“We completely agree with the PAC that the government should examine whether simply improving pay and working conditions would be the best route to solving teacher shortages. To its credit, the current government is boosting salaries but this follows years of real-terms pay erosion, and it hasn’t provided enough funding for next year’s pay award – which means another cut to school budgets.
“A key issue is the high workloads experienced by leaders and teachers. These are driven by issues such as funding shortages, the wide array of responsibilities placed upon schools and colleges, and an accountability system of inspections and performance tables which is utterly excessive. This has a massive impact on staff retention and means we’re constantly having to recruit huge numbers of graduates into the profession to make up for this endless churn. These targets are frequently missed.
“The impact of national teacher shortages is often most damaging in schools and colleges serving disadvantaged communities where recruitment and retention can be particularly hard. This is exactly where we most need a ready supply of teachers and leaders and the fact this is difficult to secure is a major obstacle in narrowing attainment gaps.
“The rising number of teachers leaving the profession because of pupil behaviour is also a major cause of concern. We hear from school and college leaders on a regular basis over just how challenging this issue has become in recent years. Behaviour policies are robust but there must be wider action to provide schools and colleges with specialist support and investment to address the variety as well as the complexity of needs that children and young people are exhibiting. School suspension and exclusion figures suggest that student behaviour is spiralling out of control.
“We share the concerns about the lack of clarity over the government’s pledge to deliver 6,500 new teachers. This does not seem anything like enough to address future need and we would urge ministers to address actual teacher shortages rather than fixate on a figure which is largely meaningless.”