In 2016, while heading up the education practice at Policy Exchange, I published a collection of essays on the topic of teacher recruitment and retention.
Obviously, because I worked at a think tank, the most important thing was a pun in the title, so I called my own essay Let’s talk about flex. (The joy of flex was vetoed.)
Teenage humour notwithstanding, my point in 2016 was that the school system was underplaying the mass exodus of women aged between 30-39 from teaching. This group represents 25 per cent of the teaching workforce overall. It was, and eight years on, still is, the largest group exiting the profession.
Although the DfE data didn’t and doesn’t give reasons for exit, a series of conversations I’d had with school leaders and teachers themselves told me that maternity and motherhood was likely to be a key driver. The research at the time from NFER also suggested that a lot of these women were leaving for lower-paid but more manageable jobs with a family, and that relatively few of them would ever return to teaching.
My argument was, and is, that the school system was underplaying flexible working – by which I meant not just part-time working (home working not having been popularised yet in those halcyon pre-Covid days) but also people increasingly moving in and out of teaching during a life cycle.
Given the NFER research that around half of all teacher leavers stayed in education in some way, it seemed clear to me that for mothers (and indeed anyone), the passion for the sector remained. Therefore, there needed to be smoother routes back into the profession after a few years out.
Shortly after publication in 2016, I had a conversation with Emma Shepherd, who had just set up what came to be known as the Maternity Teacher / Paternity Teacher (MTPT) project and organisation, while she was off on her own first maternity leave.
As befits a discussion between a policy person and a teacher, Emma instinctively liked the hypothesis but politely intimated that she wanted to do more with it. She wanted to talk to mothers who were or had been teachers and turn my random ramblings into something that could be practically useful.
This is a challenge the education sector can now grasp
Eight years on, I could not be more thrilled and delighted to see the work of MTPT going from strength to strength in terms of supporting teachers through the immediate parental leave and return to work period.
Today’s publication, from a collaboration between The New Britain Project and MTPT, is the conclusion of a long period of work engaging with mothers and fathers in detail about their experiences of parenthood, and how the school system can best support them.
This is not an easy nut to crack. The rise of flexible working via home working is common among graduate jobs now that are alternatives to teaching (and indeed alternatives to working as support staff in schools). People value that flexibility about as much as a 7.5 per cent pay rise, or close to £3,000 per teacher to offset the loss of that approach.
Meanwhile, childcare costs for young children, even for part-time (25 hours a week) and term-time only (if that can be found) average £6,000 a year. Full-time nursery provision for under-twos is now a staggering £14,800 a year – the highest cost in Europe.
However, the recommendations in this report could make a real impact. Whether it’s a coaching programme to support teachers and their line managers during and post maternity leave, priority childcare places, or introducing 1,000 flexible working champions by the end of this parliament, there’s plenty here for teachers, leaders and policy makers to make a start.
As the report says, flexibility is a solution to a problem, not a problem to be solved. The work of MTPT and others, the galvanising effect of teacher recruitment and retention shortages and the innovative thinking already being done at school and trust level (most notably by Dixons Academies Trust) all point to that fact.
So I am far more optimistic than I was in 2016. The motherhood exit is still very real, but this is a shared challenge the sector can now grasp.
Read the full report by The New Britain Project in collaboration with MTPT Project here
Not child friendly at all as a profession for your own and no flexibility at all. At the whim of initiatives at all times as the contract is open ended and no extra time is allocated to cope with change. Retention is a problem. Support plans and disciplinaries are rife in schools that are R.I. They are usually targeted at over 50s.