Ofsted warn over teacher recruitment

Across England, the number of entrants into teacher training has fallen by almost 6,500 since 2009/10 and this year was seven per cent below the number needed, its annual report found.

It also warned of an “emerging two-tier system”, with some schools more able to recruit and others less able to do so.

Ofsted’s regional director for Yorkshire said ensuring the region had a high quality supply of school leaders and new teachers was critical to raising standards in the region.

Nick Hudson said it was focused leadership and great teaching that would make an impact rather than the structures of schools.

And he said the issue of whether schools were academies or not was a “sterile debate.”

Ofsted’s national report warned that some schools, particularly in challenging areas, are facing difficulties securing the teachers and leaders they need.

It said that within the “very competitive” market there are some schools succeeding in recruitment because they are more proactive.

However, regardless of strategies adopted by those schools that are less successful, the impact is the same: weaker teaching and poorer outcomes for those pupils unlucky enough to attend these schools.The report highlights three factors that count against schools in the recruitment stakes: location, performance and intake. Teachers have the choice of living near the school or commuting to it, and schools found themselves unattractive as employers where they were in isolated areas that were poorly served by road and rail, which were also less sought-after places to live.

If housing or transport options are expensive, or transport options simply unavailable, and if an area’s environment and lack of social amenities are off-putting, a school will struggle to recruit anyone not already living in the area. If the area is one of high deprivation and low skills, the school may already have exhausted the local supply of skilled teachers.

Coastal areas were particularly badly affected.

Schools in less attractive areas or that are difficult to commute to, and schools with a lower performance history, are struggling to improve because they do not have the capacity to secure good-quality teaching for all their pupils, the report said.

Another issue is teacher training schools - which already tend to be in more advantaged areas - keeping hold of the best trainees for themselves.

There is a particular shortage of teachers in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), with science the most acute and more than half (54 per cent) of schools in challenging areas struggling to find the permanent teachers they needed.

The number of teachers leaving the profession continues to rise. In November 2014 this was up almost 4,600 a year compared with 2011 and is being driven by teachers leaving service, not by retirements, which continue to decrease.

Ofsted head Sir Michael Wilshaw suggests the Government should make it an “urgent priority” to develop local intelligence on teacher vacancies and recruitment problems in different parts of the country.

It also wants to see financial incentives targeted in order to get trainees to start their career in the areas and schools that need them most.

It also suggests the consideration of a form of “golden handcuffs” to keep teachers working in the state system that trained them, while a national strategy is needed to ensure that teacher training flourishes in areas that currently lack it.

Teacher training providers should also provide their trainees with experience of teaching in schools in challenging circumstances.

The report welcomed the Government’s National Teaching Service, which sends the best teachers to the areas that need them most, but said it will need to rapidly expand it from its relatively small initial scale to have the necessary impact.

Commenting on the findings, Professor John Howson, an expert in data relating to teacher retention and recruitment, said: “Sir Michael is right to highlight issues in teacher recruitment. The failure of the Coalition Government to act quickly on warning signs has created a crisis where schools cannot find enough qualified teachers. This wastes resources on unnecessary profit for the private sector but more importantly affects the life chances of our children.

“The National Teaching Service will not solve this problem and must not be used as a distraction with the public. As an urgent first step, the Government should once again abate the fees for all graduates training to be teachers as was the case up to 2010.”