Why Teacher Recruitment is a Matter of Social Justice

teacher standing in front of a classroom of children

At 9.30am on Tuesday 8 October, thousands of people across England were hunched over laptops and mobiles, ready and waiting for a website to open.  Their prize was not Oasis tickets – it was the application window for DfE Apply, the online portal for teacher training.

By lunchtime, the National Institute of Teaching, of which I am chief executive, already had more than a hundred applications from prospective teachers, eager and excited to start their journey into the classroom. They will now undergo a rigorous assessment process and, if successful, they will start their training with us next September.

But, according to the latest figures, more than one in 10 of those who complete their training will leave the state-funded sector after just one year on the job. After three years, just three-quarters of that cohort will be left. And after 10 years, an astonishing 58% of those teachers will have left the profession. That is some attrition rate.

This adds up to a crisis in teacher supply, as well as a waste of both human potential and public money. We need a clear, effective strategy for keeping teachers in the profession, attracting new ones and supporting them all to develop their classroom skills. The Government’s plans to create a resilient teacher workforce, including recruiting 6,500 new teachers, will go some way to supporting this. But the best recruitment strategy is a strong retention strategy, and so we also need to provide the conditions that make teachers want to stay.

Last month, we released a report setting out proposals for a stronger school workforce. It recommended ways to keep existing teachers in the classroom and attract new ones into the profession, focused on the schools struggling most to attract and retain qualified teachers.

We recommend that the Government consider three approaches:

  1. Place-based recruitment: Directing recruitment efforts to the parts of the country with the greatest need would help to increase the supply of new teachers to schools which can benefit most and addresses the stark geographic disparities in educational outcomes.
  2. Broadening access to teaching: Expanding and diversifying pathways into the teaching profession, including apprenticeships and career conversion programmes, is critical for attracting a broader and more diverse pool of candidates.
  3. Retention through professional development: The retention of teachers, particularly in high-need areas, can be supported by robust professional development and support.

 

Above all, we need to change the lens through which we view the teaching workforce – it’s not just a simple maths problem of one-in-one-out.  There is strong evidence to say that the quality of teaching is the biggest in-school factor influencing children’s educational success. And this effect is even greater for children experiencing the highest levels of disadvantage.

But quality teaching is not evenly distributed across the English school system, we don’t know enough about the best ways to develop it, and it is hampered by persistent challenges with teacher retention and recruitment. In practice, this means that the children whose lives can be most positively affected by great teaching too often miss out.

Collectively, we need to better understand how to develop teacher impact, so we’re bringing together school leaders, data experts, researchers and teacher development professionals to use anonymous data to explore how approaches to teacher training, classroom practice and professional development impact on pupil outcomes.

But teacher supply is a product not just of the attractiveness of the profession but also its accessibility, so there are other things that can be done to increase the flow and retention of talent in our schools. Whoever you are, no matter your background, there should be a route into teaching for you. Making sure that apprenticeship routes into teaching are rigorous, school-responsive and plentiful could help make this route more attractive for those who may feel as though whom a traditional university degree and postgraduate training year is not the right path for them. There are also opportunities for conversion routes into teaching, such as university researchers moving to schools, primary to secondary transitions, and teaching assistants becoming teachers. These routes could help attract a diverse range of candidates with varied backgrounds, and, crucially, provide routes into teaching for those from the communities where teaching and teacher quality is most vital.

We also need to recognise the reality of working life in modern Britain. Not all teachers will stay in the profession for life. We need a system that embraces ‘squiggly’ career paths, values experience outside the classroom and welcomes back those who have dipped out to try something else.

Together these policies make up a coherent approach to tackling a persistent injustice in our society – the inequality in access to the best teaching. Recruiting, placing, developing and retaining high quality teachers is not just a functional process – it is social justice in action.

 

If you enjoyed this piece, follow the link to read another piece discussing social justice here