Oral evidence: Retaining and Developing the Teaching Workforce, HC 460

Oral evidence, 15 November 2017.

Witnesses

Professor Dame Alison Peacock, Holly Hartley, Alan Henshall and Dr Patrick Roach.

Chair

Welcome. We are here today to look at the NAO’s Report on retaining and developing the teaching workforce. We have looked at teacher training in the past and it is an issue that very much interests the Committee. Having enough high-quality teachers is clearly crucial to the success of our school system and the education of our children. We know that the overall teaching workforce has grown, but so have pupil numbers, and that the number of secondary school teachers has fallen. We are also very alert to the regional variation, which we have come up against before in this Committee. We will therefore be asking a number of questions of the Department. First, though, we are delighted to have a pre-panel of witnesses who are at the coalface, so to speak, and who deal with these issues day in, day out. I will introduce them from my left to right: Professor Dame Alison Peacock, who is chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, Holly Hartley, who is the principal of Thistley Hough Academy in Stoke-on-Trent—yes, you guessed, we had to check the pronunciation.

Holly Hartley

I was going to say.

Chair

Don’t worry, we have local knowledge. We couldn’t start until he was here to tell us. We also have Alan Henshall, headteacher of Roundwood Park School in Harpenden, and Dr Patrick Roach, who is deputy general secretary of the NASUWT, which for those who do not know is the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. A very warm welcome to you all. Our hashtag for today, for anyone following on Twitter is #teachers. I ask Layla Moran to kick off.

Layla Moran

This Report, I am sure, made sad reading for a lot of you—and a lot of us. More and more people are leaving the profession. Starting with Dr Roach and moving down the panel, in your opinion, why is that?

Dr Roach

Why are more people leaving the profession? The Report confirms that, and it confirms the evidence that the NASUWT has been collecting systematically over the course of the last seven years on teacher morale, job satisfaction and so on. The state of the teaching profession does indicate that there is a real challenge, in relation to both teacher recruitment and retention. Around two thirds of teachers who we surveyed last year reported that they were seriously considering quitting the teaching profession and had seriously considered doing that in the last 12 months. What are the causes of that? There are key challenges in relation to overall pay levels in the profession and whether they are competitive with pay elsewhere in the economy for graduate labour. There is the issue of teacher workload, which is at unsustainable levels. Despite the Government’s efforts, teachers’ workloads and hours remain stubbornly high. It is not always down to Government practice or Government interventions, or indeed the failure thereof; there are also school-level management practices and employer practices. Greater freedoms and flexibilities have been given to schools, but whether schools have used those freedoms and flexibilities wisely, are doing the right thing as far as their workforce are concerned, and understand the challenges around retaining a workforce and developing that workforce over time is certainly called into question on the basis of the evidence available to us. For us, those would be the three main factors driving the retention challenge.

Chair

Okay. I say to you all that we are always interested in what you have to say, and some of you have put some evidence in to us, which is helpful, but if you agree with what Dr Roach has said you can just say that you agree without repeating it, and then we can get more out you.

Alan Henshall

I would like to talk a bit about retention, if I may. I think that teachers have a very clear idea of what it is that they need to do to do a really good job. They are highly trained professionals. They are really committed to their work and they are in it for the right reasons. What they find is that, when they are faced with ever so slight increases in their class sizes year on year and ever so slight increases in the amount of admin they have to do year on year, despite the fact that we take good pastoral care of our staff, with that image of what they need to do to do a really good job, they are gradually falling below their own high standards. They are doing that because they have more and more to do. They have more people in their classes and more things to take on, and because of that they are finding that life in the classroom is not quite giving them the job satisfaction that they want. They love the job and love working with young people, but what they do not love is feeling that they are not doing an adequate enough job because of that. One of the things that could happen is less being expected of teachers if they are in that situation. But far from that—I agree with what Patrick Roach said—I do believe that over the last few years, we have had new key stage 3 assessment, new GCSEs and new A-levels, and because they have been introduced at a rate of change that is rapid and, in my opinion, very poorly managed, it means that the resources that are being produced by the exam boards and the publishers are not keeping up. They have had to make all these things afresh, and they do not have the past papers to work from either. You have this double whammy of more people coming into your class, headteachers and school leaders trying to save money by imposing more on their teachers, and the workload increasing because of the pace of change being managed in a very poor way nationally, which we have no choice but to follow given that we are a secondary school and we have to do those qualifications. Those are the key things for me about retaining teachers.

Chair

Thank you Mr Henshall, and thank you for your very clear written evidence. We have some other questions on that later.

Holly Hartley

I agree with what my colleagues have said, but I would like to give three examples that I have encountered over the last couple of weeks. I am the head of a school in very challenging circumstances, and I am now helping out a second school as well. I am fiercely proud of everything that we do at our school. We have a very strong moral compass, and that is a collective expectation of every single member of staff; but there comes a point where the moral compass runs out, and that is when it gets really quite scary. In terms of staff wellbeing at the moment, I have probably got the greatest concern that I have ever had. In terms of people’s health, I have never known it as bad as it is at the moment. We are doing a wide range of things in our school to support our staff. Despite that, we have recently had a number of things that have occurred. To give you one example, we have a senior leader who has decided that she simply cannot cope anymore with the long hours that she has to work in order to be successful in her job, and she has decided that her young family are missing too much of her and that it is time for her to step out of the profession. We have a young teacher who is three years in and who, again, is an exceptional classroom practitioner—an exceptional teacher. She feels that at the moment the balance in the profession is off-kilter. She feels that the obsession with data has basically made her life too difficult and that she is not able to do what she really wants to do. One of the things that has been incredibly successful at Thistley Hough is engaging with Teach First, but retention beyond the second year is really difficult. If I may give you some examples, we have had 13 Teach First staff over the last four academic years. Again, they have been absolutely fantastic. Of those 13, we have managed to retain only two, and that is because those two were from our geographical area. Of the ones we lost, four of them left teaching altogether, and the ones who decided to move on in their teaching careers ended up going to schools in perhaps less challenging circumstances.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

