A new report by NFER is calling for a long-term strategy on
teacher pay to halt the growing school workforce crisis.
NFER’s Teacher Labour Market in England
Annual Report 2023 reveals that the number of teacher
vacancies posted by schools, an indicator of staff turnover, was
93 per cent higher in the academic year up to February 2023, than
at the same point in the year before the pandemic. The TeachVac data also shows
that vacancies were up 37 per cent compared to 2021/22.
Jack Worth, NFER School Workforce Lead and co-author of the
report said:
“Schools are being forced to stumble from budget to budget and
strike to strike without the help of a clear strategy designed to
address a worsening recruitment and retention crisis.
“School leaders are increasingly resorting to the use of
non-specialist teachers to plug gaps which will ultimately affect
pupil attainment outcomes.
“The 2023 teacher pay award should exceed 4.1 per cent – the
latest forecast of the rise in average UK earnings next year – to
narrow the gap between teacher pay and the wider labour market,
and improve recruitment and retention. This should be accompanied
by a long-term plan to improve the competitiveness of teacher pay
while – crucially – ensuring schools have the funds to pay for
it.”
The report also warns that recruitment to initial teacher
training (ITT) in 2023/24 is likely to be significantly below
target. NFER projects that primary ITT and nine out of 17
secondary subjects - physics, computing, design and technology,
business studies, modern foreign languages, religious education,
music, drama and art and design – are expected to be 20 per cent
or more below target.
Other subjects such as maths, English, chemistry and geography
are also at risk of under-recruiting this year, while biology,
history, classics and physical education are likely to be at, or
slightly above, target. This follows historically low recruitment
in 2022/23.
Falling retention rates and historically low teacher recruitment
figures point to the deteriorating competitiveness of teaching
compared to other occupations, in both pay and working
conditions, which requires urgent policy action across the
sector.
The study highlights how the gap in real earnings growth between
teachers and graduates has widened significantly since the
pandemic. Median teacher pay in 2021/22 was 12 per cent lower in
real terms than it was in 2010/11. This was 11 percentage points
lower for teachers than for similar graduates*, a wider gap than
before the pandemic.
Further findings from the report show that teachers’ working
hours and perceived workload have fallen since 2015/16 but remain
higher than for similar graduates. Reducing teacher workload has
been a policy objective for government in recent years because
high workload was the reason most-often cited for teachers
wanting to leave the profession.
Despite the pandemic leading to a widespread adoption of remote
working in the graduate workforce, teachers’ opportunities to
work from home remain very limited. In 2021/22, nearly half (44
per cent) of similar graduates worked mainly from home, up from
15 per cent in 2018/19. The lack of availability of home working
could represent a threat to the relative attractiveness of
teaching.
The report also makes the following further
recommendations:
- The government should continue to remain focussed on reducing
teacher workload by supporting schools in implementing the
recommendations of the Teacher Workload Advisory Groups.
- The government should fund further research to better
understand teachers’ flexible working preferences and use the
findings to revisit the 2019 Teacher Recruitment and Retention
Strategy, ensuring it reflects the new post-pandemic realities of
working life.
- Given the demand for flexible working arrangements, school
leaders should explore what options may work for their schools.
ENDSNOTES TO EDITORS
*In our analysis, the term ‘similar graduates’ refers to the
comparison group of graduates in other occupations who are
similar to teachers in age, gender and region.
