House of Commons - Education and Skills

Select Committee on Education and Skills Fifth Report

5 Career patterns in teaching

110. A recurrent theme in our discussions was that the notion of teaching as a lifetime career was changing, not for all but for a significant number of teachers. Elizabeth Bird from the Open University said to us that:

"I do think it is important to keep track of the recognition that many people no longer see a career as being for life and that while we are attracting young people in, who may be leaving after 10 or 20 years, perhaps to other educational jobs but actually leaving the chalkface, equally we need to have the people who are doing other jobs coming in to balance that out."[119]

This accords with recent research from the City & Guilds of London Institute which suggested that the average British employee starting work in two decades time will undertake 19 different jobs —whether internal promotions, structural change within the organisation or new careers —during their working lifetime.[120]

111. The expectations of people entering teaching appear to have changed and the expectations of the system in which they are employed also therefore need to change. As Ralph Tabberer, Chief Executive of the Teacher Training Agency, said, "A modern employer of any size, particularly a sector of our size, needs flexibility, needs adaptability. We cannot run a one-size-fits-all model, we must embrace diversity."[121]

112. This diversity has taken on a number of forms. There is the teacher who teaches for a while and then moves on to a different career. There will also be those who leave teaching and then wish to return. The table below shows the likelihood of those leaving teaching at different stages of a career seeking subsequently to re-enter the profession.

Likelihood of Return[122]

Age Per Cent 'Likely'

2002 2003

Under 30 28.3 29.5

30-39 26.9 22.9

40-49 11.6 7.7

50 and Over 7.6 4.8

All 18.3 14.6

113. Our witnesses from the head teacher organisations urged caution on returnees. John Caperon, Chair of the Professional and Management Committee of SHA, said:

"I think it is very important to try to keep the maximum amount of continuity and service. Such is the movement, such is the pace of change in schools, that I think even a relatively short break is going to be difficult sometimes for a very professional person even to be able to negotiate. Therefore,…while there are obviously going to be…flexible structures for working practices generally, I think we need to try to ensure in schools the maximum degree of continuity of work…Children and school communities need as much stability as possible."[123]

114. Kerry George of NAHT was slightly more positive, but still emphasised the difficulties:

"Very few young people now expect to go into a job and stay in the same place for 15, 20, 25 years. They just do not. They expect to move around. If we do not recognise that, that will be something that we will fail to learn at our peril. The critical issue, however, …[is] how, if people are to come in and out of the profession, you ensure that someone coming back does not then immediately face things that they simply cannot deal with because they are out of touch with the changes that there have been, and the non-stop change that we are becoming hardened to."[124]

115. Another option is teaching part-time. Many women teachers in particular have over the years changed to part-time working to combine careers with family responsibilities, but there is evidence that some recruits are now seeking part-time work from the beginning of their careers. Elizabeth Bird said that 42% of OU trainees, who tend to be older students and career-changers, went into teaching on a part-time basis:

"There have been suggestions, going back many years now, from people in the field that more flexible working patterns might be instrumental in attracting a lot more women with school-age children into working in the profession."[125]

116. Teachers coming to the end of their careers who may wish to reduce their workload, and perhaps revert from a management role to classroom teaching once again, form another group. John Beattie of the GTC argued that there should be a trend towards flexible working towards the end of teachers' careers as an alternative to early retirement., so as to keep their experience available:

"I could foresee a situation in schools where we began to recognise this as a professional issue and not an individual issue, just solitary individuals who are finding life hard and want to get out, where we say there is a great reservoir of experience in those people, they carry the history of the profession to some extent and it is going to be lost when they go. So let us look at some of the things we can do. What is it that makes their lives so difficult at the moment? It is probably teaching full time in the way they always have done…let us move them into mentoring positions, let us give them the opportunity to be responsible for performance management, so they can use their expertise as teachers to watch young teachers teaching and suggest how they might do things differently in the light of their greater experience."[126]

117. A problem previously with implementing this suggestion arose from pension calculations. Professor Howson told us that changes to the pension rules meant that it was no longer the case that teachers' pensions were necessarily based on the salary over the final three years of their career:

"You could effectively ring-fence your pension up to a certain point, step down to another job and restart… the teachers' pension scheme is a weird and wonderfully complicated document…but my understanding is that the mechanisms exist, since the changes that were made at the end of the 1990s, to make that sort of flexible working at the end of the career a possibility in a number of different ways, including the one you have suggested, and including the stepping down where you want to give up responsibility and go back to, for instance, classroom teaching without the extra burden of leadership associated with it, but stay full time."[127]