I listen to all my colleagues and see all the tensions on the landscape reflected in the kinds of things that I hear from teachers and headteachers when I visit schools all over the country. The whole point of establishing the Chartered College of Teaching is to provide an authoritative voice on behalf of the profession about pedagogy. We have heard colleagues describe that sense of moral compass sometimes being compromised. Decisions that we have to take in relation to workload, about whether we ask for flexible working conditions or about how we survive and thrive within the school are decisions that we want the profession to be supported in making through looking at evidence of what works in classrooms, so that colleagues can say, “Actually, these things really have an impact and make a difference; however, there is not much evidence to say that we should carry on doing these other things.” Otherwise, because we are so conscientious as a profession, we tend to pile even more on top. The rationale of the Chartered College is to hear the voice of the profession in relation to research, evidence, pedagogy and leadership to try to address some of these issues in a very positive, proactive way, building on the school-led system.

Layla Moran

Ms Hartley and Mr Henshall, how could the Department better help you to retain your teachers?

Alan Henshall

One thing that I have suggested is that you might be able to help us recruit and retain if you helped us with flexible working. Flexible working is quite an expensive business for schools. Employing two part-timers is a lot more expensive than employing one full-timer, because of the on-costs involved. But what I have found—and the Report states this—is that there are an awful lot of qualified teachers out there who are not practising. That in itself is a waste of public money, in that they were trained to teach. One of the things that they are often tempted back by is the idea of flexible working and part-time working. If we could be given resources to bring those people back in, that would be really good. I have some excellent teachers at my school who are managing to maintain the job satisfaction that they require to stay in the job by working four days a week. That is not a good thing, because it means that on their fifth day—unpaid—they are trying to do the work to catch up. That is a major workload issue. But in terms of recruiting people back into the profession and retaining the people who are there, we could do more to help returners to the profession, many of whom would prefer to work part time, to dip their toes back into the water and come back into a school.

Layla Moran

Can you explain why it is more expensive?

Alan Henshall

Because you have pension and national insurance contributions by the employer. The on-costs, as they are called, in a school are much more expensive if you have two people sharing a job than if one person does it. It adds up to more money, basically. I have 92 teachers, I believe, and the full-time equivalent is 71. I am keeping my workforce staffed by a lot of part-timers. I really, really value them, and they are some of the best teachers in my school, but it is a very expensive model. The alternative is not to be staffed—or not to be staffed with highly qualified, excellent teachers.

Layla Moran

I have one final question. Is your timetable flexible enough to have flexible teachers in it, or is it the case that they are working five days at different times?

Alan Henshall

I am much more flexible. It is a nightmare for the person who timetables my school, but as the employer I am very flexible in that. I try to do as much as I can to do that. One or two lessons take place outside the working day, as long as that suits the working patterns of the teachers concerned, but most of it is in the day. I try to be as flexible as I can, yes.

Holly Hartley

Again, I agree with a lot of what Alan has said. The best teachers are happy teachers, and if we can support teachers to have a better work-life balance, we will be far better off. I absolutely agree with greater flexible working arrangements. I think we are perhaps in a more complex situation in that budgetary restrictions at our school make it very difficult to timetable on a practical level. I would think there would be a number of secondary schools in the same boat, so to speak.

Chair

Sorry; make it difficult to timetable for part-timers?

Holly Hartley

Yes, with regards to flexible working. It is do-able, but it takes time. Again, it is a case of finding the other half, third or quarter on a practical level, which is very complex. For me, there has to be an acceptance that this is a long-hours profession. We talk about the notion of 1,265 as directed time; the reality is that, as the Report documents—even though it is not specifically talking about directed time—teachers work far greater hours than that. I think there needs to be national acceptance of that. For me, as well, refresher training is absolutely critical. We have been successful in securing a member of staff returning to the profession, and that is something that we did individually on our own. I was not actually aware of the return to teaching pilot until I read the Report, so there is clearly a PR piece of work to be done there. For me, teaching is a really highly respected profession, and I think there is more work we can do there. I actually came out of industry to go into teaching. When I think about the lurks and perks I had in industry compared to what I have in teaching, it is a very unbalanced playing field. If we invest more in staff wellbeing, particularly pertaining to health benefits, that would pay dividends that would be incredibly significant. For me, one of our greatest losses is our more mature professionals, who add so much to the profession, so much to the classroom and so much to the lives of young people who often need the stability of people with those kinds of life experiences.

Bim Afolami

I have a question on that for both of you. You mentioned that you were not aware of a particular initiative. What initiatives have you been aware of from the Department and central Government, or indeed local government? If you were aware of them, to what extent did they help?

Holly Hartley

I feel the need to turn to—

Chair

Yes, there is a list in the Report.

Holly Hartley

Yes, I was going to say the list in here. We engage with teaching schools, and we have found that incredibly successful in terms of getting practitioners into our school through a range of different routes. Again, that has been really successful. We have done a range of things, such as teaching leaders and teaching fellows, that again have been subsidised by the Department, and those have also led to national professional qualifications at middle leader level and senior leader level. I am now doing one at executive leader level as well. We are obviously aware of the Chartered College of Teaching, but some of the others, I must admit, I have probably heard of, but with regards to detail—

Alan Henshall

I would definitely agree with that. Some of them are very good. We are part of a teaching school alliance in Harpenden and St Albans, and that is really good for us. We work together, we train our own teachers and we do school-based teacher training for that. I am the same: I am a practising headteacher and some of those things are new to me, and some are vague to me and I am not quite sure of the detail of them. One of the reasons for that is that there are a huge amount of different routes into teaching now. I understand why that is happening—to try to attract people into the profession from different walks of life—and it is to be welcomed, but it is also very, very complicated. Doing something that would simplify that for headteachers, but also for people who are interested in becoming teachers, would be a really good move in order to help us all understand it and attract people in. Just to finish, on my local teaching school alliance, the person who co-ordinates that says he spends on average 20 minutes a day on the phone to people, just explaining the route that we offer compared to the route that somebody else they contacted offers. If that was all in one simple place when people are considering whether to become teachers or not, that would really, really help as well. We aren’t affected by Teach First. I think Teach First is an excellent thing, and I am glad that that keeps going as well.

