Want to level up the UK? Tackle the uneven distribution of good teachers

The prime minister cannot hope to “level up” the country without reform to education policy: school funding, education standards and social mobility all deserve attention.

Teacher quality must also be part of any conversation about the great imbalances in education. There is overwhelming evidence that the quality of teaching matters hugely for a young person’s life chances—but the distribution of good teachers remains highly uneven. Tackling that looks to be one of the biggest domestic policy challenges for the government in the years ahead.

The problem starts quite generally with pupil numbers. In recent years, teacher numbers have simply failed to keep pace with a booming pupil population in England. In fact, in secondary schools teacher numbers have fallen by 7 per cent since 2007. As many as four in 10 teachers in state schools leave after five years, while recruitment targets have been consistently missed in subjects such as maths, the sciences and languages, where graduates can easily command higher salaries outside of teaching.

But these assorted problems are even more acute for disadvantaged secondary schools, highlighted in a new Education Policy Institute report on the teacher labour market in England.

Teachers in the most disadvantaged secondary schools are 50 per cent more likely to be sick or absent (a reliable sign of stress and workload), while they are also less likely to hold a degree relevant to the subject they are teaching. In the most disadvantaged schools outside London, fewer than one in six physics teachers have a physics degree.

Last year, the government committed to higher starting salaries of £30,000 by 2022 to help address the overall challenges in the teacher labour market. This is based on solid empirical evidence showing that high salaries early on in teachers’ careers are effective at keeping them in the profession.

But while higher overall starting salaries may stem the general flow of early career teachers leaving, they are unlikely to address the extra problems faced by disadvantaged schools. Here, a much more targeted approach is required.

There is good evidence from the US that paying salary supplements can attract teachers to schools in areas with high levels of poverty. Since 2013, disadvantaged schools in England have had the freedom to use their extra funding such as the Pupil Premium to make such payments—but this has not happened in practice.

Teachers in more disadvantaged schools outside London are currently paid about £1,500 less than those in more affluent schools (usually because they are younger and less experienced). When this is accounted for, they are paid roughly the same.

Within London, however, a more interesting pattern emerges. Teachers in the poorest schools are paid about £1,500 more, even after accounting for specific characteristics. Such differences are longstanding and may reflect a greater recognition by schools in London about the benefits of offering higher salaries to lure in the best teachers.

So why haven’t most poorer schools offered such salary supplements to attract highly-qualified teachers? The reasons are complex. School budgets have come under significant pressure. Differences in teacher salaries within schools might also seem undesirable from a headteacher’s perspective. Where such salary supplements have been paid in the US, they have always come from a central government pot and been separate to base salaries. In England, this might be the only feasible way to implement such a policy nationwide.

The government is already taking baby steps in this direction, with extra payments for early career teachers in subjects with the worst shortages, including maths, physics, chemistry and languages. New teachers starting out in these subjects will be eligible for additional payments of £2,000 per year in state-funded schools. And they are further eligible for an extra £1,000 per year if they teach in one of about 40 “challenging” local authorities.

But this is not nearly enough. The government’s pay scheme should go much further to cover all early career teachers in shortage subjects. Given the acute teacher retention problems we are facing, such payments could also help keep existing teachers, as well as attracting new ones.

The government should also rethink the extra payments for “challenging areas.” It would be better off targeting these at disadvantaged schools, as not all disadvantaged schools are located in disadvantaged areas.

Doubling these extra payments from £1,000 to £2,000 would also go a long way to increasing the attractiveness of teaching in a disadvantaged school. At around an extra £35m, such a package would be relatively inexpensive for government, and could genuinely level the playing field to ensure that poorer schools are less likely to miss out on highly-qualified teachers.

If the government is really serious about “levelling up” the UK, it must go the extra mile for the most disadvantaged schools.