With declining numbers of teachers choosing to stay in the profession and new recruitment unable to keep pace, retention is at a tipping point. To address this, a group of academy trust CEOs are proposing a bold new approach: a sector-wide retention promise.
This retention promise, outlined in a paper by this year’s CEO system leadership group, aims to unite the sector under a shared commitment to ensure teachers feel valued and supported throughout their careers.
The promise focuses on areas such as access to professional development, creation of positive and inclusive work cultures, supporting effective workload management and offering safe and flexible working conditions.
By articulating these consistent expectations, the promise would seek to create a consistent, supportive experience for educators, regardless of where they work.
However, time is of the essence; teacher retention levels are already at their lowest in over a decade. Currently, only 59 per cent of teachers remain in the profession ten years after qualification. The number of new entrants is dwindling, and intentions to stay in the profession have dropped significantly, especially among early-career teachers.
The situation is even more alarming for teachers from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, who face higher turnover rates, which only exacerbates workforce inequalities.
The paper suggests that a large part of the solution lies in effective system leadership – a coordinated, collaborative approach that builds on and goes beyond efforts by individual schools and trusts.
System leadership can bring together stakeholders across the education sector and beyond to tackle the retention challenge collectively. It focuses on three critical areas:
Trust-to-trust support
Currently, good practices in teacher retention are often confined to individual schools or trusts. The paper calls for a shift in mindset where schools and trusts support each other, sharing resources and best practices to create a more equitable experience for all teachers.
This could include introducing nationally-reaching peer review models where trusts with strong retention records are paired with those facing challenges. Trusts could also share anonymised data on retention rates, staff feedback and diversity, identifying areas of strength and improvement.
By working together, trusts can help to drive widespread, systemic change.
Locality leadership
Partnerships between trusts, local public services and businesses can offer new perspectives on workload, flexible working arrangements and staff wellbeing – challenges that are not limited to schools among public service sectors.
For instance, trusts could (and some already do) collaborate with local businesses to provide benefits like discounted services or job swaps, offering teachers new experiences and skills.
Local partnerships can also create a sense of community and shared purpose, making teaching a more attractive and sustainable career.
Influencing national policy
Finally, the paper stresses the need for more education leaders to have a seat at the table in policy discussions. This would allow them to inform key areas like accountability, workload and flexible working conditions.
While some trusts already make commitments to support retention, a system-wide retention promise would ensure educators know what they should expect in terms of professional development, work culture, workload management and work-life balance, wherever they are.
This assurance could help to make the profession as a whole more appealing and sustainable.
This paper is a call to action from the CEO group. By adopting a retention promise, the sector would signal to current and future teachers that their contribution is valued, their growth supported, and that their working conditions matter. This would help build trust, encouraging more teachers to stay and contribute to a stable, effective education system.
The consequences of failing to act will be severe: a shortage of qualified, diverse teachers, diminished educational quality, and widening inequities between schools.
A retention promise is a crucial starting point, but it must be backed by broader system leadership efforts to ensure every teacher has a consistent, supportive experience.
We urge leaders to seize this moment to foster collaboration, share best practices and advocate for supportive policies. By working together, we can build a future where teachers are retained, valued, and empowered.
The end of this crisis may seem distant, but this paper offers a pathway to that shared goal.
Forum Strategy’s seventh annual National #TrustLeaders CEO conference takes place on 19 September. Register here
So basically, all code for a unified local area structure led by people with teachers’ interests at heart…sounds exactly like an LEA. Certainly the opposite of the current Trusts.
The Trust staff (who seem to think they know everything that makes education work brilliantly) can all be demoted with an immediate drop in pay (graduated down over a period of 6 months max) to fill the need/gaps in the classroom another issue solved. And, before the trust CEOs reading this start clutching their pearls; it’s simply a reverse of the toxic system you created to serve your own personal and financial needs at the expense of staff and future recruitment as people have soon got wind of what it is like to work in the classroom under such a terrible over promoted management.
If you’re not capable in the classroom you move swiftly up to senior leadership, then become a CEO, then maybe an advisor, or train new teachers, or if you’re really incompetent you become an Ofstead inspector. All are paid obscene amounts of money to be completely useless, and even worse are quite destructive. No surprise there’s hardly any teachers left.
So more meetings for trust top brass then eh? Probably a czar and a working group, no real change at the chalk face.
Why did ‘schools’ become ‘academies’? Has it benefited the children? Quite the opposite….a layer of overpaid office workers sitting around in expensive offices and buildings making jobs for themselves and using up money that is needed in the classroom… Then there are the overworked teachers in Victorian buildings teaching subjects they did not actually study to 150+ individuals every day, trying to best guess where the Ofsted goalposts are going next amidst a background of poorly behaved teenagers, marshalled in silence around the school, locked out of the toilets and trussed up in St Trinian’s blazers, old school ties and tartan skirts so short they leave nothing to the imagination. Simultaneously the teacher is responsible for spotting and preventing bullying, smoking and drug abuse, county lines and grooming, policing mobile phone use, dealing with children with mental health issues, autism and a host of other special needs whilst emailing demanding parents and drawing up and implementing risk assessments for a 10 minute minibus ride to the next school for a sports fixture. It’s a wonder some of them stay even 10 years. I did 32 years and am now very happily retired.
I listened to the thoughts of our teachers, who have not been too long in the system.
I asked why they were on supply, one was experienced, the others ECT, both cited poor experiences whilst in teaching practice, admittedly I was taken aback!!
Still in this time and space a school experience can knock the confidence out of new recruits.
This is the real experience of some and we need to be aware of this issue.
My staff are diverse and I spend time supporting their career development along with other staff. It is disheartening to hear that people from under represented groups feel this way.
There are many reasons why we just cannot inspire people to teach any more.but we do need tailored approaches.
Maybe do a big listen to those who have left. are contemplating going or are on supply still looking for the right school!!!
Leaders can influence the pressures we face in our schools to a point, but then the same leaders have their own pressures to manage tight budgets so we go round and round.
No one is asking for a bottomless pit, just that achieving quality outcomes need funding.
What do others think?
May I contribute another thought?
I have just read the above comments, including my own!!
A big listen on the experiences of staff in state schools and academies.
I am also hearing such dissent as the people prior to my first comment.
This CEO role and back office all need to connect in some way with the classroom workforce.
I’m now understanding the extent of dissent within the system.
It is now too top heavy with the size of MATs.
So important to keep to manageable sizing so no one is or feels overlooked, disengaged or no sense of value as the relationship connection goes!!
Leaders are then so under pressure that personal behaviours are affected and culture is damaged!!