Ministers’ decision to delay the publication of the Department for Education’s workforce strategy “shows a complete lack of urgency over teacher shortages”, a headteachers’ leader has warned.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), was speaking after Tes revealed that ministers had delayed publication of the updated recruitment and retention strategy as they faced “uncertainty” over future planning.
A memo seen by Tes said the plan to publish the strategy in December was now “untenable” because of “uncertainty” around “pay, the [Advanced British Standard qualification] announcement and the Workload Reduction Taskforce”.
Mr Barton said the delay was “deeply dispiriting” and “shows a complete lack of coordination and urgency over teacher shortages - which are the single biggest problem facing the education sector”.
He added that the memo’s “mention of the Advanced British Standard” as a factor in the decision to delay the publication of the strategy from next month to spring next year “takes the biscuit”.
“It is a qualification that won’t exist for 10 years, will probably never exist, and is simply not the right priority,” Mr Barton said.
“The recruitment and retention crisis is a clear and present danger to educational provision and standards right now, and the Department for Education should be throwing everything at this issue.”
Teacher recruitment ‘a clear and present danger’
Tes had previously revealed that the DfE was set to refresh its recruitment and retention strategy from 2019, aiming to publish the update this winter. This has now been delayed until spring.
Tom Richmond, founder and director of think tank EDSK and a former DfE adviser and teacher, told Tes that there could be a “long wait” for the strategy if the DfE intended to wait until the policy outlook had settled down.
“Uncertainty over pay and conditions could rumble on for many months and the Workload Reduction Taskforce won’t be reporting back for several months as well, at which point the general election may be just around the corner,” he added.
“If the DfE has recently developed new approaches to either recruitment or retention then a further delay at this point would be very frustrating.”
James Zuccollo, director for school workforce at the Education Policy Institute, said delaying change in the recruitment and retention strategy “could have real impacts”.
“The department needs to be confident that postponing the strategy will result in genuine improvements,” he added.
Teachers are now leaving the profession at the highest rate in four years, and the government failed to meet its initial teacher training (ITT) targets last year.
However, James Noble-Rogers, executive director of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, said developing a cohesive strategy “will require careful planning in partnership with all interested parties”.
“It would be prudent to delay the introduction of a new strategy until the necessary groundwork has been completed and a collegiate process agreed,” he added.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said schools “desperately need a proper recruitment and retention strategy” because “we remain in the middle of a deteriorating recruitment and retention crisis”.
“It is essential that the government now urgently engages with the profession properly to come up with an ambitious plan that will actually make a difference,” he added.
He said the plan must deal with the “fundamental issues causing people to leave the profession, including excessive workload, a punitive accountability system and falling real-terms pay”.
“We can’t continue to tinker around at the edges and expect a major impact. If there is to be a delay, that time should be put to good use to work with the profession to produce a plan that will make a meaningful difference.”
A spokesperson for the DfE said: “We recognise the extraordinary service that headteachers, teachers and other school staff provide and we remain committed to updating the recruitment and retention strategy.
“It is important that we take the time to get this right and so we will be working with sector experts to align this with other key workstreams, such as the Workload Reduction Taskforce, the School Teachers’ Review Body process for next year’s pay award and our work to develop the new Advanced British Standard.”