Mature entrants

118. There are now significant numbers of trainees coming into teaching having had careers elsewhere. DfES figures show that of the students who finished training in 2001 and had entered the profession by March 2002, 16,000 were under 30 and 14, 000 were over 30.[128]

119. Professor Moon of the Open University told us:

"Through the 1990s round about 5,000 qualified through the Open University, and I think that gives us quite a good feel for what the mature entrant into the population might be… the segment of the population which chooses to become a teacher in their 30s is a different segment from the peer group that 10 years earlier decided to enter into teaching. There are two or three reasons for that: the anti-teaching feeling of university life has dropped away because they have had all sorts of experience with children and so forth, they have also had other vocational experience and come to view what you might call the teaching profession in a different way."[129]

120. He illustrated this last point by pointing out that maths and science were the most popular subjects and in London more than 50% of applicants came from minority ethnic communities. He also told us that on entry to teaching most were in "promoted positions" within two years:

"So for all sorts of reasons we think that this is a vein of potential supply of teachers that is being worked at the moment but could be worked more significantly."[130]

121. Professor Howson added one note of caution:

"…whilst I accept that mature, second career entrants are very valuable to us, I would want some discussion at some point or other as to what the balance of the profession should look like to ensure as well that we do not get back into a yo-yo situation, where we yo-yo from a very old profession, with most people coming up to retirement, to a very young profession with everybody under 30, and how we can get back to a more balanced profession with a reasonable number in each of the age cohorts."[131]

122. Given the need to continue to recruit in the region of 30,000 trainees a year into Initial Teacher Training, it is essential that the Teacher Training Agency should aim to recruit people from the widest possible pool—mature entrants, those from minority ethnic communities, those seeking part-time work and those returning to the profession amongst others. The evidence we heard encouraged us to believe that ways of attracting people from these different groups already exist, but the TTA should continue to seek innovative ways of recruiting trainees in order to maintain the numbers required.

123. Greater flexibility of employment patterns must be actively promoted both by the Department and school leaders and managers, to make it easier for mature entrants to come into teaching, to promote flexible working and by providing refresher training for returnees. More varied careers are likely to become the norm in all fields of work and teaching will need to adapt to accommodate that trend and facilitate flexibility to allow people to move in and out of the profession.

124. It is also important for mechanisms to be found to encourage those coming towards the end of their career to stay in teaching in some capacity for as long as possible so that their expertise is not lost. The age profile of the teaching profession, with 50% aged over 45, could have serious implications for staffing in our schools over the next ten to fifteen years unless the situation is managed properly.

Conclusions

125. We decided to undertake an inquiry into teacher retention and recruitment in secondary education because of concerns about systemic problems in the teaching workforce in secondary schools; too many teachers were resigning from their posts, a third had expressed a desire to leave the profession over the next five years and recruitment had declined dramatically.

126. During the inquiry, however, we did not find evidence of endemic problems with retention and recruitment. The number of teachers resigning has fallen, actions taken by the Government to promote teaching as a career have boosted recruitment to initial teacher training, and a fall in the school population which is beginning to affect primary schools rolls will from 2005 start to have an impact on secondary schools, so reducing demand for teachers. As Professor Smithers told us, "The turnover rate of about 1 in 8 full-time teachers compares not unfavourably with the 12.4% from the health service and 11.5% from local authorities, and is considerably better than the 26% reported for the retail industries."[132]

127. What, then ,was the reason for the general concern which had drawn our attention to the issue? While we did not discover a system-wide problem, we did discover a number of specific problems with retention and recruitment which pose very real difficulties for those school which are affected. We also explored a number of underlying issues which need to be addressed in order to prevent difficulties in the future.

Specific retention and recruitment problems

Schools which have difficulties with recruitment

128. We noted earlier the evidence that schools with lower than average GCSE results, higher than average numbers of pupils on free school meals or with higher numbers of pupils with special needs have higher turnover of staff than other schools. One way of tackling this problem is to develop a recommendation we have made previously that all teachers should be encouraged to work in a challenging school as part of their career development[133], and involves training teachers specifically to work in challenging schools and offering support to them once they are in the classroom. The establishment of a training programme along the lines of Center X at UCLA would attract people who are keen to work in these more difficult circumstances and, if the example of California is a guide, it could encourage more applicants from minority ethnic communities. We consider that a programme to train teachers to teach in challenging schools and to support them once in post should be developed as a matter of urgency.

