WLTTA Submission to Parliament May 2023

In March 2023, the government's Education Select Committee launched a Teacher Recruitment, Training and Retention Inquiry in response to the current chronic shortage of teachers.  WLTTA responded to their call for written evidence;  that response was published on the parliamentary website in May and is reproduced below in its original Q&A format including the introduction to the alliance at the start.

No teaching hubs or other alliances submitted responses. We always actively engage with government to improve teacher recruitment and believe that we are uniquely positioned, bridging evidence from schools, recruitment and teacher training. 

West London Teacher Training Alliance – Evidence Submission

We are a large and experienced teacher training provider, established in west London in 2013 and training 80 students in 2022-23. We are currently providing both salaried and unsalaried PGCE & QTS courses in partnership with St Mary’s University, Twickenham; Roehampton University; University College London (UCL); and London Metropolitan University. Our alliance is made up of over 50 schools including nurseries, primaries, secondaries, special needs, faith and non-faith, maintained schools, independent schools and free schools. Most of our schools are in Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea, but we also have schools in Westminster, Richmond, Ealing, Hounslow, Hillingdon and Brent. We maintain a close relationship with our partner schools and universities through the recruitment and training years, and believe we are uniquely positioned to respond to the government’s call for evidence.

The current situation regarding teacher recruitment and retention 

What are the main factors leading to difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified teachers?

Pay: is clearly not competitive by comparison with other graduate professions, particularly after the first five years, and over time during a teacher’s career. This has an impact on both recruitment, and then later, on retention.

Pay progression: Performance management for teachers now feels obtuse, including a major element of box ticking. Research shows that it is challenging to measure a teacher’s impact on a class, but results are currently used as a major reference point for salary progression, which can be enormously demoralising. In the past annual increases were automatic rather than being tied to results.

Workload: A number of factors contribute to the increased workload for teachers, which in turn has a significant effect on retention. Class sizes across the country, but particularly in urban areas, are simply too large and this affects workload across the board including marking, report writing and parents’ evenings. Timetables are too heavy.  An average secondary teacher now often teaches 44 / 50 hours in a 2-week timetable; alongside marking and meetings this leaves little or no time for professional development, reflection, and interaction or conversation with peers. Additionally, teachers’ subject knowledge doesn’t expand or develop because they are left with no time to research new areas of the curriculum or read around their subject on a regular basis.

Much has been made in the media recently of the pressures brought about by the ever-present shadow of Ofsted inspections. Across the country teachers’ Ofsted-ready workload has increased hugely due to the lack of transparency over inspection timing and changing priorities.

Behaviour:  has deteriorated significantly since the pandemic; The increased pastoral workload puts additional pressure on teachers because a substantial amount of time is spent responding to and tracking behaviour incidents. This dissuades people from applying to teach as the perception and reality of widespread poor behaviour in English schools is a clear deterrent.

Mental Health: There is a crisis in student mental health on a scale not previously seen, which has developed since the onset of Covid. This has also affected attendance and parents are allowing children to be absent on much more regular basis across both primary and secondary schools. This adds enormous pressure to teachers’ jobs because of the subsequent gaps in students’ learning; at Key Stage 4 and 5 this results in high stakes accountability for class teachers to remedy.  Furthermore, CAMHs is now so poorly funded that this increases the onus on schools to plug the gaps in supporting ever deteriorating student mental health and there is insufficient funding for specialist support staff.

Social media has developed into a major factor in the mental health crisis for students but also for teachers, including the increased prevalence of students denouncing teachers on public platforms.  Many teachers report poor mental health in response to student behaviour and workload as a reason for leaving the profession.

Overseas / independent competition: the system is currently haemorrhaging staff to English schools overseas particularly in the Gulf states and Australia, where they offer better pay (tax free in the Gulf) and housing conditions – often paid for and provided by the school. The state sector is also in competition with independent schools who offer the attractive combination of higher pay, smaller classes and longer holidays. Morale-boosting rewards and celebrations are not allowed under academisation. Teachers have to pay for their own Christmas parties, unlike in private schools; likewise, they cannot enjoy one off funded social occasions such as end of year celebrations or receive gifts or bonuses. There is no incentive to stay in the state sector beyond moral.

Flexibility: Other professions offer more flexible working conditions / WFH, part time work etc, which is particularly appealing to young graduates.  While this is a difficult model to make work in a school, there appears to be little or no flexibility offered by most schools.

