The economic uncertainty caused by Covid-19 led to a bumper year for teacher recruitment. In 2020/21 the Department for Education exceeded its own target (by 11%) for the first time in years with more than 40,000 new entrants starting postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT).
The good news continued into 2021/22, with 101% of the target recruited (37,000 new entrants), but things have declined in 2022/23, with 71% (23,000 entrants) recruited despite the targets being reduced (DfE, 2022a).
Unfortunately the news isn’t good for STEM subjects. In 2022/23, history recruited 133% of its target and PE recruited 143%. However, computing only managed to attract 30% and physics struggled at 17%. To put that into context, the DfE wanted 2,610 new physics ITT entrants and managed to attract 444.
Getting them to stay
However, it’s not just getting people through the door but getting them to stay. The last time we saw more than 90% of teachers remaining in the profession a year after qualifying was in the mid-90s.
In 2020, 88% of new teachers remained within a year of qualifying, 69% remained after five years (DfE, 2022b) – that’s a third of new teachers, and for STEM subjects it is even worse.
Research from the NFER shows that 16% of science and maths teachers leave within the first year and more than half (53%) leave within the first five years (Worth & De Lazzari, 2017).
The DfE recently announced training bursaries of £24,000 for physics, chemistry, computing, and maths teachers – this year almost 3,400 new ITT entrants were recruited in these shortage subjects. If 16% of them leave within one year, that is costing us more than £13m.
But retaining teachers in the profession isn’t just about economics. The UK has the youngest teaching workforce in the OECD – about one in every four teachers are under-30 compared to the OECD average of around one in 10 (OECD, 2019). This isn’t inherently a problem, but it reflects the rate of high turnover in the current workforce. The problem comes when we explore the correlation between experience and effectiveness.
In 2018, PISA presented evidence that student performance and behaviour are positively correlated to teachers’ average years of experience (OECD, 2018). This remained the case when accounting for multiple other factors – for example, less experienced teachers are more commonly found in more challenging schools.
Like most other professions, teachers have to learn their trade; the question of whether teaching experience is related to effectiveness has been the subject of many research papers, and while there isn’t quite a consensus, the data shows that the vast majority of teacher improvements are made within the first year of teaching, followed by further improvements in subsequent years (Clotfelter et al, 2007; Rivkin et al, 2005). Generally, teachers reach peak performance after three to five years – the challenge is keeping them in the profession for that long.
So what can we do?
Teacher recruitment and retention is a multi-faceted challenge, and it is unlikely to have one solution. Narrow progression opportunities, a lack of professional recognition, and poor support from their school or the wider system have all been cited as reasons for leaving the profession, alongside the excessive workload, challenging working conditions, and lack of trust in policy-makers and government.
Teachers engaging with support via our STEM Learning network say it helps improve their quality of teaching, values and recognises them as a professional, reduces their workload, and helps them establish networks of professional support – all factors that support retention and improve the quality of teaching and learning.
Evaluation evidence shows that these teachers who are engaging with subject-specific professional development are more likely to remain in the profession compared to those who haven’t engaged with CPD (Allen & Sims, 2017), and young people achieve better outcomes when taught by these teachers.
It is clear that STEM Learning can’t solve the recruitment and retention challenges faced by schools, but our support has been shown to help alleviate some of the issues.
The Early Career Framework provides a fully-funded package of structured training and support for early career teachers, but this support isn’t available beyond the initial two years. With some evidence that coaching can be an effective way of increasing teacher retention, we are trialling a coaching model for those teachers in years three to five of their careers to improve practice, overcome challenges and ultimately, remain in the profession.
Addressing teacher recruitment and retention requires innovation. Many specialist science teachers feel stagnated and no longer a “professional”; losing touch with cutting-edge developments in their discipline while they teach the curriculum on a cycle.
Perhaps supporting teachers to continue professionalising within their discipline, for example by allowing them time away from the classroom to engage in academic research, or trialling four-day work weeks would allow teachers to engage with their subject discipline without losing them from the classroom permanently.
- Ben Dunn is the head of monitoring and evaluation at STEM Learning. This is an edited version of a blog that originally appeared on the blog of the Confederation of School Trusts. For more details about the work of STEM Learning, visit www.stem.org.uk
Further information & resources
- Allen & Sims: Improving science teacher retention: Do national STEM Learning Network professional development courses keep science teachers in the classroom? Education Datalab and Wellcome Trust, 2017: https://bit.ly/3X9aDRX
- Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor: How and why do teacher credentials matter for student achievement? CALDER Working Paper, 2007.
- DfE: Official Statistics: Initial teacher training: trainee number census 2022 to 2023, December 2022a: https://bit.ly/3BeblVu
- DfE: Reporting Year 2021: School workforce in England, June 2022b: https://bit.ly/31phkrz
- OECD: Education at a Glance 2019: OECD indicators, 2019: https://bit.ly/3ZdTDvQ
- OECD: Effective Teacher Policies: Insights from PISA, 2018: https://bit.ly/3vFG5f8
- Rivkin, Hanushek & Kain: Teachers, schools, and academic achievement, Econometrica (73,2), 2005.
- Worth & De Lazzari: Teacher retention and turnover research: Research update 1: Teacher retention by subject, NFER, 2017: www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/nufs01/nufs01.pdf