129. It is not just the more challenging schools which have difficulties in recruiting staff. We heard in evidence that there are problems in areas just outside London, for example, where teachers living locally can travel to work in London where salaries are higher. Financial incentives may help to address these problems. The School Teachers' Review Body is at present consulting on proposals to allow greater flexibility, and it is suggesting that schools which face persistent labour market difficulties should be allowed to offer higher levels of pay. This might be funded through a revised funding formula, or on application by the school, as with the Standards Fund.

130. We support this approach, as it seeks to address difficulties on a school by school basis rather than by geographical area. The teaching profession is strongly committed to national pay scales, and local variations have not been looked on with favour in the past, but where there are persistent problems of recruitment it is surely right in the interests of children's education that financial incentives are available to attract teachers. They have worked well in encouraging more people to train as secondary teachers, and could make a significant difference. We look forward to seeing the School Teachers' Review Body's recommendations following its consultation.

Shortage subjects

131. There are persistent shortages of teachers in some subjects: mathematics, science, modern languages, technology and English. Training bursaries and "Golden Hellos" for those completing induction years have been introduced in each of these subjects, and the Government intends to increase those amounts for mathematics from September 2005. Other subjects also have difficulties: research in 2003 showed that there were on average only 3.5 applications for each vacancy in RE compared to 11.8 for each History vacancy.[134] The Government is taking action, particularly on maths teachers, but problems with the designated shortage subjects, and with others, need to be closely monitored to make sure that policies to encourage people to teach in these subjects are effective.

Teachers teaching outside their area of specialism

Underlying issues

Workload

133. The workload agreement is designed to take certain administrative tasks away from teachers and provide them with more preparation and other non-contact time. Given the concerns expressed by teachers about excessive workload, the successful implementation of the agreement could aid substantially the retention of teachers in the profession. There are significant problems: the numbers of new staff required to implement the agreement are not in place, the NUT has never subscribed to the agreement and UNISON has decided to withdraw from it . The DfES needs to do its utmost to keep the workload agreement in place and to encourage those who are not participating in it to do so.

Wastage from training and qualified teachers who do not enter teaching

134. We heard in evidence that fewer than 50% of those who begin teacher training are teaching after five years; the rest either fail to complete training, qualify but do not enter teaching, or decide within that five year period that they do not wish to continue as a teacher. In a world where careers are no longer expected to be necessarily for life, this situation may be considered acceptable so long as recruitment continues to improve. However, in looking at ways in which to retain people in the profession, it is notable that the retention rate of those who train through the employment based routes, who typically tend to be older, is considerably higher than the university or postgraduate courses , with more than 90% achieving qualified teacher status. Concerns about the high level of drop-out from initial teacher training could be addressed by seeking to expand the employment based routes.

135. We emphasised in our discussion of Center X and the possibilities for such a programme here that support in the school is vital, and the same is true of employment based routes for teacher training. Any expansion of employment based training must include appropriate support for trainees and for their schools.

Induction of newly qualified teachers

136. We heard from various witnesses that where it worked well the new induction year for newly qualified teachers made it more likely that people would stay in the profession at the end of the year. NEOST argued for an expansion of the scheme. As we concluded in relation to students in higher education, the first year is crucial.[135] We recommend the introduction of a formal entry programme integrating the end of training, the induction year and support in the early years of a teacher's career. This could reduce significantly the number of teachers who are no longer teaching within five years of qualifying.

Exit interviews

137. We discussed earlier the role that the quality of leadership in a school plays in retaining teachers. An issue which we feel needs to be addressed is what happens when a teacher decides to resign. There needs to be a systematic process of exit interviews, as is common practice in other sectors, to ensure that heads and other managers know why people are resigning and perhaps provide the opportunity for solutions to be found to any problems which may be encouraging a teacher to leave. Many headteachers do this already, but it should be come a standard practice to ensure that teachers are not lost to the profession by default.

Pupil behaviour

138. Poor standards of pupil behaviour—general indiscipline, violent behaviour and verbal abuse—is the reason given by many teachers for leaving or contemplating leaving the teaching profession. The DfES has acknowledged that there is a problem, and has attempted to address it in schools through the behaviour and attendance strand of the Key Stage 3 Strategy (implemented in September 2003), and through Behaviour Improvement Projects, piloted in 34 LEAs since September 2002, with another 27 added in 2003 and with a commitment to a further expansion to all Excellence Clusters by September 2005.

