The chief executive of the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT) has urged the Department for Education to review its teacher recruitment and retention strategy to take into account the impact of the pandemic.
The NIoT has called for the development of a recruitment and retention strategy for the post-Covid education landscape in its evidence submitted to the Commons Education Select Committee’s ongoing recruitment and retention inquiry, Tes understands.
At a Nuffield Foundation event, entitled What’s behind the teacher workforce crisis?, this week, experts in teacher training and recruitment called for the government to revisit its strategy developed at the end of the last decade.
Jack Worth, the school workforce lead at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), said: “The government worked on [a recruitment and retention] strategy several years ago.
“That probably needs updating given the changes in the wider workforce in the years since, to make sure that teaching is attractive in the world in which it currently is, a post-pandemic world.”
And speaking at the same event, NIoT chief Melanie Renowden said she agreed with this call for a “revisit” of the recruitment and retention strategy.
The recruitment and retention strategy, which was published in 2019 under former education secretary Damian Hinds, set out plans to create more quality support for early career teachers and to make it easier to apply to become a teacher.
It also set out ambitions for increased flexibility and tackling teacher workload.
But last year the government failed to meet its initial teacher training recruitment targets, achieving just 59 per cent of the target for secondary teacher trainee entrants starting courses, heightening concerns around teacher supply.
Teacher recruitment targets missed
And earlier this year experts warned that the government was set to miss its teacher trainee recruitment target for the second year in a row, despite an increase in bursaries.
Speaking at the Nuffield Foundation event this week, Mr Worth said that while there had been progress, “more needs to be done and we need to understand the importance of flexible working in teachers’...preferences and how those can be addressed or compensated”.
And Ms Renowden said: “I would agree with Jack’s call for a revisit to the recruitment and retention strategy...There have been so many substantial social changes and the context - if you’re focusing just in the teaching profession, of course - it’s changed so substantially, that it really does feel like we need to revisit that work.”
Last year’s government Schools White Paper pledged to champion a culture of flexible working, and a contract published in June last year revealed that the Department for Education planned 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.
Despite this move, a Teach First survey, revealed exclusively by Tes this month, showed that one in 10 respondents worked at a school that does not allow flexible-working requests.
NFER called for the government to revisit the recruitment and retention strategy earlier this year in its Teacher Labour Market in England 2023 report.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the current teacher shortage is “the worst it has ever been and poses a significant risk to educational standards”.
“The Department for Education published a recruitment and retention strategy four years ago, but this has been fatally undermined by pay erosion, systemic workload pressures, a punitive inspection system and lack of sufficient funding for education. The government must address these issues to resolve this crisis and ensure that schools and colleges are able to put teachers in front of classes.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Recent data shows there are record number of teachers entering the profession, with more than 468, 000 in England’s schools, up by 27,000 since 2010.
“We want to continue bringing great people into teaching and have bursaries worth up to £27,000 tax-free and scholarships worth up to £29,000 tax-free, to attract talented trainees in subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing.”
