• £500k to boost flexible working and drive staff retention

    The government is looking for eight schools to share almost £500,000 as part of a programme to boost flexible working and improve staff retention.   Each flexible working ambassador school (FWAS) will receive £60,000.  The scheme, which runs from April next year until December 2022, is part of the Department for Education’s recruitment and retention…

    5.00 Oct. 17th, 2020 | News

  • Hinds defends extension of trainee teacher bursaries to more 2:2 graduates

    The education secretary Damian Hinds has defended a move to relax the eligibility criteria for government teacher training bursaries, and admitted he’s looking at the “simplicity” of routes into the profession to encourage more graduates to join. The Department for Education announced on Thursday that bursaries for graduates training to be music, history, design and…

    5.00 Sep. 29th, 2018 | News

  • DfE 'looking at' resilience measure for trainee teachers

    A Bradford teacher-training organisation has reduced drop-out rates by screening applicants for their resilience. The wastage rate of teacher trainees at Bradford SCITT fell from 10 per cent to one per cent in the first year after applicants’ resilience was measured and those with low scores were targeted with support. The man behind the idea,…

    5.00 May. 7th, 2018 | News

  • Funding rules prevent MATs from building affordable homes for teachers

    School leaders want to offer teachers accommodation to help solve the recruitment crisis, but, as ever, finding the money is too hard. Over the last six months The Harris Federation, one of the country’s largest multi-academy trusts, which runs 44 schools in London, has been working on a project to build up to 100 homes…

    5.00 Apr. 28th, 2018 | News

  • Tips for improving staff wellbeing in schools

    Amid the retention crisis and ever-increasing levels of teacher stress, it has never been more important to look after staff wellbeing. Sonia Mainstone-Cotton has some suggestions Staff wellbeing is a significant challenge for managers and school leaders, who are in an excellent position to make a difference to the lives of their staff. If your…

    5.00 Feb. 16th, 2018 | Opinion

  • Five solutions for teacher retention and development

    The numbers quitting teaching are becoming a full-blown crisis. David Weston presents five solutions that might stem the tide As a basis for a strategy to attract and keep teachers in our schools, Professor Dylan Wiliam’s approach, “love the ones you’re with”, is bang on. We certainly need some overarching strategy to deal with, what…

    5.00 Feb. 10th, 2018 | Opinion

  • Performance-related pay will solve teacher retention crisis

    To keep talented teachers from quitting, you have to pay them according to how well they do, says Lee Miller In almost all walks of life, employees are rewarded for excellent work. It motivates them to stay with their employer and continue to perform well, which in theory, leads to even higher pay in future.…

    5.00 Nov. 20th, 2017 | Opinion

  • Teacher drop-out rates highest in EBacc subjects, study finds

    Drop-out rates for new teachers in key EBacc subjects is “particularly high”, a new analysis has claimed. A National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) study, published today, finds that teachers in maths, science and languages are most likely to leave the profession, particularly in their first five years. Researchers claim the drop-out rate in key subjects could…

    0.01 May. 16th, 2017 | News

  • Teacher recruitment and retention is all about talent management

    Teacher recruitment and retention is not a government problem – it’s schools that need to embrace new technologies and adopt a servant-manager mentality, says David Cobb The debates rage on about grammar schools, free schools and funding, but without dealing with teacher recruitment and retention, those policy debates are largely irrelevant. These are the facts:…

    9.30 Apr. 4th, 2017 | Opinion