Heidi Allen

You answered one of the questions I was going to ask about Teach First. Is it universal?

Alan Henshall

No. I am in a much more leafy lane than Holly. Therefore, it is not open to my school, but I would love it to be because we have got some fantastic students from our own school who are becoming graduates, and it would be great to have them back into the school as well. So I would welcome that being extended.

Heidi Allen

The observation I made when I looked at Teach First for my own area, which struggles to recruit teachers for a whole host of reasons, was that I was shocked by the philosophy of Teach First, which was, “We are creating leaders for the community. We don’t care if they don’t stay as teachers.” I found that staggering, as it is a big use of public money. I am interested in your views on that.

Holly Hartley

It is a difficult one, because when you are recruiting the highest quality graduates, there has to be that kind of future career. One of the philosophies of Teach First—I have heard it said before—is about the leadership of the future, but schools need future leaders as well. One of the greatest sadnesses for me is that we invest so much time and money in developing those staff, only to lose them. It is an amazing organisation and it achieves amazing things, and the impact that those staff have had in our school has been transformational. I cannot underscore that enough. The greatest sadness is that we then do not see them on to the next stage of their career, but it is also a factor that they leave the profession.

Heidi Allen

Is there something about the Teach First model that could be changed to help with that?

Holly Hartley

You made the point earlier about a fairly wide acceptance that they are not expected to stay as teachers; that is an accepted norm before they have even started. That is something that needs to change, because we need them to stay. It is about working with young people and transforming their lives; that takes time, and we need stability.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

I am a trustee of Teach First, and one of the things they welcome is the fact that we are establishing chartered teacher status, which would be in one’s third year of teaching and beyond. That notion of intellectual rigour is the kind of pathway that these young, talented teachers are looking for. Being able to provide recognition while staying in the classroom is fundamentally important. We do not want to have people leaving the classroom all the time to go off and be leaders straight away. We want them to stay. We hope that the chartered status will be one route that will entice more teachers to want to stay beyond their second year.

Bridget Phillipson

I will come on to the point about regional variation in just a moment. I want to ask Ms Hartley about the experience in Stoke of being part of the Department’s opportunity area. What does that involve, and what have the benefits been?

Holly Hartley

To be honest, it is fairly early days at the moment. The project is just being set up, and a week on Monday is the launch for the school, which we have all been invited to. At the moment I cannot really comment, but if you invite me back in six months I will tell you.

Bridget Phillipson

On regional variation, what do the panel believe the causes of that variation might be? There is a lot in the Report about it. Dr Roach, do you have any comments?

Dr Roach

I am happy to comment on that. I hope the Committee have looked at our reflections on the question of supply routes in general as well, because that deserves greater attention. That is not because we agree that there is a confusion around the supply pathways into teaching; it is the underlying causes of drop-out from the profession that have to be properly examined and carefully addressed. On the question of hotspots and “difficult to recruit” areas around the country, we have “difficult to recruit” areas geographically and by subject. It is pretty universal. We look at the evidence from Ofsted and others that have asked schools about their experiences of the challenges around recruitment. Across the board, around half of all schools report that they are finding it difficult to recruit. In more deprived areas, we know that that is higher, with around 75% to 77% of schools serving pupils from deprived backgrounds facing those recruitment and retention challenges. I come back to what I said at the beginning about the underlying causes. The underlying cause relates to the competitiveness of teaching as a graduate career option available to good graduates who aspire to have a career for life. The pay is not seen to be competitive or sufficiently rewarding; teaching is now in the 19th percent of lowest-paid graduate occupations out there. There is a challenge there to begin with. There is the challenge of workload and sustainability from day one. For a beginning teacher who perhaps is in their NQT year—

Chair

You have given evidence on this and you have talked about the work there before. It is particularly the regional variation that I think Ms Phillipson was—

Bridget Phillipson

I should perhaps have been clearer. I also meant in terms of the attainment gap regionally and whether you get a sense that the Government are taking action to address the issues around quality and attainment.

Dr Roach

We do not think the Government are taking the right actions in relation to quality and attainment, because if the Government were taking the right actions in relation to teacher quality, they would not have deregulated qualified teacher status in the first instance and they would not have created greater freedoms and flexibilities for schools to recruit unqualified staff to serve in classrooms. We have seen somewhere in the region of a 35% increase in unqualified staff working in classrooms. In terms of addressing the key challenges within the system currently, the Government do not appear to us to be addressing the right things in the right way. Actually, taking action to bring downward pressure on workload and to increase pay overall, would make the profession as a whole more attractive to graduates. We have been here before. In the early 2000s we had a deep recruitment and retention crisis in the teaching profession. That required those forms of actions. The net result was that we cracked the recruitment and retention crisis and we made teaching the No. 1 career of choice for graduates in this country. The Government need to learn the lessons from that and apply them, rather than bury their head in the sand and pretend that somehow the crisis does not exist.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

In terms of recruitment for membership of the Chartered College we are finding that there are certain areas—I have a heat map here. The north-west has far less recruits than other areas. I can send this to the Committee.

Chair

Please, if you could, that would be very helpful.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

The evidence tells us that access to high quality professional learning is a way of retaining staff. There was a report published by the Wellcome Trust earlier this year. It had invested a lot of funds in supporting science, technology, engineering and maths teachers, and when it researched retention it found that those teachers were much more likely to still be in the teaching profession having received that support. The Chartered College is accessible regardless of what your school is doing in terms of professional learning. You are able to join as an individual member. Again, that is trying to address the fact that there are regional variations and provide access regardless of that.

Bridget Phillipson

On the issue of quality, in addition to the issues around recruitment and retention on a regional basis, what more can be done and what are the drivers of that regional imbalance?

