Government will need a joined-up policy approach to have a hope of delivering 6,500 more teachers

This blog was first published in Tes on Thursday 13 March.

The findings from NFER’s annual report on the teacher labour market in England are again, regrettably, far from promising. The report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, shows that teacher leaving rates have not improved since before the pandemic and recruitment into initial teacher training remains persistently below target.

This is resulting in growing shortages, more vacancies going unfilled and increased reliance on unqualified and non-specialist teachers, affecting schools with the most disadvantaged pupil intakes the most.

There has been a change of Government since last year’s report to a Labour administration that pledged in its manifesto to ‘get more teachers into shortage subjects, support areas that face recruitment challenges, and tackle retention issues’. This should perhaps raise our hope that a renewed impetus for action on improving recruitment and retention could see those trends reversing.

The Government will certainly hope to see these trends improving if it is going to meet its pledge of recruiting ‘6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects’. But nine months into Labour’s term in office, does it have a plan for delivering the pledge? If it does, it is keeping it very quiet.

The June Spending Review is a critical moment for the prospects of the pledge being delivered by the end of the parliament. Teacher pay and financial incentives are key policy levers that the Government has available. A significant increase to raise the much-depleted competitiveness of teacher pay coupled with further targeted support for shortage subjects would be a sure-fire way to make teaching more attractive and improve recruitment and retention.

However, it is also an expensive lever, especially to deliver the scale of change needed. The mood music around the Spending Review – the rising cost of borrowing, low growth forecasts, competing priorities for spending, such as on defence – suggests that substantial teacher pay rises may not be the lever the Government chooses to pull.

So, is there a way to deliver 6,500 teachers for little additional money?

Perhaps. High workload is cited by 90 per cent of teachers as an important reason why they are considering leaving. Full-time teachers continue to work significantly longer hours in a typical working week than similar graduates. Bearing down on teacher workload could therefore yield retention gains that offer a key alternative route to delivering 6,500 more teachers.

But it would require the Government to ruthlessly prioritise delivery of 6,500 additional teachers across all its policymaking.

Many teachers say the demands of school inspection and accountability are key drivers of workload. The Government has removed headline Ofsted ratings and plans to introduce report cards, based on a relationship with schools ‘to improve, not punish’ and ‘to challenge, not to scold’. But is Bridget Phillipson’s ‘new era of relentless improvement’ to ‘drive up standards’ consistent with reducing teachers’ workload?

The introduction of the revised National Curriculum from 2014 coincided with the peak in teachers’ working hours, negative perceptions of their working hours and leaving rates. Any curriculum change is likely to require teachers to adapt curriculum plans and schemes of work. Will the on-going Curriculum and Assessment Review deliver a slimmed-down curriculum that places less burden on teachers? Or will it introduce changes that add to teacher workload?

Increasing numbers of teachers say they spend too much time following up on behaviour incidents and perceptions of pupil behaviour have worsened since 2022 among both teachers and leaders. The Government has scrapped behaviour hubs, but does it have a plan for supporting schools to improve pupil behaviour?

The drivers of worsening pupil behaviour are complex and multi-faceted and are likely to be linked in part to pupil mental health and the wider challenges facing the system for supporting pupils with SEND. Indeed, NFER’s 2023 teacher workload review found that ‘more support from outside agencies for specific pupil needs such as SEND support, mental health and safeguarding’ was seen by teachers as a key enabler of workload reduction.

Therefore, SEND reform has the potential to be a key enabler of teacher workload reduction. Equally the Government’s emphasis on meeting the needs of more pupils with SEND in mainstream schools runs the risk of demanding more from teachers to support an increased complexity of pupil need in mainstream classrooms, thereby increasing workload and worsening retention, if rolled out without due care.

In short, if the Treasury doesn’t deliver the funding that could make teaching financially attractive enough to recruit and retain the teachers the education system needs, then the Department for Education will face a difficult choice: develop a teacher workload reduction strategy to improve retention that is fully integrated with its wider policy reform agenda, or face the realistic prospect of failing to deliver a key manifesto pledge.