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Ross Morrison McGill founded @TeacherToolkit in 2010, and today, he is one of the ‘most followed educators’on social media in the world. In 2015, he was nominated as one of the ‘500 Most Influential People in Britain’ by The Sunday Times as a result of…
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How will the Department for England improve teacher recruitment and retention in England?
To date, the Department for Education has failed to complete any robust evaluation of subject bursaries in secondary schools and if they lead to an increase in teacher retention …
In light of the teacher strikes happening across England this week – which I support 100 per cent – the Department for Education will likely be reflecting on teacher salaries, recruitment and retention across the sector.
- We know teacher recruitment targets have been missed, year-on-year, over the last decade or so.
- We also know that teachers’ pay in real terms has declined significantly since 2010.
If teachers cannot see their salaries moving with inflation or a better work-life balance, why should they sacrifice their wellbeing when they can work elsewhere and receive (pretty modest living) standards in another profession?
Some interesting research from NFER highlights that teachers are prepared to leave teaching and earn a lower salary if it means escaping from the classroom.
Teachers are more or less likely to move into another career-destination after leaving state-sector teaching in England … moreso during a downturn. E.g. pandemic, pay and conditions, workload, school inspections …
Teacher bursaries are a sticky plaster fix …
One ‘sticky plaster’ fix that continues to rear its head repeatedly is subject bursaries. Very little research is able that suggests subject bursaries improve retention.
Put simply, if we pump more cash into maths and physics at secondary level to attract more trainees into those subjects, are they more likely to stay longer in the classroom?
Well, it appears that we don’t know. There is very little research to suggest bursaries improve retention.
A simple search on Google Scholar reveals only 17 results!
There is little or no research!
There is one article () which is cited 77 times. Published in 2009, Andrew Hobson evaluates beginning teachers’ perceptions and experiences of support.
His literature review reveals that “early career teachers’ learning, motivation and retention are likely to be enhanced in schools with a professional growth ethos.”
There is a reference to teacher training in England in 2002, which suggests that the government was spending “£127.6 million on student-teacher bursaries.”
We should also consider the tuition fees required by trainees; first started in 1998 as a result of the Teaching and Higher Education Act, tuition fees escalated to £9,000 per academic year in September 2012.
The research concludes with several recommendations that we can now see implemented into the early careers framework across England.
The impact of bursaries on teacher retention?
A more recent research paper, Teacher Training Bursaries in England (Noyes et al., 2019) provides an analysis of the impact of bursaries on the quantity and quality of training teachers.
“ITT bursaries are based on a flawed premise, namely that teacher quality can be predicted by degree outcome, and this is regardless of the relationship of the degree discipline to the subject taught.”
There is no evidence that bursaries attract and retain more people to stay in teaching, especially in shorter subjects (Allen et al., 2017).
For as long as I can remember, the Department for Education continue to reward shortage subjects, and whilst there may be the occasional ‘spike in applicants’, there has been no detailed evaluation to understand if those people that join the profession are still in the classroom five or ten years later …
Just imagine taxpayer cash being used without any analysis or evaluation.
With eroding pay, terms and conditions, no wonder many schools are struggling, and pupils (like my son) are experiencing non-specialists in the classroom daily …
Recommendations for government
The research offers several recommendations, which I have summarised below:
- Commission research on the relationship between trainees’ prior qualifications and subsequent teacher productivity/quality
- Independent research should be commissioned on the effectiveness of teacher bursaries, particularly in increasing diversity.
- Within-subject bursaries should be abandoned.
- Significant parts of the bursary budget should be redirected to incentivise retention. For example, reward people after X number of years service.
Having spent 25 years in the classroom, it is heartbreaking to observe increasing accountability, workload and reduced pay erode the teacher profession collectively. We need a few ‘bright sparks at policy level’ to help inspire a new way of thinking for the government …
The relationship between bursaries and recruitment is far from clear, with very little research to understand if bursaries attracts more teachers.
We need our government to pull their finger out!