Training costs: The cost of training to teach and the burden of the debt incurred remains a major disincentive for those considering joining the profession. It is simply not possible for students to train, particularly in London, without a bursary unless they can live at home, and even then, they will incur further debts from the £9,250 fees and the cost of living. There are currently limited ‘excellence’ incentives for quality applicants eg those with first class degrees, and none in (apparent) non-shortage subjects.

Which subjects are most affected?

Sciences, RE, Geography, Computer Science. Recruitment of Heads of Department for smaller departments such as Business and PE has also become a major issue.

How does the situation differ across the country and across different types of schools and colleges?

Retention in London is particularly challenging due to the high cost of living and exorbitant rents.  There is a chronic lack of key worker housing. Many teachers leave London when they plan to start a family because of the disproportionate and unaffordable cost of housing

Again particularly in London, there is significant disruption in high staff turnover leading to students rarely having teaching or pastoral support maintained over a sustained period.  This lack of pastoral consistency is exacerbating students’ deteriorating mental health and absenteeism.  Cover teachers are being utilised at a level never before seen. In difficult-to- fill areas and small departments, there are frequently no subject specialist teachers.

The quality of primary applications is largely lower than that of secondary. Because there is no funding, only those who live at home can afford to train to teach.  Overall the quality of applicants is decreasing because the perception of the profession has fallen in the eyes of society.

Competition from independent schools, see earlier point.

What impact does this have on pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND?

Chronic underfunding means that the staff / student ratio is a barrier to 1:1 support that students with SEND and other disadvantaged pupils need in order to flourish, or even survive.  Furthermore, the lack of pastoral support around teachers means that long term absenteeism among these groups, is not being tackled consistently across schools and trusts, leading to inequality of opportunity and outcomes. 

The lack of specialists teaching in certain subjects is particularly damaging to disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND because they cannot rely upon private tuition or cultural capital to plug the gaps caused by non-specialist teaching.

What action should the Department take to address the challenges in teacher recruitment and retention? 

Incentivise teachers to stay in the state sector for at least 10 years eg through loyalty bonus free of tax which could facilitate a mortgage deposit or paying off student loans.

Undergraduate and teacher training student loan debt forgiveness after x years, as a reward for contributing to an essential aspect of society. 

Introduce London incentives around the cost of travel / council tax etc (currently only available for trainees).  There is currently no sense that teachers are valued as key workers, whereas in the past there were housing benefits etc. Some kind of offer of health insurance.

Statutory equal pay rises across every stage of the pay scale, so that more experienced teachers are not subsidising less experienced teachers.

Reform of Ofsted with less high stakes accountability to reduce fear and pressure and increase the sense that DfE is working with schools to support them to improve, rather than condemning them.

Clear government guidance in terms of workload (marking etc) so that all teachers and unions feel empowered to advocate for what is feasible, rather than what MATs or schools desire. Existing government interventions on workload have tended to be general recommendations rather than direct requirements.

Abandon forced academisation and absorption into Multi Academy Trusts as these create an atmosphere of corporatism that is disincentivising to those who want to work in an individual school and contribute to the good of their local community.

The exorbitant costs of agencies are a huge drain on school resources and, ultimately, tax-payer money. The costs charged by cover supply agencies or agencies for recruiting overseas staff are prohibitively expensive. Similarly, the cost of advertising for vacancies on websites such as TES Jobs is high and the DfE could do more to promote its free teaching vacancies portal to trainee and existing teachers rather than simply school leadership; this would help schools transition away from paying private companies.

DfE to reconsider the implications behind allowing international schools to do iGCSEs. Exactly the same curriculum and exam boards make it too easy for UK teachers to consider leaving the country to teach abroad in private schools at the expense of domestic state schools.

An immediate halt to undermining the status of teachers through backdoor strategies such as higher-level teaching assistants who are now allowed to deliver lessons and cover classes for PPA time. Instead, these individuals should be incentivised to undergo teacher training.

What has been the impact of the new bursaries and scholarships announced in October?

Almost none in terms of domestic recruitment. In our experience the subjects such as Geography have seen no increase. MFL has now increased slightly due to an EU recruitment drive. STEM subjects have always been reasonably well funded, so there has been no significant increase.

The major increase has been in the many applications for the secondary subjects offering tax free bursaries from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana. Unfortunately, these applicants are frequently not qualified.

