Schools have had a turbulent year. At short notice last April, they began providing remote lessons, and they have since endured the government’s indecision over covid testing, school reopening, and exam arrangements.
Teachers have spent their holidays drawing up risk assessments, rearranging classrooms, and debating how to reliably provide their students with grades that could decide a place at university. It is no surprise that, in a recent poll, 70 per cent of teachers reported that their workload had increased in the past year, and almost all were concerned about the effect on their wellbeing.
The exhaustion felt by teachers and school leaders should worry the government. Since at least 2012, teachers have been leaving the profession increasingly rapidly and the retention of staff has been a top priority for education ministers. In 2013, nearly three-quarters of new teachers were still in the profession after five years. By 2019, that had fallen to barely more than two-thirds.
Not only have more teachers been changing careers, but the government has also struggled to recruit enough new staff to plug the gap. Until 2020 it had missed its recruitment targets for seven consecutive years and the number of secondary teachers had fallen from 224,000 in 2012 to only 209,000 in 2019, despite pupil numbers increasing. This has resulted in increasing class sizes and increasing pressure on those who remain in teaching.
However, Covid has had a silver lining for the government: the ensuing recession has made the relative stability and security of teaching far more attractive to graduates. As employment opportunities dried up across the UK, in 2020, 16 per cent more people applied to become teachers than in the previous year. Recruitment targets were met and far fewer teachers moved schools or quit the profession, reversing the trend of the previous decade.
One of the greatest policy challenges for the government will now be to hold on to these teachers after the pandemic. Children will have lost months of learning and recovering from that will not be possible without a strong, motivated teaching workforce. Unfortunately, the current workforce is exhausted, and the bumper crop of new entrants may not be as attached to the profession as earlier recruits. Having joined teacher training during a recession, many may choose not to stay on once higher-paying jobs open up elsewhere.
Worse still, in response to the temporary boost, the government cut the financial incentives it had previously offered for entering and remaining in the profession. Previously, a trainee teacher could earn a bursary of up to £26,000 if they trained in a subject experiencing shortages, such as maths, physics, or languages. If they then stayed in the profession for five years, they also received £10,000-£15,000 in salary top-ups from the government to encourage them to stay long-term. Now, the bursaries for most subjects have been cut to zero, and even shortage subjects have had their bursaries reduced.
Not only have bursaries been reduced, but salary top-ups have disappeared completely. There has been some dispute over the effectiveness of bursaries and the National Audit Office was scathing of the lack of evaluation, despite the well over £1 billion spent on them. However, financial incentives to keep teachers in the profession in the form of salary top-ups have proven remarkably successful in the US and independent researchers from both EPI and the Gatsby Foundation have recommended them in England.
The government’s apparent complacency right now is in stark contrast to its efforts to improve retention rates before the pandemic struck. In 2018, it released a wide-ranging strategy to improve recruitment and retention that included the introduction of salary top-up payments. That same urgency is needed now more than ever.
There is no doubt that teachers will continue to be under pressure to support children and make up for the lost time in the classroom over the past year. Reinstating top-up retention payments for early-career teachers and recommitting to a pay raise for all is one way for the government to begin to demonstrate its commitment to support teachers in that endeavour.
It should also consider continuing with softer accountability measures for schools in the next year so that teachers can focus on supporting pupils to recover, instead of facing extra pressures from business-as-usual school inspections.
Providing children with the support they need following the pandemic will not be easy. Central government cannot do it without first winning over teachers, school leaders, and school staff. Several missteps over the past year have diminished the trust between schools and ministers. Now is the time to start repairing the damage.
