The Wrong Answer to the Wrong Question

Are teacher shortages a case of a wrong diagnosis and a wrong prescription?

Recently, the Government has looked to offer bursaries to help boost recruitment after teacher shortages. However, is focusing on teacher recruitment the wrong answer?

Why is teacher retention a problem and what effect is focusing on recruitment having on children in schools?

Carry On Teaching: The Real Problem

Year upon year, there are reports of a teacher shortage here in the UK and the Government’s response to this problem has generally been the same. At the Conservative Party conference last month, the Education Secretary, Justine Greening announced that math graduates who teach will receive up to £35,000 in bursaries. Similarly, in Scotland, at the SNP conference in October, John Swinney declared that the government would offer £20,000 bursaries to those who become teachers in key subject areas.

When I started my Initial Teacher Training (ITT) in 2013, similar dialogues were being spouted by the Government. However, is the Government’s focus on cash bursaries as a drive to boost teacher recruitment the wrong answer to the wrong question? In 2003, Ingersol and Smith explored the issues surrounding the teacher shortage and found that teacher recruitment was not the problem.

So, what is the problem and what is the solution?

Should I stay or should I go?

The process that causes a teacher to leave the profession starts a long time before a teacher leaves (Lindqvist and Nordanger, 2015, p96). My experience in teaching mirrors these findings. I loved teaching and had an amazing group of children both years. When I decided to leave the profession this year, it was not a decision I took lightly; it was something I had thought about for almost a year and was based on several factors. The main one being workload and specifically ‘unnecessary’ work.

Studies into why teachers leave the profession have shown that workload is a key factor, which has constantly been an issue in education. Smithers and Robinson (2003) found that more than half of primary teachers who left the profession ranked workload as the most important factor in leaving. I went into the profession knowing that it would be a tough job. I stayed late after school, took books home and generally spent most weekends doing some form of work. Still, I felt like I was only just staying afloat, a feeling I’m sure many other teachers can relate to.

Doing essential things like planning and resourcing your lessons is a given, and providing stimulating, exciting lessons takes time. However, adding other time-consuming duties to this workload (which you are often told won’t take long at all) can start to look unmanageable. For example:

• Constantly inputting assessment data on numerous platforms.
• Data will be reproduced in different formats for the use of governors/academy/school heads.
• Excessive unnecessary ‘in-depth’ marking to adhere to the ‘school policy’.
• Unnecessary administrative/paper work

After getting through my first year, I remember recalling a piece of advice from my tutor during my training year: ‘ask yourself, how much of an impact is this going to have on my children’s learning’.

Surviving

Of all the additional things I was expected to do each week, I asked myself: how many of them were necessary? How many of them were going to impact on my children’s learning? My children made good progress each year, though at times I felt inadequate because I was struggling to manage this excessive ‘unnecessary’ workload. As a professional, spending your week working late or bringing your work home and part of your weekend working will undoubtedly affect your social life and even your health. This problem is facing many teachers, especially younger ones or those new to the profession.

An unmanageable workload affects teachers, causing them to leave the profession, even after just a term. But what effect does it have on children?

Why Focusing On Recruitment Can Be Problematic

Focusing on teacher recruitment as opposed to looking at the real issue, teacher retention can also have a damaging effect on students. Research into the effect of teacher turnover in London schools found that high levels “can be shown to have a detrimental effect on pupil progress and achievement” (Dolton & Newson, 2003).

When judging schools, poor pupil progress is often linked with a high teacher turnover, so what effect is this nationwide high teacher turnover having on the students? If recent reports are to be believed, this issue of teacher retention is only going to get worse; almost half of teachers are predicted to leave in the next 5 years.

Rather than a constant cycle of enticing new people to fill the shoes of those who have left, why do we not hold the Government / school leaders to account and address the problem of retention?

What Can Be Done?

Head teachers, school leaders and governors have the power to ease the strenuous workload. Here are three things to start:

1. Review marking policies to get rid of ‘unnecessary’ marking.
2. Think about what your teachers are there to do and minimise or abandon the amount of administrative work they do.
3. Remember that teachers are humans as well, and a lighter workload will make for happier teachers. Shifting this workload would allow teachers to have more time and to focus on what they are there to do—teach and stimulate the minds of the future.
4. Use authentic and genuine recognition to feed positive professional identities. Praise from school leaders can make the workload feel lighter when you are motivated. Research suggests that “teachers who had quit and those who were considering it in the next two years said that the thing that would most encourage them to stay is receiving praise and recognition.” (Lindqvist and Nordanger, 2015, p101)
5. Remove the top and lower tier OfSTED gradings from school inspections.

Until something significant is done to ease the workload and pressures surrounding the job, more good teachers will continue to leave and it will continue to have a negative affect on our children’s education.