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

I think it is very interesting. As Holly says, it is very early days for the opportunity funds and we have the teaching and learning innovation fund as well, which is really focusing on areas of deprivation. This is an initiative that is explicitly—the Department for Education tells us—intending to address these issues. We want to learn from that early on, so if we start to see promising signs of things working, we will want to learn from that to see what we can do across the whole country. It is very important that we collaborate more and learn from each other in trying to address this issue that is so important.

Bridget Phillipson

But is some of this just reinventing the wheel? Surely some of what needs to happen to improve standards and support teachers is well understood. Is it not just a question of doing this everywhere as opposed to picking 13 areas without any discernible criteria?

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

Yes. Show me a school leader who does not want to raise standards in their school; show me a school leader who says, “I am not worried about attainment.” Of course, it is universal. I think we have fantastic teachers and schools across the country. Clearly the social circumstances around some schools are such that it is more difficult and challenging—respectfully—to teach in Stoke than in Harpenden. I know that Alan would agree with that. The challenges are different, but they still exist wherever you are. Part of the attraction, ironically, of being a teacher is that the job almost feels impossible. There is a sense of constantly juggling things, but there is a tipping point. On the comments of our colleagues on reward for the profession, I am a teacher and of course I would support those. We do need to reward education.

Chair

Do our two headteachers have a couple of main points that they want to add to what has been said about the regional variation?

Holly Hartley

I want to say a couple of things. Responding to one of Patrick’s comments, I do believe that teaching is still an incredibly rewarding profession. Even though at the moment times are incredibly tough, we have worked incredibly hard at our school to make sure that our teachers get a real buzz at the end of every single day. That is about a sense of purpose and leadership. I would like to see the Department working with leaders. I find the title “teacher quality” somewhat concerning, because I do not think it is always about teacher quality. A lot of the time it is about role complexity. As Alison has already said, in some schools there are so many things that need to be addressed in addition to the quality of teaching and learning. I feel sometimes there is a danger that, when one talks about context, people feel or say that you are making excuses. It is not about making excuses; it is about tackling the problems that really exist, and in some schools that is incredibly challenging. But good teachers work with that. For me, stability and stability in policy are absolutely critical, because teachers need to be able to get on with the job that they do on a daily basis, and when we have a raft of change after change after change, that makes it harder for us. When you look at other systems, I think the one in Finland would be a good comparison. They have had far more stability in their policy over a number of years. For me, it would give teachers the chance to grow their roots and to learn the skill of their craft, without having to learn one thing and then quickly move on to the next thing.

Chair

Mr Henshall, is there anything you want to add after those comments?

Alan Henshall

No. I think it has all been expressed, thank you.

Chair

If all our witnesses—I say this to the Government witnesses in the room—could be so brief, it would be great. Caroline Flint, did you want to come in briefly, because we need to be aware of time?

Caroline Flint

Doncaster has an opportunity area as well, and I understand that it is about trying to improve social mobility. I heard you say before, Ms Hartley, that you are waiting to see, but is there anything within the opportunity area for you to tackle some of your recruitment and retention issues, from the ambition of that scheme?

Holly Hartley

Yes. For me, continuing professional development for teachers at all stages of their career is absolutely crucial and that is something that I would hope we get to see through our opportunity area. I would also—

Chair

Sorry. Did you say you hope to get to see, or you will see?

Holly Hartley

Well, we will get to see it, but one of the things I think we have to be quite forceful on is that it is for teachers at all stages of their career and not just for those within the first five years, so that we can retain people, where at the moment we are losing people. Social mobility is a very complex matter that is not necessarily going to be addressed within a three-year window. I think that multi-agency working has got to be the key part of that. That is one of the things that I am really interested to see, as our opportunity area develops. Schools cannot work in silos, particularly when you are talking about social mobility cold spots. You need to be working with several other agencies in order to give these young people the support that they really need.

Caroline Flint

Going back to my colleague’s point, everything you have just said I would not disagree with, but I just do not understand why that would be confined to a few areas and why that is not embedded in the way we support our teaching profession, and our children and families.

Alan Henshall

We have a much lower deprivation factor, but one in 10 of my students is disadvantaged and the more it creeps up, the more the class sizes get bigger, the less able you are to get at the students who need more help in the classroom and extra support in their learning in the classroom. That really is harming social mobility in my school, definitely.

Caroline Flint

But isn’t it about making sure that, through continuing professional development and support, teachers, at whichever school they are working in, have the resources and the networks to be able to respond flexibly to whatever challenge they are facing? In one school, it could be underachievement because of class, in another school it could be English as a second language, or whatever it may be. It isn’t one-size-fits-all. What you need is a comprehensive system of support, don’t you?

Alan Henshall

Absolutely.

Caroline Flint

Not just area schemes.

Holly Hartley

May I just come in on that, because I think you have used a critical word there, which is “networks”? In Stoke-on-Trent, we are a unitary authority with 14 different secondary schools, and one of the things that we have is a really powerful network, and we collaborate across our city, with different heads working together. We have an organisation called SASCAL and that is exactly what we have done. Different schools have different issues that they work with, and we often pool our resources and share. That is about the integrity behind the profession. That model works in Stoke-on-Trent and it is something that could definitely work in other places.

Dr Roach

We would simply take a view that there needs to be a system-wide response to the challenges that we face in relation to recruitment and retention. If the Government is going to prioritise opportunity areas, as a union we will give that a fair wind, but all our areas have challenges, which are, in their own way, acute challenges for those schools and certainly for the children and young people who are currently in the system who don’t have that guarantee of a quality teacher in front of them. The stark fact of the matter is that, across the system, schools are actually spending less in terms of their share of resource, their share of income, on teachers today than they were in 2010. What the Government has to address is, strategically, how does it use its levers to get, for example, opportunity areas to do the right thing as far as recruitment and retention in the profession is concerned, to ensure that the outcomes for children and young people are as the Government desires them to be. That is a challenge the Government faces: how to use the levers at its disposal.

