mental health.
Ms Renowden said: “If we’re going to be responding to those changes in the wider workforce...in relation to behaviour, pastoral leadership, then we are going to need new leadership knowledge and skills. And so there’s a question of how we are all collectively supporting school leaders to develop the leadership knowledge and skills that’s going to support them with an emerging evidence base of what works in terms of interventions in that area.
“It can’t be frozen in time. We do need to evolve it to respond to the picture that we’re facing.”
Ms Renowden’s comments echo calls in recent months for leadership National Professional Qualifications to be revised amid concerns that they are too narrow and fail to provide the full range of knowledge and understanding needed.
Earlier this year Tes revealed that a report interrogating Labour’s announcement that it would work with schools to deliver a “teacher training entitlement” had recommended that leadership NPQs should be reviewed to ensure that they are “fit for purpose”.
The report also recommended that the NPQs should provide “sufficient” support for leaders to help them make “effective decisions about CPD”.
Appeal for NHS-style workforce plan
The NFER report projects that the government is “at risk of under-recruiting” secondary trainee teachers for 10 out of 17 subjects for next year.
Giving its recommendations in the report, the NFER says: “Political parties should set out their plans to develop a long-term strategy for pay-setting which reduces the gap in earnings growth with competing occupations, while ensuring that schools have sufficient funding to enact these pay increases without making cuts elsewhere.”
Responding to this, Ms Renowden said: “I would take your recommendation...and I would propose extending it from the focus on pay and encompass a full long-term workforce plan.
“If we say it’s needed and we think it can be achieved in the NHS then, given what you’ve just set out for us in terms of the challenge here, why are we not also calling for that long-term workforce plan in teaching?”
Ms Renowden said it would be useful for the sector to have a “longer term view” in relation to areas such as initial teacher education bursaries, professional development funding and “long-term planning on attraction”.
And the NIoT chief added that “timely pay settlements, of course, would help as well”.
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