UK school leaders over the past two years have endured a journey of intense virtual learning, teacher burnout, school closures and the unpredictability of new strains of covid affecting day-to-day operations.
Teacher retention isn’t a new problem brought on by covid-19, although it hasn't helped. Long before the pandemic - dating back to the early 2010s teacher attraction and retention was heavily impacted by the challenge faced by school leaders to train or recruit enough skilled teachers to meet the demand caused by growing secondary pupil numbers.
Another factor impacting current teacher numbers is the lasting damage to teachers’ wellbeing as a result of continued disruption to the classroom over the last two years, with a rise in the number of school staff saying they are suffering from lost confidence and unmanageable workloads.
A recent survey of 3,000 teachers carried out by Tes as part of the 2022 staff wellbeing survey revealed that 67% of UK education workers said their workload is not manageable — compared to 36% across the rest of the world. And only 38% of school staff in the UK now feel confident in their roles, compared to 79% last year.
Further reinforcing the pressures on the nation’s teaching force highlighted above, a survey by NASUWT-The Teachers’ Union, into teacher wellbeing has found that 91% reported that their job has adversely impacted their mental wellbeing in the last 12 months.
The impact of the pandemic has driven up teachers’ workloads that were already excessive even further and many are looking to employers to put processes in place to relieve the burden. As a result, 78% of respondents to NASUWT’s survey said that their school does not provide staff with workspaces that promote wellbeing, and two thirds of teachers say that their school does not have measures in place to monitor and manage stress and burnout.
Case study: How the University of Bath Student Services are attracting and retaining talent.
Joel Staley is the Deputy Director (Disability & Operations) of Student Services, University of Bath.
Belonging.
An important factor to take into consideration when examining employability and the ability to retain skilled education professionals is to ensure they have a workplace where they feel comfortable, can be their true self and lean on others for support when needed.
According to our research, 1 in 5 (20%) of the UK’s employees feel they don’t belong at work. With approximately 31,000,000 workers in the UK, that means 6,200,000 colleagues feel excluded professionally.
We have to ensure that remote workers don’t feel like they are being overseen due to not being visible physically. We’ve struggled onboarding new remote staff during the course of the pandemic - we found that they are embedding in slowly and only engaging with people on work chats, missing out on incidental informal conversations with colleagues that we value so much and contributes to a sense of belonging and team cohesion and dynamic. We need to work on that over the coming months - we want teams working together, not only to make better use of office space, but to ensure they feel supported and part of a team.
Keeping mental health front of mind
“Ensuring your staff can take comfort in being able to offload is key. We offer access to therapists and counsellors which is invaluable. From a professional point of view there’s always been a mechanism there for people to speak with people regularly - they feel supported.
Acknowledging their concerns can sometimes be very challenging - they are under pressure, but we’ve got measures in place to ensure they can confidentially voice their opinion.
As a sector we’re really looking at the mental health challenges affecting students and staff through the Mental Health Charter, developed as a partnership between Universities UK (UUK) and Student Minds. We’re understanding what this means for us at Bath, ensuring we’re promoting a supportive culture where staff and students feel like they belong to the University and proactively encouraging everyone to think about and maintain good mental health and wellbeing.
Shout about the benefits.
One of the most common misconceptions about teachers leaving their role is associated with pay. As explored above, Randstad’s Workmonitor survey, covering all sectors including education, revealed the importance of meaningful work over monetary benefits.
A deep dive into motivation for leaving teaching was carried out by The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), who recently revealed that most teachers do not necessarily move into higher-paying jobs outside of teaching when they leave. Findings suggest that a large proportion leave employment or retire, and a majority of those who left moved into other teaching roles (such as for the local authority or in the private sector) or jobs in the wider education sector. Even when teachers left for jobs outside of the education and childcare sector, they were more likely to be in lower-than-professional occupations.
The research also revealed that only 2% of teachers who left the profession switched to a different professional or managerial career, and more than two-thirds of teachers who left for another job remained working in the wider education and childcare sector after leaving.
Joel commented: “It’s all about the nature of the work. It’s a good environment to be in. We find that there’s a high number of colleagues that come into student support from NHS services, social work, probation - all different types of background. They value the balance that comes with the role at the university in student support. Yes there are peak times and challenging students and clients, but we promote that balance of work and life that they may not have experienced in other sectors. It’s an attractive package overall.
“In my experience, Higher Education is a fantastic sector to work in - it’s incredibly rewarding. Of course it has its pressures and stresses, but there is also balance - including flexible working, decent pension benefits, generous leave and flexibility around sickness, paternity and maternity leave.
Working in Student Support you also get to support students through their studies and watch them flourish. It’s an incredible sense of achievement to feel like you are contributing toward their personal success. That’s what meaningful work is in my eyes.”
Managing pace of change
Joel added: “The pace of change we’re putting people through is no doubt a challenge that can’t be overlooked. Some thrive on that pace, others don’t and find it really difficult.
Some just want to be at home - they feel they can do their job at home so why do they need to be there in person (on campus). However, others are desperate to get back.
“In terms of attracting new skilled workers, we’re in a really competitive environment at the moment. Some of our staff have decided to explore a new career or change roles due to the way things have changed for them during the pandemic, but we’ve also benefited from others wanting to join us from other sectors for the same reasons. We’ve also found that people who have been in the university sector for a high number of years and are considering retirement aren’t wanting to go into something new, they just want to stop altogether.”