Chair

Thank you. I know we are going to come back to Professor Peacock on some of these issues, but Ms Keegan has a short question before I go back to Ms Moran.

Gillian Keegan

As someone who was educated in Knowsley, I share your pain in terms of the social deprivation. One thing I am struggling with is that job satisfaction is usually linked to results, and the results in terms of good or outstanding schools and social mobility are actually better than they have been. I know that they are not perfect, but they are better than they have ever been. Usually, that would give some sort of satisfaction. What is the disconnect between the results and the morale?

Alan Henshall

It is to do with the point that I made first: the difference between what teachers know to be the good job that they need to do, because they are trained to do it, and the amount they can do with the amount of people in their class and the amount of students that they are working with.

Gillian Keegan

So the confidence that they could do even better is what is creating this disconnect.

Alan Henshall

That is right. It is the knowledge that, “Give me the right resource, give me a bit more time to prepare my lessons, give me a slightly lower class size and give me some time to breathe, step back and do some professional development on the job, and we will be much more satisfied with the job that we are doing every day.”

Chair

Briefly, Ms Hartley, because I do want Ms Moran to come back, but if you have something to add—

Holly Hartley

It is not just about exam results either. Teachers get results in a whole range of other ways. It might be getting students to go to university. It might be getting students to engage with schools.

Gillian Keegan

But they are related to exam results.

Holly Hartley

Yes they are, but for teachers who work in the most challenging schools it is not always about the exam results. There is so much more to it.

Caroline Flint

Yes, but it shouldn’t be an excuse.

Gillian Keegan

Good or outstanding is about measuring the teaching quality, isn’t it?

Alan Henshall

It is, but an Ofsted grade is not a measure of teacher wellbeing.

Gillian Keegan

No, no.

Alan Henshall

It is a measure of the standard of the school and the standard of the results they are getting.

Gillian Keegan

The children’s outcome.

Alan Henshall

Yes, exactly. It is a lot better to work in a school that is graded good or outstanding, but frankly that is not what drives a teacher. What drives a teacher is being able to help a child as well as they can do.

Layla Moran

The headline of this Report that made the news was that 50% of posts are not being filled by people who are qualified to fill them. I wanted to ask the headteachers, Ms Hartley and Mr Henshall, whether that is something that you have experienced. Have you had to fill posts with people who you would not have had as your first choice?

Holly Hartley

I would not say that it is with people who we would not have had as our first choice. I would say that we are having to be more creative in the way that we source our staff. If I say to you that I have literally had to scour the world for a scientist—it is that difficult to source a scientist. In Stoke-on-Trent, we have a maths partnership that runs across the city that has been very helpful there, but there are certain subject areas and the introduction of the EBacc has made that more complex. It is getting harder and harder and harder. The issue is also that this breeds a certain amount of competitiveness between schools, and that is schools over a relatively large area. So with the critical cut-off points in terms of resignation dates, you end up with a stampede. Teachers have to resign on October 31 and then they will leave at a certain time. Where you might fill in one place you create gaps elsewhere, and that is incredibly difficult.

Alan Henshall

Yes, I agree. I have a quick stat from my school. We have advertised 16 teacher jobs since May. Nine had no applicants at all, six had one applicant and one had two applicants. That is despite the fact—

Layla Moran

How did you deal with that?

Alan Henshall

We had to re-advertise, we had to go out and recruit and we had to put out feelers in our local network and things like that. We did finally manage to do it, but it is not easy to do. That is despite the school being graded outstanding and despite the fact that the teachers in the school acknowledge that it is a great place to work. The most important factor is that it is very expensive to live where we are. Although Harpenden is a lovely place to live, the teachers who I recruit cannot afford to live there.

Bim Afolami

I would like to say that, as MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, I agree—Harpenden is a wonderful place to live.

Alan Henshall

You did tell me to say that.

Bim Afolami

Critically, I know that the Chair is concerned that I ask a good question. In relation to living costs, how do you think you could be supported by the Department or by local government in dealing with that particular problem, which I know you will have acutely in Harpenden?

Alan Henshall

You may have detected from my accent that I am not originally from Harpenden; I am a Yorkshireman. I was enticed to go and teach in a fairly challenging school in Luton as a newly qualified teacher, because I had a rent allowance offered to me by Luton. I came down and had the rent paid for me for the first year. That enabled me to relocate and start work there and to teach in an area that was perhaps very difficult to recruit in, and it enabled the school to recruit me. Certain things on relocation might help with the regional variability that we were talking about. That is one suggestion I would make.

Holly Hartley

The cost of recruitment now for schools is spiralling out of control. The Report talks of a national strategy for that, which I think would be an excellent idea. It is incredibly expensive, particularly when you have to recruit somebody fast and you might be drawn to using one of the private agencies.

Chair

We have certainly had some compelling evidence on that, which we will no doubt reflect when we publish our Report.

Layla Moran

How many of your teachers, Ms Hartley and Mr Henshall, are not teaching their primary subject? I should caveat that by saying that my background is as a physics teacher, but I always taught maths, and I think that’s okay.

Alan Henshall

You are not interested in a job in Hertfordshire, are you?

Layla Moran

No, sorry. How many of those teachers are teaching subjects that are not even closely related to their subjects?

Holly Hartley

To give you an exact number, I would have to provide that later. We have used such things as SCITT courses, whereby you do a transfer from your subject specialism into another one. Once you get a good member of staff—a teacher who can teach—that has been a very effective way. We have tried to limit that as much as we possibly can, because students need the level of knowledge that a subject specialist has, but sometimes you are forced to make those decisions.

Layla Moran

Do you feel when it happens that the kids suffer?

Holly Hartley

With the right support, there is no need for the kids to suffer, but continuing professional development and things like SCITT are absolutely critical in that regard.

Alan Henshall

I agree that good subject knowledge does not make you a great teacher. Therefore, a great teacher who is learning that subject can do a really good job. The higher you go in a secondary school, the more it harms the students, because they always need to see over the horizon to the next event. When you are teaching GCSE, you need to understand what is required at A-level. When you are teaching A-level, you need to understand what is required at degree level, so I think it is something that does harm student chances the higher you go up the school.

