Commenting as the National Foundation for Educational Research
(NFER) publish a new report on the Teacher Labour Market in
England, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’
union NAHT, said: “These figures do show an increase in teacher
training applications thanks to Covid. But that apparent good
news story should not be allowed to distract from the worrying
longer-term implications of the experiences reported by school
staff over the last year. There is a real risk that we will lose
more experienced teachers and school leaders post-Covid than can
possibly be replaced by new recruits.
“The findings of this report chime exactly with what we are
hearing from our members. Before the crisis hit, it was widely
acknowledged that teachers and school leaders’ working hours had
reached unsustainable levels. During the pandemic, their working
week has got longer still. The juggling act of teaching children
remotely and in-person concurrently is giving way to the
challenge of assessing and addressing the varied impact that
lockdown has had on our nation's young. Over the last 12 months,
school leaders have re-engineered schooling from the ground up,
many times over, and expertly navigated the constant last-minute
emergencies and major business planning challenges that the
pandemic has brought. And all this whilst facing another
real-terms pay cut.
“The current situation is unsustainable. School leaders are
frustrated at Government and exhausted by Covid. Our own survey
in Autumn 2020 found that nearly half of school leaders surveyed
(47%) were considering leaving the profession sooner than
originally planned, as a result of the pandemic. These
experienced teachers and leaders cannot be replaced by the new
people entering teacher training this year. Action must be taken
to ensure a sufficient education workforce, improving conditions
to retain both current staff and new recruits.
“We agree with many of NfER’s recommendations for change,
including reducing teacher workload, supporting well-being,
improving mentoring programmes, and making teacher and school
leader pay competitive. School leadership is a demanding and
important profession, and the government needs to make the case
for a decades-long career in teaching.
“We particularly welcome the report’s recommendation that the
School Teachers’ Review Body should be given a permanent remit to
make independent recommendations on teacher pay, even when
government considers that pay should be frozen. The constraints
placed on the review Body by successive secretaries of state have
led to a decade-long fall in the real value of teachers’ and
leaders’ pay, and undermined the salary differential for
leadership responsibility. The result has been a full blown
teacher and leadership supply crisis.
“The STRB has repeatedly said that pay in the profession is
uncompetitive, differentiated pay awards are likely to fail in
their own terms, and that leadership responsibility must be
properly remunerated. NAHT agrees. Our evidence to the STRB calls
for a full review of the pay structure for teachers and leaders.
An interim settlement over three years, that takes a strong step
towards restoring the losses of the last decade, could provide
the breathing space needed for the STRB to consult on a full
review of the pay structure for the profession.”
