One problem with research is that it’s all about the past. When policymakers or school leaders try out an innovative response to a problem, it can take years for researchers to collect enough good data to determine whether it worked.
For example, many schools been experimenting with increased flexible working. However, an EEF-funded review found a “lack of robust evidence” about whether this improves recruitment and retention. But given that flexible working is a relatively recent phenomenon in schools, this may simply reflect a lack of accumulated data.
One way around this is to simply ask people whether flexible working (or other potential reforms) would make teaching jobs more attractive. But this has drawbacks of its own.
First, people may give ‘socially desirable’ answers to the researchers. For example, they may play down the extent to which money or paid leave would influence their choices.
Second, we would like to know how much these reforms matter. It’s unsurprising that some flexibility is better than none. The question is: will it make a real difference to recruitment and retention?
Recently, researchers have made increased use of job-choice studies, in which participants choose between pairs of hypothetical jobs.
This mitigates social desirability bias because both jobs have socially desirable aspects. It also allows us to quantify the relative impact of different changes on (hypothetical) job choices.
In a new paper for Ambition Institute, we summarise the results from twelve job choice studies. This includes studies conducted with teachers (who could choose to leave the profession) and non-teachers (who could potentially enter it).
Flexibility also matters – quite a lot
We found that teachers and non-teachers alike are highly sensitive to pay. Strikingly, one study found that teachers’ job choices are five times more sensitive to a 10- per cent increase in pay now than a 10-per cent increase in pay upon retirement.
This suggests that shifting some of teachers’ pay earlier in the lifecycle (from pensions to salary) could have a sizable effect on shortages.
Paid time off is another draw. Our results suggest an extra ten days of paid leave per year be can worth as much as a 7-per cent pay rise. This could be pertinent to schools considering a nine-day working fortnight.
Unsurprisingly, workload also emerged as important. In one study with non-teachers, a 20-per cent reduction in workload was valued as much as a 10-per cent increase in wages.
Put another way, cutting workload by 10 per cent could boost the attractiveness of teaching by about same as the official 5.5-per cent pay rise the government awarded last year.
We also found that both teachers and non-teachers are more likely to choose a job if it comes with ongoing professional development. Indeed, in one study, having job-specific training affected choices by the same amount as a modest increase in salary.
This is noteworthy: people are willing to choose a job with lower pay if they know they will be supported to develop professionally.
Flexibility also matters – quite a lot. Each extra day that someone has to work from the office (as opposed to home) is associated with a four-percentage point change in their probability of choosing a job.
No wonder many schools are experimenting with off-site PPA. The same study suggests that people would need to be paid £2,000 per year extra to compensate them for the lack of work-from-home opportunities in teaching.
Understanding the actual effect of the above reforms on real job choices will require patient evaluations of reforms over the coming years. But the findings from job choice studies allow us a glimpse of the likely effects before implementation has even happened.
One theme among the findings is the importance of extrinsic rewards. Adverts to attract new teachers have historically tended to focus on the vocational aspect of the job, and with good reason. People become teachers to make a difference in the lives of children and this motivator will always be at the heart of the profession.
But that doesn’t mean we can ignore other factors that can offer teachers more balanced lives and make them feel rewarded for demanding work that they do.
Read the full Ambition Institute report here
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