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Recruitment and retention

 
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School leaders are driven by an ambition to provide opportunities for young people to reach their full potential. To fulfil that ambition, teaching must attract and retain a high-quality, well-trained and properly rewarded workforce. 

Through our work with members, NAHT is documenting and communicating the unfolding recruitment and retention crisis taking place in our schools to policymakers at the highest levels. 

NAHT is campaigning to:

Ensure all schools can recruit and retain excellent teachers and leaders

  • Lobby for change and reform of key macro issues affecting recruitment and retention: pay, accountability, funding and workload and identify key actions to be taken to improve these
  • Press for the development of a range of flexible leadership and non-leadership pathways to support recruitment and retention, including new opportunities that will retain the experience and expertise of mid to late career leaders
  • Build on the opportunities offered by the Early Career Framework to press for similar support for new heads, deputies and assistants, and school business leaders
  • Maintain a watching brief on the impact of Brexit on teacher supply
  • Lobby the DfE for practical measures to address the workload of school leaders, including protection of strategic leadership time
  • Campaign for a staged real term, restorative pay award for teachers and school leaders
  • Develop a position on the role of CEOs and other posts outside the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) including a position on which roles should have a requirement for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS)
  • Lobby for a review of the pay system, including the STPCD
  • Press government to maintain and enhance the teacher's pension scheme and/or Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
  • Support work to ensure the profession represents a diverse workforce, including those with protected characteristics
  • Support effective partnerships between school leaders and governors with clarity of roles and responsibilities across different school structures.

Create a safe working environment for school leaders and their staff

  • Lobby the DfE to take concrete steps to tackle verbal and physical abuse and aggression against school staff, including harassment online and through social media.  

Ensure professional recognition of school business leaders (SBLs)

  • Lobby the DfE for SBLs to be included within a new national framework of terms and conditions for school staff
  • Promote the professional standards framework for all SBLs
  • Raise the profile and understanding of the SBL role across the school sector, including with governors.  

 

The DfE responds to consultation on QTS and wider career development

NAHT has broadly welcomed the Department for Education's (DfE) response to the consultation on strengthening qualified teacher status (QTS),  and improving wider career development and progressing for teachers.  NAHT has engaged productively with the DfE before and during the consultation process – the outcomes provide a starting point for the complex journey to resolve the recruitment and retention crisis in teaching.

The DfE has committed to the following:

  • Retaining the awarding point for QTS at the end of the period of initial teacher training as is currently the case
  • Extending the NQT induction period for teachers to two years to provide more support to new teachers in developing their practice, knowledge and skills
    • This extension will not impact on pay; salaries post-ITT will still be on the qualified teacher pay scale, and teachers in their second year will have the same opportunity to advance through pay scales that they currently have
  • Introducing an early career framework (ECF) to underpin the induction period - the content of the framework is intended to build on and complement ITT, and it will be designed with the profession to offer coherence with the wider work to improve later career development
  • Amending the statutory induction guidance to create a new role of mentor in addition to the induction coordinator/tutor
    • The government has recognised that this might be challenging for some very small schools, and it is considering adding a caveat to the guidance that allows for exemptions to this rule providing a strong case can be made
  • Ensuring all schools have access to high-quality training for their NQT mentors
    • The government will also review the ITT mentor standards to make sure they are applicable to NQT mentors in schools as well as mentors in ITT settings
  • Supporting the development of new specialist qualifications for non-leadership pathways
  • Establishing a work-related sabbaticals pilot for more established teachers for delivery from September 2019.

NAHT believes this could represent an important first step towards improving recruitment and retention in the profession.  However, we have made clear that for these measures to be effective, all aspects must be fully funded.  Without sufficient funds, schools will not have the capacity to deliver these new measures.  

We will be working closely with the government on the detail and implementation of these proposals going forward.

Read NAHT's full response to the proposals. 

Read the government's full response.

First published 09 May 2018

First published 06 January 2020
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