The government has been urged to look at why part-time teachers are “more widespread” and “better supported” in Wales, as analysis finds they are “significantly” less likely to quit than in England.
In England, 11.1 per cent of part-time secondary teachers left the state school sector between 2019-20 and 2020-21.
This is “significantly higher” than Wales’ 8.5 per cent, according to the analysis from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
The difference at primary level was smaller but still “significant”, researchers found - 8.9 per cent in England and 8 per cent in Wales.
The report notes that part-time teachers make up a “greater share of the teaching workforce” in Wales than in England.
They comprised 39 per cent of the primary workforce and 34 per cent of the secondary workforce in Wales, compared with 28 and 20 per cent in England, respectively.
While the DfE recently announced plans to pay up to £768,000 for the delivery of a “culture change programme” focused on embedding flexible working in schools and multi-academy trusts, some warn there is still some way to go.
In 2019, Sir Andrew Carter, chief executive officer of the South Farnham Educational Trust and a former government adviser, said it was “wrong and immoral” for teachers to ask for their hours to be reduced after taking on full-time jobs.
And Vivienne Porritt OBE, founder of WomenEd, said that schools in England tell the organisation they are “not sure about flexible working: is it helpful for students or are there more costs?”
Ms Porritt said there were many school leaders who had benefited from a flexible approach, adding: “It’s time to look again at what schools can do.”
As well as supporting female leaders in particular, part-time working “helps schools to retain teachers”, she continued.
‘Something to learn’ from Wales
Co-author of the report and NFER school workforce lead, Jack Worth, said the fact that a greater proportion of the workforce are working part-time in Wales could suggest that there are “more opportunities for part-time working”.
He said it could be the case that there is an “equal desire or demand for part-time working” in England but that Wales is “better at making it work or making those opportunities available”.
Mr Worth added that the comparison of the attrition rates suggested that there is also a need to retain those part-time teachers once they move to fewer hours.
“There could be something to learn from Wales,” he said.
He added that he would like to see the government in England look into why “certain aspects may be working better for Wales than England and what English schools and the DfE can do to make attrition in England lower…particularly for part-time teachers” given the results of the analysis.
The research also shows that the attrition of teachers in England just starting out in the role - as well as those who have been in the profession for longer than 20 years - is higher than in Wales.
This is true at both primary and secondary level, finds the report, which is funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
However, newly qualified teachers with one to two years of experience had a higher attrition rate in Wales (11.6 per cent) at secondary than in England (8.8 per cent).
A complex picture
Researchers said that education policy decisions made by the government in Wales since devolution had aimed to prioritise teachers more in overall decision making.
The report looked to test a theory that this could lead to a reduced workload for teachers - a reason most cited by ex-teachers when asked why they left the profession - and therefore see lower rates of departure than in England.
Among its conclusions, the report said a “more collaborative approach to policymaking in Wales may be associated with slightly lower working hours in Wales”.
But it added that there may be ‘more complex’ factors as well.
Mr Worth said: “Given the different approaches taken by education policymakers in England and Wales since devolution, we might reasonably think that teacher retention rates could be higher in Wales compared with England.
“However, newly available data that allows us to make robust comparisons of retention rates seems to show that it is a lot more complex than that.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that, looking at both countries, ”the overriding reasons for teacher attrition are similar - pay and workload”.
Mr Barton added that teacher pay and school funding ”must be improved to encourage recruitment and retention and ensure that schools have enough money to pay for the staff they need”.
He said: “Teachers are the lifeblood of education. It is crucial to education standards in both jurisdictions that schools are able to recruit and hold on to teachers in order to give their pupils the full range of educational opportunities and support they need and deserve.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said teachers are the ”backbone of our education system”.
“That’s why we proposed the highest pay awards in a generation for new teachers, alongside further pay awards for more experienced teachers and leaders.
The spokesperson said the proposed pay increases “sit alongside fully funded high-quality professional development available at every stage of a teacher’s career, helping to raise the status of the teaching profession and make it an attractive career”.
“The number of teachers in the system remains high and there are now more than 465,000 teachers working in state-funded schools across the country, which is 24,000 more than 2010.”
