The government has quietly abandoned three policies from its teacher retention and recruitment strategy in a “disappointing” blow amid growing shortages in the sector.
A “match.com-style” website to pair up teachers looking for job shares and an Ofsted hotline to report workload inspection breaches were never set up after being outlined in the 2019 plans.
Schools Week has also established that a pilot scheme offering experienced teachers paid sabbaticals was dropped.
A major study last month to inform a potential Labour government’s education manifesto proposed the gradual introduction of teacher sabbaticals for every five years of service.
Reasons behind the Department for Education’s change of heart vary. The department said it could have “more impact” by focusing on barriers to flexible working in the sector than through a job share service.
It said that it explored a sabbatical pilot scheme but was unable to find a suitable provider after trying to outsource it. Ofsted said the hotline was never formally set up, but the DfE is yet to explain why.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said it was disappointing that the government “had not implemented many of the policies it set out in its [strategy] nearly four years ago”.
Teacher reforms billed as ‘biggest in a generation’
Damian Hinds, education secretary at the time, unveiled the recruitment and retention strategy three years ago against a backdrop of worrying recruitment figures.
He billed it as “the biggest teaching reform in a generation”. Several of the proposals it outlined – and all the major ones – have since been implemented. They include the flagship early careers framework and a market review of initial teacher training providers.
While recruitment and retention improved during the pandemic, teacher vacancies were at their highest level for 10 years last year, with early signs they have increased again this year.
The government is set to miss its recruitment target for new secondary teachers this year for the ninth time in a decade.
The 2019 strategy said many teachers left teaching because they could not access part-time or flexible roles, informing its commitment to create a “find your job share” website.
But the DfE said last week that further discussion with teachers and schools led it to abandon the idea. “We learnt that the department could have more impact by focusing on tackling the practical and cultural barriers around flexible working instead,” he said.
Separately, Ofsted’s latest inspection framework sets out new rules for inspectors to reduce schools’ workloads. They must now consider if teacher workload is too high and not ask to see internal assessment data on inspections.
DfE never found sabbatical pilot provider
The strategy set out a plan to introduce a hotline for headteachers to report breaches of the commitments, but this was never set up.
A contract document for the sabbatical pilot scheme was published by the government in October 2018 to engage potential contractors to deliver the pilot in 2019. But the DfE said this week it never found a provider.
A 2018 government consultation found 81 per cent of nearly 2,000 respondents from the sector agreed sabbaticals would be a positive step for the profession.
Professor Stephen Gorard, director of the Durham University Evidence Centre for Education and a former secondary school teacher, said sabbaticals would “give you a chance to refresh your ideas, yourself and your capacities so you can do it again for another five or seven years”.
“There’s a kind of grind to teaching. You give to the cohorts generously, then they move on and something is taken from you.”
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general-secretary of the National Education Union, said: “It will come as no shock to teachers that the warm words of successive Conservative education secretaries have been just that.”
She said that teacher recruitment and retention was a perennial problem that would only change when the government acknowledged its causes of “high workload, real-terms pay cuts, and excessive accountability”.
Labour is yet to confirm if it will incorporate Lord Blunkett’s proposals on teacher sabbaticals into its education policies.
The government strategy also pledged to explore if there was interest in building new homes for teachers on surplus school land. TES reported earlier this year that the government said there was a “lack of demand”.
A DfE spokesperson said it had launched “significant reforms” after the strategy. These included “the biggest reforms in a generation to teacher training and development”.
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