Teacher recruitment – Enlarging the pool and respecting educators
Why do other countries seem to value educators more, and what can we do about the teacher recruitment crisis?
- by Melissa Benn
How can we enlarge the teacher recruitment pool and grant educators the respect they are due? Melissa Benn investigates…
Valuing the profession as other countries do
As the teacher recruitment crisis continues to spiral, what will it take for policymakers to finally give the profession the respect it deserves?
With all the pre-election furore surrounding immigration, you might think the government would be clamping down on anyone from outside the UK coming to work in Britain these days.
Far from it. In some sectors, the government is desperate to recruit from abroad. The latest figures show that education, just like healthcare, is becoming increasingly reliant on recruiting teachers from around the world. This is particularly at secondary level.
A state of perma-crisis
According to the National Foundation for Educational Research, the latest set of trainees entering the profession are, “Dominated by international recruitment.” This is amid “limited growth in interest in teaching from anywhere else.”
In other words, not enough qualified people living within the UK want to work in our classrooms. Also, too many teachers are looking for ways to get out.
There was a brief period during the pandemic when it seemed that economic insecurity would lead to a permanent rise in recruitment. Somewhat surprisingly, however, in light of the continuing economic crisis, this COVID-engendered boost hasn’t lasted.
“Not enough qualified people living within the UK want to work in our classrooms”
As a result, teacher recruitment and retention rates are in a state of perma-crisis. This is particularly at secondary level, with acute shortages in subjects like physics and modern languages.
Unmanageable workloads
Trawl through the official reports, be they from the DfE or any of the numerous education-related quangos, and they all point to the same well-established problems. These are depressed pay levels, excessive workload, lack of autonomy and notably, teacher reactions to government policy (negative, one presumes).
Figures from the last Teaching and Learning International Survey held in 2018 show that KS3 teachers in England were working 49.3 hours per week. That’s over eight hours more than the OECD average of 41 hours per week.
Full-time primary teachers in England meanwhile reported working 52.1 hours a week. This exceeds more than the equivalent measure in any other participating country, with the exception of Japan.
Even back then, 53% of primary teachers and 57% of lower secondary school teachers felt their workloads were unmanageable. Comically (or perhaps tragically), the DfE has since stated that it won’t be taking part in the upcoming 2024 TALIS survey, due to the “Considerable workload burden” it places on government.
In fairness, several official schemes have been set up to to try and deal with these problems, particularly workload. The government’s current ambition is to reduce teachers’ and leaders’ working hours by five hours a week within three years. It’s also made promises with respect to teachers’ professional development offer, alongside boosts to pay, conditions and support for ECTs.
But are these kind of short-term fixes – often the favoured approach of Ministers – going to provide real solutions? In short, no. The problems go much deeper.
Underfunded, over-controlled
Schemes like Teach First – which was initially set up to attract clever and and ambitious graduates into teaching – founder on the simple fact that a 20-something with a good degree from a prestigious university soon realises they can earn far more by pursuing a career in the financial, technology or law sectors. It’s worth noting that only 40% percent of Teach First graduates remain in the job after five years.
Pay isn’t the only issue, though, important as it is. The education sector itself is simultaneously underfunded and over-controlled. This is to the extent that teachers (and many school leaders) can find themselves treated as much like children as adults.
Unlike other European countries, there’s little sense in England of teaching being a high status, long-lasting vocation – on a par with the status afforded to doctors and lawyers, for example.
I’m no great fan of the notion that competition can usefully shape public sector policy. However, I do look on with some envy at countries like Finland or Canada, where it’s harder to secure places on teacher education programmes. This is because the profession in those countries is seen as having a higher status.
I’d hope that when the next UK government is voted into office, there will be a profound re-think of how we regard and reward our nearly half million teachers, setting us on a much better course over the coming decades.
Should we be looking to late career changers?
If the same teacher recruitment well keeps running dry, asks Melissa Benn, why not try enlarging the pool of potential candidates?
Last month, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lucy Kellaway about teacher recruitment. The former Financial Times columnist left journalism in her 50s to embark on an entirely new career as a classroom teacher.
What’s interesting about Kellaway is that she not only swapped one profession for another, but also set up an organisation called Now Teach to help others make the same journey.
Intense pressure
Kellaway has frequently written about her experiences of working in state education for her old newspaper. She used a series of FT columns to examine some of the key issues affecting state education. This included unsustainable workloads.
I spoke to her soon after the publication of a DfE report on that very topic. The department’s ‘Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders’ study is long and detailed, but we can summarise its findings as, ‘Teachers and leaders are under great pressure.’
A separate study published in April by the NEU, ‘State of education: workload and wellbeing’ similarly found that many in education are facing ‘unmanageable’ workloads.
This is hardly a new problem, of course. Though it’s striking to look back over the past decade and see just how little has changed. That’s despite repeated efforts by both government and unions to reform working cultures.
Kellaway’s experience provides an interesting frame through which to consider various issues raised in both reports. The first of these is simply financial. By the time she entered teaching, Kellaway had already paid off her mortgage and her children had left home.
By the time she entered teaching, Kellaway had already paid off her mortgage and her children had left home
Observing her younger colleagues, she’s seen the intense pressure they’re under. They’re trying to meet the financial demands of setting up homes and raising families on middling salaries that haven’t kept pace with inflation.
The lesson to be learnt here? That teaching simply doesn’t pay enough for what it demands.
Enforcing limits
Kellaway’s second key observation is that, to put it crudely, she had already met and satisfied certain ‘status’ ambitions well before she entered the teaching profession. Having been a national newspaper columnist for the past 30 years, by that point she had nothing left to prove.
Instead, she became increasingly motivated by her writing job feeling empty. This was compared to the value she saw in improving the next generation’s life chances.
Now aged 63, Kellaway has also come to understand and increasingly enforce her own limits. This has enabled her to keep the job both sustainable and highly enjoyable.
“I absolutely love being in the classroom,” she says. “What could be (better) than spending your life with teenagers? They’re funny, and by definition, optimistic, because they’re at the beginning of their lives?”
“What could be (better) than spending your life with teenagers?”
Again, however, she is acutely aware of how her younger colleagues lack such freedom of choice with respect to their careers. They have to contend with working days of 12 hours if they want to earn more or rise up the ladder.
Teacher recruitment talent pool
The takeaway is perhaps that when it comes to teacher recruitment, we need to create a larger pool of experienced classroom teachers. And we need to properly pay and genuinely value them for their talent and experience.
At the same time, however, we also need to create the conditions that will allow them concentrate on their jobs. They shouldn’t have to take on additional administrative stress.
Finally, Kellaway highlights how the drive to get top marks and secure a place at a top university can create incredible stress. This is not just for young people, but teachers and school leaders too.
Having worked in both hyper-ambitious schools with high staff turnovers, and more relaxed settings where greater emphasis is placed on cultivating good relationships, she’s seen first-hand the great value of the latter.
It’s still difficult to question the relentless prioritising of achievement within contemporary state education. It may be that the issues faced by today’s overworked teachers can be traced back to a broader excessive emphasis on individual achievement across wider society – and not enough on the importance of social equity or harmony.
Melissa Benn (@Melissa_Benn) is the author of Life Lessons: The Case for a National Education Service, and is a Visiting Professor at York St John university.
