There is a significant ‘workforce quality gap’ between schools with the most and least disadvantaged pupils, new EPI report finds

A new report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI), funded by The Sequoia Trust, examines differences between the teaching workforces at schools with the most and least disadvantaged pupils. It finds a substantial and persistent gap in teacher experience, as well as in subject expertise, turnover and absence rates. The report recommends boosting retention incentives and accelerating professional development for teachers in disadvantaged settings.
 

Using proxy measures to explore the effectiveness of the teaching workforce, the report finds that:

• Teachers in disadvantaged schools are less experienced, with those teaching in disadvantaged secondary schools having approximately 3 years less experience than those in affluent schools.
• Leadership experience gaps have widened in secondary schools. There was no gap in headteachers' experience in 2010, but in 2023/24, headteachers in the most disadvantaged secondary schools had, on average, 3 years less experience than those in the most affluent schools. 
• Teachers in disadvantaged schools are increasingly less likely to have a relevant degree, particularly in STEM subjects, with the proportion of lessons taught by teachers with a relevant degree in disadvantaged schools declining by 11 percentage points since 2016/17. In addition, the gap between affluent and disadvantaged schools has grown by over two thirds in recent years.
• Disadvantaged schools experience much higher levels of teacher turnover, with annual turnover in disadvantaged secondary schools exceeding affluent schools by 5-8 percentage points. 
• Teachers in disadvantaged schools miss 1.5-2 more working days annually compared to those in affluent schools, representing approximately 1 per cent of instructional time lost for pupils who already face educational disadvantages.

The report recommends that the government should: 

• Increase retention incentives to retain experienced subject specialists in disadvantaged settings. Existing retention payment schemes have proven helpful but the persistence of the experience gap over a decade indicates they have been insufficient.
• Boost professional development. Enhancing existing support structures such as the Early Career Framework and National Professional Qualifications can accelerate teachers' learning in challenging contexts, mitigating some effects of the experience gap.
• Focus on the quality of leadership. Reducing teacher turnover and absence to improve the stability of the teaching workforce depends on the quality of leadership in schools, as earlier EPI work on the effectiveness of headteachers has also found.
• Improve measurement of teaching quality to help determine the extent to which the observable differences outlined above translate into differences in educational experiences for pupils.

 
James Zuccollo, Director for School Workforce at EPI said: 
 
“Schools today are generally struggling to recruit and retain the teachers they need. Our research shows that it is the schools serving the most disadvantaged communities that face the greatest difficulties in attracting and keeping experienced, specialist teachers. These staffing challenges directly affect the learning of pupils who need the most support.

As the gap in attainment between affluent and disadvantaged pupils continues to widen, it is clear that addressing workforce inequalities is essential. Ensuring that every school can offer stable, high-quality teaching is a crucial step towards giving all children, regardless of background, a fair chance to succeed.”
 

Background and Methodology 

This report examines differences between the teaching workforces at disadvantaged and affluent schools. The effectiveness of a school's workforce is commonly measured overseas by linking teachers to their pupils' attainment and estimating the value the teachers add. However, that approach is not available in England because the Department for Education does not allow those links between pupils and teachers to be made. Instead, we have constructed indirect measures of the quality of the school workforce by measuring across four aspects of schools' workforces:

• The skill and experience of the workforce, using measures of teachers' experience.
• The subject-matter knowledge of the teachers, using the proportion of teachers with an academic degree or specialisation in the subject they teach.
• The stability of the workforce, using measures of the turnover rate and absences of staff.

Using these measures, we detail the evolution of the ‘workforce quality gap' from 2010/11 to 2023/24, which is the most recent data available. The gap we measure is the difference between the most and least affluent quintiles of schools, as measured by the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals.