The Department for Education’s latest statistics on the state of the school workforce offer “a glimmer of hope” that the worst of the teaching profession’s recruitment and retention difficulties may be behind us, say researchers.

The researchers, from the Education Policy Institute (EPI), say the DfE’s effort to “improve the offer” for early-career teachers may be “beginning to pay off” for the most recent graduates.

Analysis by EPI researchers points out that the DfE retention statistics show, for the first time in a decade, a rise in the proportion of early career teachers staying in their jobs after one and two years.

They show that, in November 2019, 85.4 per cent of new teachers were still in the job after one year compared to 85.1 per cent in 2017, and that 78.3 per cent were still in the job after 2 years compared to 77.8 per cent in 2017. 

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However, EPI says the overall workforce census does not “paint a rosy picture” and that new entrants to the profession are down this year, while pupil-teacher ratios in secondary schools continue to rise.

And Tes highlighted last week that the figures show the proportion of teachers remaining in the profession after five years has decreased.

But author James Zuccollo states: “It seems possible that the government’s efforts to improve the offering for early-career teachers are beginning to pay off for the most recent graduates.

He added: “The government has made significant efforts to improve the retention of early career teachers over recent years, focussing on workload, engaging with the profession, and eventually releasing its recruitment and retention strategy in early 2019. The workload challenge, accountability and inspection, and teacher bursaries have all been changed to improve the wellbeing of teachers and increase retention”.

“In addition, while some teacher pay reforms have not yet kicked in, the efforts that led to them may have nonetheless helped to improve retention rates simply by improving teachers’ expectations and perceptions of the profession. We know that teachers in the early stages of their career are likely to be more enthusiastic about the profession, so a marked shift of tone from the government on how it values the profession may have helped sustain some of that early enthusiasm.”

The EPI analysis also states that the covid-19 pandemic has boosted recruitment.

Last year, the government announced an increase of £6,000 in starting salaries of new teachers from 2022.