Commenting on today’s report by the National Audit Office
(NAO), Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary of
the National Education Union, said:
“This NAO report provides a challenging judgement on the work of
this government in meeting its responsibilities around
evidence-informed and impactful spending of scarce public
resources in education, particularly around the improvement and
retention of the existing teaching workforce.
“The report’s findings are an indictment of a record of failings
that stretches back over several years. The Department for
Education has failed to engage with schools on issues of
recruitment, retention and professional development. Its response
to an ongoing crisis has been on a scale far too modest to
achieve effective change and has failed to collect the basic
information which would allow it to address acute local-level
problems.
“We have long decried the Government’s limited focus on teacher
recruitment, which ignores the early exodus made by many
excellent and experienced teachers due to an inflexible and
excessive-working-hours culture. Children's education will suffer
if Government cannot fulfil its basic responsibility to train and
retain enough qualified teachers
“Recruitment, retention, workload and professional development
should be at the heart of Government policy for the teaching
workforce. These issues cannot be left to schools: they are a
responsibility of central government.”
