The state of the nation
The Education Policy Institute (EPI) just released the results of a new study—The teacher labour market in England: Shortages, subject expertise and incentives—which examines the most recent figures on how numbers of teachers and their quality vary. The report highlights a major shortage of teachers across the country. Additionally, pupil numbers have risen by approximately 10% in the last eight years.
Furthermore, the report shows that new teachers are not moving in to fill the gaps as quickly as they once were—teacher training applications are down by 5%, and training targets have been repeatedly missed in maths and science.
Teacher exit rates have risen too. The EPI found that just 60% of teachers remain in state-funded schools for five years after starting. For high-priority subjects such as maths and physics, retention drops to just 50% after five years. With education workforce recruitment and retention issues persisting, it is vital that new routes into teaching are explored and funding is fully utilised.
Case study
Ashcroft High School is located in Bedfordshire, Luton. Luton is an area which, due to its close proximity to London, has a similarly high-cost housing market. However, this is paired with a low average salary. As a result of this disparity, we have historically faced considerable difficulties recruiting new teachers to our school, as well as retaining our existing staff.
Earlier this year, we made the decision to utilise the newly-launched Teaching Apprenticeship Programme as a way to recruit talent to our school and more easily access the government’s apprenticeship levy funding—which provides our school with grants to support the recruitment of graduates. The training programme began in September, with 14 apprentice teachers starting at our school, and will run for one year. Over the year, the graduates are guided towards Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and End Point Assessment (EPA). One of the key benefits for the apprentices is that it has enabled them to embark on a fee-free and more hands-on route to achieving QTS—and for us, it has been a simple way for our school to address long-standing recruitment and retention issues.