Layla Moran

Professor Peacock, did you want to add something?

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

Sometimes you might have a teacher who is teaching a class and it is their subject, but if they have not had the access to high-quality CPD within their subject, they might not be as effective as they might otherwise be. So it is about that notion of being able to access learning regardless to enhance one’s quality.

Layla Moran

Which brings us neatly on to the next line of questioning, which is about the initial qualification. Dr Roach, you mentioned the QTS status not being needed by certain schools, and that has been harmful. Can you expand on that?

Dr Roach

Not by certain schools, but by any school. The deregulation of the requirement for schools to employ qualified teachers was slipped under the wire, shall we say, very early on in the period of the coalition Government. It is an issue. When we have spoken to young teachers—to newly qualified teachers—about their perception of the professional status and esteem that goes along with the job, they have said that one of the most harmful factors to that is professional deregulation; the reduction in the requirements placed on teachers to be qualified. Our ambition is that we move to a profession that is, frankly, a Masters-level profession. That is our aspiration and ambition as a union, but teachers are saying, “If our status is not secure, the rewards won’t follow in relation to the job, and frankly, it might be better to seek a career elsewhere.” As I said earlier, we can see the statistics on what has happened as a consequence of the deregulation. We are seeing an increased number of unqualified staff. I do not just mean unqualified teachers; I mean unqualified staff in general, working in classrooms and being expected to undertake teaching. We have seen a greater reliance on teaching assistants and cover supervisors to replace teachers. We have seen the explosion of the work of supply agencies that, frankly, are making huge profits at the expense of the public purse. All those very real issues flow from the deregulation of teacher qualifications.

Chair

We will come back to that shortly.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

Again, one thing that we are really keen to do is to raise the status of the profession as a whole. A lot of what we have been talking about comes back to that. I am incredibly proud to be a teacher. A lot of what we have been talking about comes back to that. I am incredibly proud to be a teacher. If we have a profession that people flock to or want to come to, we are more likely to have teachers who also seek qualification. We have started the chartered status, which will be really tough—it has an exam attached to it—and we have got 150 people on the course for the pilot in January. Teachers, some of them with PhDs, are saying, “We really want to do this because we like this notion of recognition.” Typically, school leaders are looking to recruit qualified staff because they want the best teacher for the job. Clearly, if there is a pressure and we have not got the status and the drive towards bringing people in, the issue around the qualified staff becomes something more prevalent.

Layla Moran

Professor Peacock, do you believe there should be an ongoing requirement for CPD that is met by all staff?

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

I think that to be a professional is to constantly seek to improve one’s practice. This should be part of a natural extension of the school-led system, whereby one is proud to teach and proud to constantly update and improve. The kinds of opportunities that we seek to provide across the country at a very low cost exactly speak to that. When I liaise with colleagues from other royal colleges representing other professions, the expectation that one constantly seeks to evidence the learning that has taken place and have that accredited—we are thinking three-yearly after the chartered status—is something that I think the profession has an appetite for, but they have to be able to have access to it. So it is about having the high-quality CPD available to them. Things like the teaching and learning innovation fund are seeking to start to do that, but there is a lot more that could be done.

Layla Moran

Ms Hartley and Mr Henshall, what are the barriers to your getting this professional development for your teachers?

Holly Hartley

Time and money.

Alan Henshall

Time more than money.

Layla Moran

Explain time.

Holly Hartley

Teacher contact time now is so high. The things we need to cover during directed time include a wide range of things. The money to be able to buy more time—

Chair

You mean cover for teachers going off—

Holly Hartley

Yes. Also, I feel at the moment that teacher contact time is too high. If you are a teacher, for example, and you are not an NQT, you could be teaching in our school something like 44 out of 48 periods, with planning, marking and everything else that needs to be done. It is incredibly difficult to factor in CPD.

Layla Moran

How much would you like to see it reduced by?

Holly Hartley

That is a very difficult question.

Layla Moran

Wish list.

Chair

We have the Permanent Secretary in the room. He is listening.

Holly Hartley

Absolute pie in the sky wish list. If teachers could have a 50% timetable where they have the rest for planning, preparation and doing the other things, that would be a dream.

Alan Henshall

I would love to wish that as well, but three or four hours a week would definitely make a huge difference to the quality of the assessment—

Layla Moran

More than they already have.

Alan Henshall

Yes. Again, it takes students out of the classroom for a day, but we try and create that time by having more inset days. That is one thing we can do as an academy. We add those in. It is not very popular because it reduces the amount of contact time you have a year, but sometimes you have to be brave and do that in order to make sure the teachers are getting the professional development of a high quality that they need to keep motivated and keep improving their practice.

Layla Moran

Final question to Professor Peacock. What more can the Department do to support you in your endeavours?

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

This is a dream question.

Chair

Yes, the dream and then perhaps what you might think is realistic in the short term. The Permanent Secretary will probably not take the dream straight off.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

What is really important about the Chartered College is that we need to be independent: financially independent. A greater awareness of the work that we are doing is fundamentally important so that teachers join us and it is their body. We are not an extension of the Department. We need to be seen as being independent. I would love to think that the work that we start to do gains traction across society, and that more businesses say they would like to invest in supporting the teachers. We produced a leaflet to ask, how can we help our teaching profession? Education is our future for the country, so it goes way beyond what the Department can do. It is about society supporting education and providing an opportunity for the teaching profession to be deservedly really highly regarded. It is about having access to the learning that is needed and about teachers having such access regardless of the school they are in. We were talking about these regional issues; if you are working in a school that maybe is under the cosh in terms of Ofsted and all kinds of pressures, but you know that you can join your professional body, you can access learning online, you can go to conferences on Saturday, should you wish to—you don’t have to, but you could—then you have got a lot more agency building up within the profession on behalf of teachers. I think that is the important answer, really.

Chair

So independence and enough money to do that. A final quick question from Gareth Snell.

