Teacher recruitment and retention is currently in a critical state – as outlined by The National Foundation for Educational Research’s (NFER) 2024 report on the teacher labour market in England. This puts at risk the quality of education that children and young people receive. In this article, Andrew Howes and Louisa Dawes acknowledge the Labour Party manifesto pledge to recruit 6,500 new teachers as an excellent starting point but urge the new government to go beyond this ambition and consider more radical policy actions. 

• Current rates of attrition (teachers departing the profession) in teaching have substantial impact on the profession and children’s educational experiences.
• Current ‘authorised’ approaches in the classroom and professional development frameworks restrict teachers’ autonomy.
• Re-professionalising teaching should be a priority for the new government. Opportunities for children and young people will grow once teachers and educators are better equipped and trained to respond to local and other contextual challenges.

Attrition – a significant and sustained issue

Teacher attrition rates in England are higher than in comparable countries. Domestically, the attrition rate is generally higher in schools where more pupils are eligible for free school meals; higher for language, physics, and maths teachers; higher in some cities, including London. The average attrition rates are also high – around 9%- and under-recruitment is also significant. Trainee numbers in 2023-24 were a quarter down on 2019, affecting almost all subjects and phases. In this context, both recruitment and retention matter. The government’s pledge to seriously address teacher supply with an intention to recruit 6,500 additional teachers is welcome, as is the fully-funded above inflation pay rise.

Authorisation – a limited approach

Currently, there are threads of conformity wrapped around the education system, restricting opportunity for proactive and responsive actions by teachers and leaders in schools and academy chains. Our research has found that teachers and school leaders are obliged to adhere to generic ‘what works’ evidence-based practice from a limited range of sources, rather than engage in activities based on their own professional judgement and contextualised knowledge of their own students. As a result, children’s and young people’s experience in school is all too often limited, repetitive and uninspiring. Whilst evidence-based practice has undoubtedly developed and improved the profession’s understanding of learning, the disadvantage gap remains consistently and resolutely wide in 2024.

Similarly, in professional training, our research on the Early Career Framework (ECF) illuminates the effects of the narrow ‘one size fits all’ curriculum alongside authorised ‘legitimate’ forms of teaching practices (and their evidence bases). Our findings indicate a lack of autonomy for those inducting and mentoring teachers in their early career, along with an excessive bureaucratic workload for both mentor and mentee throughout the process. The competing demands of complying with ECF requirements, alongside the complex realities of their specific classroom settings, leads to disenchantment, frustration and burn out.  These issues, however, are not unique to new teachers. Research on the development of school leadership qualifications mirrors many of these issues, and spotlights a financially lucrative, yet restricted teacher-education pseudo-market.

The vice-like grip of accountability

Running through these invisible threads of conformity and authorised, prescribed classroom practice, teachers and school leaders are overburdened with high-stakes accountability that works in a vice-like manner at all levels of the sector. Metrics and markers of success are dictated by external policy actors in the guise of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) at a national level and Ofsted at a local level. The sector has become overburdened and de-professionalised by the unintended consequences of external accountability. Not only can this impact on the way that teachers are viewed by society but there are serious implications on workload, self-worth and wellbeing.

In contrast to centralised accountability systems, University of Manchester researchers have shown how place-based school-led partnerships can foster collective accountability for the learning of all children, reduce the polarisation of schools within a local area, and benefit pupils who are often marginalised at the edges of the system.

Since 2017, Manchester Institute of Education (MIE) researchers have sought to enact a different approach to professional learning in schools. Rather than adopting a “one-size-fits-all” response to poverty, the ‘Local Matters’ programme seeks to address poverty knowledge gaps in schools through the exploration of the local poverty context. By applying research skills and knowledge, educators can develop a more sophisticated understanding of child poverty in their schools that shape appropriate and tailored institutional practice and policy. Rather than “fixing” the local community through standardised activities and interventions, participants co-create transformational approaches that are contextually relevant to children and families from low-income communities.

Key recommendations for policy and regulation

 Based on the above findings from our research, we make the following recommendations that are intended to benefit practitioners and policymakers:

• The new government and the Department for Education should develop and promote a new model of external inspection for schools. This model should be based in professional dialogue and not rely on the threat or promise of a high-stakes single word judgement or a scorecard, but instead offer a clear, readable narrative describing the school – how the school is placed; the local, regional and national issues the school is addressing; how the school is working; indications of change and development. The ambition is for Ofsted to continue to be utilised as a tool for the review and oversight of schools, but to become less significant in the minds of teachers and teacher educators, leading to an improvement in the quality of research-informed educational debate.
• Develop recruitment drives and campaigns centred on celebrating and building on the many strengths of the teaching profession across the country: knowledgeable, research-informed, skilled and experienced teachers, working and developing collaboratively in schools with a professional commitment to the growth and education of the young people they teach. The new government should both overhaul recruitment and also demonstrate their commitment to improving areas identified as of concern for teacher’s workload, self-worth and wellbeing.
• Support investment by education professionals in their continuing professional development. The Department for Education should move away from setting expectations of professional development through a centralised framework or thread, and move towards an approach that identifies opportunities for teacher learning in and across schools, working with centres of research and scholarship in universities, and with institutions such as the Chartered College of Teaching. The co-creation of research-informed actions in a local context to address the poverty knowledge gap, or the challenges of climate crisis, for example, is professional development for all concerned.

These measures will, in our view, contribute to a cultural shift towards re-professionalisation, and away from high-stakes jeopardy. They will have positive consequences, we believe, for recruitment and retention of teachers in the profession.