Ministers have been urged to take action to improve teacher recruitment and retention by a senior leader in the academy trusts sector.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), raised concern about teacher supply as an example of a “fragility” in the school system.
She said that if she was in government, she would develop a strategy to strengthen the resilience of the sector around teacher supply, funding and completing structural reforms of schools.
Speaking at a policy roundtable hosted by the Westminster Education Forum today, she said: “There really is a need for the government to be addressing teacher recruitment, retention and the supply of teachers coming through the system.”
The event today also heard from another senior figure from the academies sector, who predicted that the government target of all schools being in multi-academy trusts by 2030, as set out in March’s Schools White Paper, will not be met.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen at all,” Steve Chalke, founder of the 52-school Oasis Community Learning, told attendees. “Others have expressed some doubt about it. I have no doubt about it,”
Mr Chalke said small trusts that he speaks to are too busy fighting the cost crisis, which he foresees will last into the long term, to achieve the government target.
Multi-academy trust growth target ‘will be crushed’
“As I witnessed among smaller trusts, with inflation running at the rate it is, the appetite of smaller trust has evaporated altogether for growth as the focus has become totally on survival,” he said.
“Because we’re going to be in this mode over the next few years, that is going to crush the ambition to reach a sustainable completion of that target”.
Ms Cruddas was asked what she would be doing if she was in government regarding the plans contained in the Schools White Paper and Schools Bill.
She said: “If I was in government, I would be building a strategy based on the resilience of the school system. I would deliberately be talking about resilience because I think there is a fragility in our system at the moment.”
Ms Cruddas said that the government needed to complete the structural reforms of schools, to increase funding into the sector and to address teacher recruitment and retention.
Schools Bill ‘came too soon’
Ms Cruddas also commented on the issues that have faced the Schools Bill, which aimed to implement some of the changes set out in the White Paper.
Earlier this year the government had to withdraw large sections of the Bill amid concerns that the Department for Education’s plans to create new regulatory powers over MATs would lead to Whitehall having to much of a say in the day-to-day running of academies.
Now Ms Cruddas is on a panel to help the government to redraft its plans for new powers and standards to regulate multi-academy trusts.
Speaking at the event today, she said: “I think the Bill came too soon. I think it preceded the work that we should have done first on a regulatory and commissioning review. We have now started that work.”
Commenting on whether the Bill will go ahead, she said that “we are now in a more secure place” around part one of the Bill, which deals with academy standards.
She added that even if the Bill did not go ahead, it was nonetheless essential that a regulator was created that was fit for purpose for the trust sector.