139. These measures were generally welcomed by teacher unions, and we are encouraged that the issue is being acknowledged and addressed. We have two particular concerns. One is that these initiatives must be properly evaluated to see whether they do actually help to reduce levels of poor behaviour. The DfES told us that

"London University's ongoing evaluation shows fewer exclusions from targeted schools and that teachers welcome support from multi-agency [Behaviour and Education Support Teams], additional Learning Mentors, police in schools and senior staff appointed to take responsibility for whole-school behaviour management issues."[136]

The Key Stage 3 strategy is in place throughout the country and the Behaviour Improvement Projects will be in place in more than 61 LEAs and 400 other schools in Excellence Clusters by September 2005. A reduction in the incidence of poor behaviour in schools will help both teachers and pupils. If the Government's strategies work, they should be pursued with vigour. If they do not, alternatives need to be found. In any event, the evaluation needs to be as thorough and as expeditious as possible. We cannot afford to wait for years to discover whether or not the DfES is on the right track.

140. The second concern is that any measures taken by schools need to be supported by parents, and there must be an acknowledgement that schools alone cannot overcome this problem. Engaging with parents whose children cause difficulties in school has proved an intractable problem but one that needs to be addressed. Schools face a more difficult task if they are not supported by parents.

Age profile of the profession

141. Despite the influx of new teachers through ITT, 50% of teachers are over 45. That could spell problems for schools over the next ten to fifteen years. Stephen Kershaw, Director of Finance at the DfES and formerly head of the School Workforce division, explained how recruitment was tailored to prevailing trends:

"[W]e have rather a sophisticated teacher supply model which works both with our analytical services focusing on the department and the policy code and in the Teacher Training Agency which does indeed plan in some of the judgments about falling teacher numbers as a result of falling rolls in primary and has done for some years, and that is why the Teacher Training Agency has long-term secondary recruitment targets… The second point, of course, is to count the demographics of the population, the teacher population, as well. So over time, as we know, a significant number of teachers are approaching retirement age and that, of course, is taken into account in the model as well. So the falling numbers you describe in primary, to some extent demographic changes will take account of that. The third thing is that when one takes the nature of training that we are talking about, of course we are not going to ask the Teacher Training Agency to train people for whom there will not be jobs. It is fair to say that over the last few years all the pressure has been to recruit and train more people generally rather than cut them off, but it is one reason why, if you look at the figures, over the last two or three years there has been a distinct shift from the four-year B-Ed, which traditionally people have gone on from to primary school teaching, into the PGCE, which traditionally has been the main route into secondary teaching, and that has been a very deliberate shift to take account of that."[137]

142. Recruitment is the easier part of the problem, as it falls to the TTA to manage recruitment to ITT throughout England. There is no similar control over the arrangements for people leaving the profession and departures will take place according to individual circumstances. The retirement age is being raised to 65 with effect from 1 September 2006 for new teachers and from 1 September 2013 for existing staff. It is possible that this will encourage those who would otherwise have retired at 60 after 2013 to bring forward retirement. This does not change the nature of the problem, but it does suggest that the consequences for the profession may be felt sooner rather than later.

143. One of the themes of this inquiry has been that teaching should no longer be seen necessarily as a career for life, and with more people joining at a later stage in life the age profile can be expected to change. What is needed is a good balance within the profession; those who have long-term careers in teaching, those who teach and then move on to another career and those who come to teaching as a second or third career.

144. The situation requires some strategic thinking. The DfES, NEOST and the TTA need to develop a managed approach to retirement to ensure that there is no sudden exodus of half the profession, and that adequate numbers of new recruits are brought in to the profession over the next decade. The projections are that 12,000 fewer teachers will be needed in secondary education in 2010 compared to 2004 because of falling rolls.[138] This may help in the management of the problem, but demographics alone cannot be relied upon to produce a satisfactory outcome. We do not suggest that a balanced profession is an easy thing to achieve, but it is a situation which needs to be managed, so far as that is possible, rather than left entirely to chance.

The Government's five year plan

145. On 8 July the Government set out its plans for schools for the next five years.[139] We will aim to examine those plans, alongside our conclusions from this long-term investigation into secondary education, in our overview report later in the year. One thing is certain: the success of the Government's policies for improving schools depends on teachers. As part of its five year strategy, the Government must develop a plan for the structure and strategic management of the teaching profession which addresses the specific issues we have identified; without sufficient appropriately qualified and experienced teachers, all plans for improvements in school provision will come to nothing.

119 Q 127 Back

120 City & Guilds Press Notice, The transient 21^st century workforce, 25 February 2004. Back

121 Q 403 Back

122 Ev 234, Chart 8. Back

123 Q 243 Back

124 ibid Back

125 Q 164 Back

126 Q 97 Back

127 Qq 165, 166. Back

128 Q 116 Back

129 ibid Back

130 ibid Back