Commenting on an incentives package for teachers announced by the Welsh government today (Sunday 5th October), Laura Doel, national secretary for school leaders’ union NAHT Cymru, said:
“We appreciate that the recruitment of subject-specific teachers, Welsh language teachers, and teacher from ethnic minorities is problematic. But we feel that this incentives package ignores the wider concerns of the profession.
“NAHT has long campaigned for an improvement to the terms and conditions of all teachers and leaders to ensure the profession remains attractive for all. We firmly believe that creating the conditions where all can thrive, having manageable workloads, and reasonable expectations being placed on the profession is a much more sustainable way of tackling the recruitment and retention crisis.
“These incentives are for those during and on completion of their training. There appears to be no requirement for them to work in schools for a certain number of years to gain or retain the financial benefit. So we could still end up paying out a significant amount of money to those training to become teachers, only for them to gain permanent employment and still leave if they choose to.
“A significant proportion of teachers leave the profession within the first five years of teaching – if we are really going to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis in education, we need to tackle to endemic challenges facing all teachers to ensure teaching is an attractive proposition for a long-term career.”
First published 05 October 2025