Gareth Snell

This is to Holly and Alan; you said fewer hours would be good. Would the same effect be experienced if, rather than fewer hours in the classroom, you had more teachers and smaller classes? I wasn’t expecting silence.

Holly Hartley

It is hard to say.

Alan Henshall

I would say high-quality teaching is the most important thing; it is more important than class size. I definitely would say that.

Caroline Flint

That is what people pay privately for.

Alan Henshall

Yes, but that is another debate. However, you can give more attention individually to someone and therefore your lesson becomes a lot better if your class size is small and you have had more time to prepare and more time to assess and work out what their individual needs are, so that you can plan the lesson going forward, so I would say yes, in answer to that question.

Chair

Holly, do you agree?

Holly Hartley

Yes, I do—quality of teaching, again.

Chair

Thank you very much indeed, all four of you, for your time. The transcripts for this session and the next will be up on the website uncorrected in the next couple of days. Our Report, with a fair wind, could be out before Christmas, but do not bank on that, because we have got a bit of a backlog building up. You are very welcome to stay; in fact our Moroccan visitors have gone so there are plenty of seats for the next session, when we are welcoming the Permanent Secretary and a colleague from the Department for Education. Thank you very much for travelling to visit us. Your input has been invaluable. It is always very valuable to hear from those of you working with and representing the front-line profession. Examination of witnesses

Witnesses

Jonathan Slater and Paul Kett.

Chair

Welcome back to the Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday 15 November 2017, where we are examining the question of teacher training and recruitment. We have just heard from teachers and others at the frontline and we now welcome our main witnesses for today, Jonathan Slater, the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education—welcome back to you, Mr Slater; and Paul Kett, who is the director general for education standards at the Department for Education. I think it may be your first visit to us, Mr Kett.

Paul Kett

It is, indeed.

Chair

A very warm welcome to you. Before we kick off with the main session, I want to ask Mr Slater a couple of questions. We note that there has been a change at the top of the Student Loans Company. I understand that Peter Lauener is taking it on as a temporary project. Is that right?

Jonathan Slater

That is absolutely right.

Chair

And how long is he going to be running the Student Loans Company for? Has he got an end to his time, or is it as long as he needs to be there for?

Jonathan Slater

The Student Loans Company needs to start the process for recruiting a permanent chief executive, and Peter will run the organisation in the meantime.

Chair

Until that point, okay; and, given that there have been some changes there, which we are not going to discuss today—but we do know that the National Audit Office will look at this—what are your priorities for the Student Loans Company, for Peter Lauener, now he is in that role?

Jonathan Slater

Peter’s tasks are to make sure that the highest possible customer service is maintained for all of the customers of the organisation. Equally, the Student Loans Company has some important programmes of work to improve its effectiveness—getting more digital is the most obvious example—to provide a better service for customers than them simply getting their money on time. He has to do those first. As a very experienced chief executive, I hope he would be able to maintain that progress, albeit as an interim chief executive.

Chair

So it will not be at a standstill while he is there?

Jonathan Slater

No. The customers of the Student Loans Company need the best possible service from the company and it is his job, supported by me, to ensure that they get it.

Chair

Great. There are a lot of colleagues across the House concerned about some of the issues for their constituents in terms of the Student Loans Company. I am sure people will welcome that promise and let us hope it delivers. You may have picked up that BBC “Panorama” and the BBC education correspondents have done some digging about student loans and some of the private colleges that were encouraged to expand places for higher education by the Government. Are you aware of the revelations in “Panorama” in particular?

Jonathan Slater

I am.

Chair

What are you going to do about them or as a result of them? To recap, for those who may not have picked it up, students were effectively buying places, qualifications and sometimes attendance at colleges, and in some cases being issued with bogus qualifications. Will you change your inspection regime?

Jonathan Slater

The NAO has recently finished a review of our efforts to improve in that area. A predecessor of mine had a fairly torrid time in front of the Committee a few years ago, and you were very clear about what the Department needed to do to get on top of the issue. I would not be at all surprised if we were having a meeting in due course to discuss what the NAO found.

Chair

We are.

Jonathan Slater

They did find a very significant improvement in performance in that respect.

Chair

You say that, but this is quite recent footage. These are actual things that have happened in recent months, particularly in London colleges where people were going in and buying qualifications and attendance.

Jonathan Slater

Which they absolutely should not do. When anybody sees any criminal offence, they should definitely contact the police. I would look to see the strongest possible action taken. It is very distressing for us all to see public money being misused in that way. From the point of view of the regime that we have in place to minimise the number of such events, we will probably never get to the position where that is zero. The good news is that it was 4% and it is now down to 0.5%. That is the NAO’s advice. It looks to me like the arrangements that we have been putting in place are taking us in the right direction, but we need to ensure that as few as possible of those criminal events take place.

Chair

Clearly, when it is criminal, we expect the police to take action, but you are here as the Permanent Secretary of the Department responsible. We have seen, for instance, that the college in Greenwich that was featured in the programme had expanded from 650 students about five or six years ago to 6,500. That rate of expansion was partly because of Government policy, which is not an issue for us to question, but do you think that your Department and the predecessor Department responsible had the measures in place to ensure that, with that rapid expansion, there were the safeguards in place to limit or minimise this type of fraud? As you say, people always try it on, but you have to ensure that you have the mechanisms in place to stop that happening.

Jonathan Slater

The answer I was trying to give you was that no, it did not and it has got a lot better, but we continue to need to improve. Whenever we see any example, we need to ensure that the appropriate regulators are taking the appropriate action. It is better than it was but it is not as good as it needs to get to. It is a disgrace when you see those things happen.

Chair

Do you have any comments for the university sector? They award degrees and often license out that degree-awarding status to those colleges. Clearly there were some issues there, particularly in the case of the University of Plymouth, which was awarding degrees. Do you look at that or do you think there are enough systems in place for you to be sure that those degrees are being awarded properly? Do you think there is a role for the Department there at all?

