Recruitment and Retention Crisis

Teacher vacancy rate

Real teacher earnings growth since 2010

Teacher workload statistics

Earnings growth

Leaving rate of teachers compare to levels of deprivation.

ECTs leaving teaching within 1 and 2 years of qualifying

gap between target and recruitment in curriculum subjects

Teachers attitudes to workload

Postgraduate ITT recruitment in teaching

It's tough out there...

I'm sure I'm late to the party, but the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) Annual Teacher Labour Report paints a pretty grim picture of the 'state of the nation' in the educational workforce in the UK.

Overall, it seems that the teacher recruitment and retention crisis is NOT improving. Teacher shortages are now having a more obvious negative impact on schools and pupils.

Here are some soundbites:

⛔ In 2022/23, 9.6 percent of teachers left state-sector teaching, slightly higher than pre-pandemic.

⛔ Postgraduate secondary recruitment was nearly 40 per cent below target in 2024/25 while primary missed its target for the third consecutive year.

⛔ At least 7 out of 17 secondary subjects are forecast to under-recruit in 2025/26.

⛔ In 2023/24, 15 per cent of secondary pupils were in classes of more than 30, up from 10 percent in 2015/16.

⛔ The proportion of maths teaching hours taught by maths specialists is12 percentage points lower in the most-deprived schools than the least-deprived.

⛔ Teacher pay will have to rise by 6.1 % between 2026/27 and 2028/29 to match forecast average earnings growth by the end of the current parliament.

⛔ During term time in 2023/24, the average teacher worked five hours per week longer than similar graduates in other jobs.

⛔ The proportion of teachers spending ‘too much time’ responding to behaviour incidents has increased by 10 percentage points since 2021/22.

🌱 And finally a more positive statistic - Teachers who used ChatGPT to help with their lesson planning spent, on average, 30 per cent less time on lesson planning than teachers who did not.

Recommendations in the report include:

✅ Increase teacher pay in 2025/2026 by at least 3% and increase school budgets so that they are able to increase teacher pay by 6.1% from 2026/2027 to 2028/2029.

✅ The government should supplement pay rises with increases in spending on financial incentives targeting shortage subjects.

✅ The Government should develop a teacher workload reduction strategy to improve retention that is fully integrated with the wider policy reform agenda.

✅ Schools should consider whether and how generative AI tools such as ChatGPT could help improve their teachers’ planning workload.

✅ The Government should develop a new approach for supporting schools to improve pupil behaviour, reinforced by improved external school support services and backed with additional funding in the Spending Review.

✅ School leaders should consider adopting a wider range of flexible working practices in their schools to improve teacher retention.

Whilst I know that some innovative school and trusts are seeing some green shoots of improvement, it seems like the situation is now extremely urgent, and we need a cohesive system wide approach to turn this tide. I also know that we have some great people working on possible solutions, which, it seems, can't come soon enough.

If you're leading a school or trust and are looking for solutions, I know that there is some amazing innovations happening in this area.

😊 If you're looking for support with flexible working policies, check out Flexible Teacher Talent, led by Lucy Rose and Lindsay Patience. 

😊 If you want to retain your staff who are new parents, check out the 'Maternity Teacher, Paternity Teacher' Project (The MTPT Project). They support teachers as they become parents and help schools to become more family-friendly workplaces.

😊 Coaching can also be helpful for school and trust leaders who are looking at trying to improve retention and recruitment. Whilst coaches can't solve the financial challenges, we can help you consider ways of making your organisation the employer of choice. I have some limited availability for new coaching clients from the summer term.