Some trainee teachers (especially Sciences and Geography), openly discuss their lack of intention to ever complete their ECT induction and work as teachers; they simply complete the first year PGCE+QTS in order to receive the funding.  The bursaries are tax free and there are no restrictions on their use, which often leads to their misappropriation for travelling or establishing businesses. Instead, they could be linked to remaining in the profession for at least the 2 ECT years or otherwise paying back the money.  The government’s failure to track those trainees and that wasted funding ultimately looks naïve and desperate.  

How well does the current teacher training framework work to prepare new teachers and how could it be improved? 

What has been the impact of the Early Career Framework implemented in September 2021?

The framework is well evidenced and researched but the implementation is only ever as effective as the time and skill of the mentors in place to deliver and support individual ECTs. Because of heavy timetables, it is not always possible to protect a timetabled slot for both mentors and ECTs at the same time. This leads to a lack of parity between mentors and ECTs who can have protected meetings during the school day and those who have to meet after school which is always more difficult. It is extremely challenging to have both a trainee teacher and an ECT within a small department because of the number of hours of mentoring support required. Many schools are now not accepting PGCE students because of the increased burden of ECT mentoring and the fear is that this will only increase over the next few years. Without schools offering trainees placements, the profession will regress further into a recruitment crisis; it is essential that universities can access school placements to support their students. We frequently receive pleading messages from (non-partner) universities asking us if our schools can offer placements because so many institutions are consciously withdrawing from engaging with teacher training. This is because training student teachers represents an extensive investment in terms of time and effort for schools; when done well it can be truly beneficial, but with the increased burden of ECT mentoring this is less and less the case.

Another drawback is the generic nature of the framework. Subject specialist mentors are essential for contextualising the training to be subject specific, but this is often very challenging to facilitate using the online platforms which are restrictive and focused on generic skills, with little opportunity for tailoring and adaptation. Moreover, termly CPD delivered through teaching school hubs is frequently generic rather than subject or area specific.

One positive change through the ECF has been taking the role of assessment away from the mentor and making it a purely supportive and developmental role. However, this puts an onerous workload on the induction coordinator to produce progress reviews and assessments, particularly in schools with high numbers of ECTs. Over time, this runs the risk of disincentivising talented teachers from seeking out the role of induction coordinator because it is not stipulated as a specifically funded position with a TLR and there is wide inconsistency between schools in terms of whether the role is an SLT position or not.

Finally, it was a mistake to reform early career induction before reforming initial teacher training, because it has led to a failed buy-in from many ECTs who are resentful at taking two years rather than one to be seen as fully inducted. It would have made far more sense to begin with ITT reform and build from the ground up.

Are there ways in which teacher training could be improved to address the challenges in recruitment and retention?

The proposed reforms to teacher training through the market review in terms of hours of ITT mentor training and refresher training required each year are not workable in English schools. With timetables and staffing already under strain, schools simply cannot afford or logistically manage to release staff for hours of mentor training each year. The reforms as proposed risk alienating many schools from the process of hosting, training and supporting trainee teachers due to a lack of capacity.

How does teacher training in England compare internationally, and what are the benefits and disadvantages of the English system?

We are unable to comment on this question.

How do challenges in teacher recruitment, training and retention compare to those being faced in other professions/ sectors of the economy, and is there anything that can be learned from other professions/ sectors of the economy? 

Widespread public sector strikes are an indication that there is a general failure in the government’s approach towards public sector workers and incentivising people to work within the sector.

Other professions and sectors which have experienced growth and acceleration are those which can offer competitive pay and benefits. Even benefits such as lengthy teacher holidays are hamstrung by higher prices of travel costs and accommodation.

The current state of affairs in the UK public sector reflects the fact that in our globalised economy, it is a buyers’ market. Frequently interview candidates for high-demand subjects will demand to negotiate salaries beyond those advertised because they know that schools are in competition for such staff due to scarcity. In this market, multi-academy trusts can ‘outbid’ small trusts or standalone schools with ease.

What particular challenges exist in teacher recruitment, training and retention for teachers from different demographic backgrounds? 

How well does the demographic makeup of the teaching workforce reflect that of the pupils they teach?

Not well. The teaching workforce is predominantly female and white which is not representative of the national demographic makeup. Despite the large numbers of female staff in the profession, school leadership is still very much dominated by men, particularly the Multi-Academy Trusts.

Lack of diversity in terms of representation of people of colour in the curriculum disincentivises graduates from different demographic backgrounds who might otherwise aspire towards working in education.  In addition, there are simply not enough Black and Asian teachers in leadership positions providing role models and examples to students from similar backgrounds.