The education secretary is “deluded” and “living in a fantasy world” over the school recruitment and retention crisis, union leaders have said.
Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the National Education Union, today gave their final keynote speech to its conference ahead of their retirement in September.
The NEU is currently locked in a bitter stalemate with the government over teacher pay which has already led to six days of strikes in England by teachers. Members this week voted overwhelmingly to reject ministers’ pay offer.
It comes at a time of crisis in school staff recruitment and retention. The government missed its target for recruitment of new secondary school teachers by 41 per cent this year, and also recruited fewer primary teachers than needed.
And a recent report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found schools posted 93 per cent more vacancies between September and February this year than at the same point in the year before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bousted warned today that “so many schools are running on skeleton staff. Unable to recruit. When they advertise for teaching posts there are no candidates applying. Losing support staff because they can earn more stacking shelves in a supermarket.”
But she said education secretary Gillian Keegan was “airily unconcerned about all of this”.
Keegan ‘dismisses’ evidence
“When Kevin and I showed her the evidence of teacher flight from the profession, she dismissed it with a wave of her hand, and said ‘there’s a shortage of workers throughout the economy. Teaching is not a special case. It’s not as bad as you say it is’.
“Gillian – I have to tell you, you are deluded. You are living in a fantasy world. You are secretary of state for education – it’s your job to ensure that there are enough teachers and leaders and support staff in our schools.
“So I say to you Gillian, do your job.”
The government had offered unions a £1,000 one-off payment for this year, a 4.3 per cent rise for most teachers and leaders next year, and various other pledges aimed at reducing workload.
But Courtney warned today the offer was “badly misjudged”.
He also criticised the “constant repetition that inflation is falling – as though that means prices are falling – and the constant repetition that the offer is funded when it isn’t fully funded”.
“They are not reading the room,” he said, adding that the government should be “worrying” about the union’s “capacity to campaign, to win parental support, to pressurise politicians”.
“Now we intend to win this campaign next term. Mary and I and the rest of you in conference will be leading from the front on that.”
However, with just five months left in the job, Courtney acknowledged it was “just conceivable we might not win on our watch. But you are going to win – I have every confidence in that.”
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