Asked by Lord Addington To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in
the light of the recommendations on pay made by the School
Teachers’ Review Body, what action they will take to increase
teacher recruitment and retention. The Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash)
(Con) My Lords, teaching is and remains an...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the
recommendations on pay made by the School Teachers’ Review
Body, what action they will take to increase teacher
recruitment and retention.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, teaching is and remains an attractive graduate
profession. Despite the dramatic improvement in the
economy, more teachers are in our schools than ever before,
over 15,000 more than in 2010. However, we are not
complacent, which is why we continue to invest, including
more than £200 million this year, in attracting the
brightest and the best into teaching and on tackling the
areas that cause teachers to leave the profession, in
particular that of workload.
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(LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. Figures I
have obtained show that between 2010 and 2015 we trained
117,000 teachers and that we have lost 27,000 of them. Does
the Minister think that this is due primarily to workload
or to pay?
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It is quite clear that teacher retention rates have
remained pretty stable over the past 20 years. We live in a
world where people do move between jobs a lot, but there is
no evidence to suggest that teacher retention has declined
in recent years. Moreover, we are doing a great deal of
work with teachers, including running an active programme
in order to reduce workload.
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(Con)
My Lords, is not the great increase in the number of pupils
with English as a second language making life very
difficult for teachers?
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As we have discussed before, there is no doubt that
initially pupils who either do not speak English or have
poor English do make life difficult for teachers, but the
evidence is clear that those pupils, once they can speak
the language—which many of them do relatively quickly—can
be, to put it bluntly, much more aspirational. As we now
all know, although we spend a lot of time compiling
statistics on what we call English as additional language
pupils, it is in fact white working-class pupils who are
falling behind dramatically in our schools. That is why we
are making such a substantial investment in coastal towns,
former mining villages and other such communities to
improve education.
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(Lab)
My Lords, I refer the House to my interests relating to
teacher recruitment through my work at TES Global. The
Minister says that he is not complacent. When I look at the
statistics for teacher retention and take out retirement
because the number of those retiring has been reducing, I
can see that the number leaving the service prematurely has
been increasingly significantly every year since 2012. The
figure rose from 28,630 in that year to 39,980 in 2016. To
repeat the question: is this because of workload pressure
or because of pay?
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I know that the noble Lord is very experienced in this
area, but he has picked one particular statistic. The fact
is that returners to education employment have increased by
8% since 2011 and, as noble Lords will know, this year our
recruitment programme has run substantially ahead of last
year. We have again recruited 100% of primary teachers and
89%, as opposed to 82%, of secondary teachers.
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The (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister consider reviewing the system
of continuing professional development for teachers with a
view to streamlining and strengthening it? Only last week I
heard from the leader of a multi-academy trust that he
thought that there are too many providers in this area and
it is not working efficiently. Does the Minister agree that
consistently excellent levels of continuing professional
development could have a significant impact on the
retention of teachers?
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The noble Earl makes an extremely good point. I think that
we are all aware that continuous professional development
for teachers is vital. Their initial training may be brief,
for nine months, and I think that it is accepted by all in
the profession —I have had discussions with the unions as
well— that professional development should take place
throughout a teacher’s career, particularly in their first
three or five years. We know that overseas—for instance, in
Shanghai—the programme takes five years. We are seeing many
multi-academy trusts developing much more sophisticated
continuous professional development for their teachers.
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(Lab)
My Lords, despite the Minister saying that he is not
complacent, I think that noble Lords will agree with me that
his answers suggest that he and his department remain in
denial about the crisis in teacher retention and recruitment.
Just eight months ago, the department confirmed that almost
one-third of teachers who joined the profession in 2011 had
left it within five years. My noble friend Lord Knight asked
a few moments ago whether the cause was workload or pay. In
fact, it is a combination of both, particularly
below-inflation pay increases. On that specific question, can
the Minister reveal to noble Lords whether teachers and
teachers’ assistants are among those public servants that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to regard as “overpaid”?
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One reason why it has become difficult to recruit teachers is
the strength in the economy. The best way to recruit more
teachers might be to have a Labour Government, who would
wreck the economy and therefore dramatically improve
unemployment rates and increase our chances of employing
teachers. We live in a highly competitive economy. In many
parts of the country, we have full employment. Difficulty in
recruitment is not exclusive to teaching or to this country.
However, we are not complacent; we are investing a great deal
of time in a more regional approach to teacher recruitment
and in changing our approaches to advertising and marketing,
with schools working together in different regions on a much
more sophisticated approach to recruitment.
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(Con)
Are the Government continuing to improve the arrangements
under which teachers are initially trained?
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Yes. As I think my noble friend knows, we have substantially
increased the proportion of teachers trained in schools—it
has now risen to 56% of initial teacher training. As I said
in answer to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, we are continuing
to look at improving initial teacher training.
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