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.
Tackling teacher turnover
A lack of professional development and investment in people could be a strong contributing factor to the difficulty many schools face in finding and keeping the right people.
To combat the documented fall in teachers entering the industry as trainees or newly qualified professionals, particularly where new and core subject areas are concerned, schools could consider a more structured approach to career development. Doing so will ensure that not only current teachers in your school develop and therefore remain with you, but that the image of the profession as offering rewarding careers influences take-up of teacher training courses.
As Guardian Roundtable contributor, John Howson states; “teachers aren’t fully formed when they come out of school training, it’s about a lifetime of development”.
When continued professional development (CPD) is offered to all members of staff, you create a healthy culture that looks after the simultaneous interests of everyone, but sometimes cost is a concern within schools. Can schools find ways to measure their return on investment?
If schools can dedicate time and resource to individual teacher performance and development, you should see a marked increase in your retention and attraction levels.
Why are teachers leaving?
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.
How to prevent teachers from leaving
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 Staley, Deputy Director (Disability & Operations) of Student Services, University of Bath commented:
“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."