Jonathan Slater

One of the most important purposes of the Office for Students, which was created on the back of Acts approved by Parliament at the end of the last session, was to strengthen regulation of the higher education sector in a more risk-based way than the previous regime under HEFCE, which did not have any legislative powers in respect of fee income and did not have the responsibility to take a more proportionate pace. Obviously I would like to see the Office for Students focus more on areas of income growth with institutions with less of a track record, as is implied by your question. That is precisely the point of the OFS and that is what we will be holding it to account to deliver against.

Chair

Do you not think there is a damage to UK plc? In this case, a university was licensing degrees and there was clearly something the police need to be looking at there. Do you have any plans to mitigate the impact that that could have as it ripples out across the world? A lot of people come to Britain because we have a good university system; a degree from a British university is highly prized. It may be a small number overall, but there are evidently now people out there with degrees that are not worth the paper they are written on, which is a kick in the teeth for the students who have done the work.

Jonathan Slater

Which is why it is absolutely important that we have more effective regulation in the ways that I have described. The introduction of the teaching excellence framework is designed to demonstrate good quality, but wherever you have bad stories like that, they will have some negative impact, and we need to minimise the number. I absolutely agree.

Chair

Do you have a message for students out there about whether they should apply to colleges and what safeguards there are to ensure they are getting a good deal? Can you assure them that you are on top of this enough now to make sure it will be minimised in future?

Jonathan Slater

I can assure them that the quality of regulation of this sector is a very high priority for the Department and that we have made significant progress. This is the whole point of the creation of the Office for Students, on which we are currently consulting to see what people think is the best way of meeting this challenge as well as possible. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that. I would say to those students that my task and the task of Michael Barber and Nicola Dandridge at the Office for Students is to protect their money.

Chair

We will come back to this. It is important. A lot of people out there are feeling quite bruised because they have good degrees from organisations that have now been questioned, quite rightly, in public. We will move on to the main session.

Layla Moran

Is this country facing a teacher retention crisis? How seriously do you take this?

Jonathan Slater

The country is seeing, as you discussed at the previous session, more teachers leaving, particularly in their early years, and the Department needs to support schools in doing all sorts of things of the sort you were describing to tackle that challenge. I am looking forward to having a conversation with you this afternoon, to the extent that you want one, about the sort of thing we are doing. We absolutely need to help schools to retain more great teachers for longer in order to get good value for money and in recognition of the fact that pupil numbers continue to rise. I think we can do more than we are doing at the moment.

Layla Moran

But you do not think it is a crisis.

Jonathan Slater

I do not use words like “crisis”. That is not typically what you get from Permanent Secretaries. I am straightforward with you that although the overall level of teacher retention is pretty much the same as it was a few years ago, in the first five to six years there has been an increase in drop-out rates. It is very important that the Department works with schools to tackle that, which is why the proposal I guess we will be discussing about strengthening the qualified teacher status, an early career framework, more CPD—

Layla Moran

So come to it. What are you doing to fix this?

Jonathan Slater

From the point of view of retaining teachers, we have been looking carefully at the data, and I have highlighted a particular challenge that we face. It seems to me and to the Department that the most obvious way we can support schools in meeting that challenge is to develop, on the back of what we all know is a very professional profession—as you were discussing previously, teachers do not see the opportunity to develop with high-quality CPD, moving onwards and upwards in their career, to the same degree as in other professions. Teachers feel they are not getting sufficient support from the Department in that regard, as the NAO identifies, so we will shortly be consulting on work we have been doing with teachers, other experts and the College over the last six months on what a really top-class, strengthened QTS, followed by really good CPD for the years after that, would look like.

Chair

We probably all know what we are talking about, but we keep using these acronyms, so we should spell out what they mean.

Jonathan Slater

Qualified teacher status and continuing professional development. It is clearly not there to the extent that everybody would like it to be, so what we have been wrestling with over the last few months with teachers and headteachers is what the best way for the Department to support them is. The sorts of things we were getting ready to consult on are things like whether we should have a much clearer framework for what you might expect to do as a new teacher and when and how you might develop, or how we might improve the quality assurance of that CPD. A lot of money is spent by a lot of schools on things that they are not that happy with afterwards. What role might we or an independent provider play in quality assuring that? What level of entitlement might you give a new teacher, or a teacher after three years or five years? How would you incentivise them and the schools to do it?

Chair

These are all questions that you are asking. Ms Moran?

Layla Moran

They are questions I would also like to ask. What are your specific plans to address all those questions, and what timeframe are you planning to address them in?

Jonathan Slater

We have been addressing those questions over recent months. The bad news, for the timing of this particular hearing, is that we are about to consult on a specific set of proposals, and the Secretary of State would not welcome me announcing her plans today.

Chair

Let’s cut to the chase. From what you are saying, we welcome the fact you were in the room to hear the previous witnesses, but do you disagree with any of their analysis of the problem, without your having to breach any confidentiality on the advice you are giving to your Minister?

Jonathan Slater

Well, they said quite a lot of things, didn’t they, and they did not always agree with each other in every respect.

Chair

On retention?

Jonathan Slater

I think that they and other headteachers need more support from the Department in helping them to retain the best teachers that they can. One thing we need to do is to put into place a strengthened set of arrangements for QTS and early career progression.

Layla Moran

Just to clarify, is the Department considering reinstating QTS for all schools?

Jonathan Slater

So, 95% of new teachers come in on the basis of qualified teaching status. It is true that, a number of years ago, the Government decided to give schools the freedom to recruit non-qualified teachers if they wanted to, on that basis of the Government’s judgment at the time, which has not changed, that individual headteachers are best placed to make those sorts of judgments. You can imagine a number of scenarios in which a headteacher might choose— See footnote.

Chair

Sorry, we are not really asking too much about QTS. So, the policy remains that schools still have that freedom, but you are saying that 95% of teachers—

Jonathan Slater

It is a freedom to do it if they particularly want to. In 95% of cases they do not. The Secretary of State’s particular priority is to strengthen QTS, but not to abolish the other one.

Chair

That is what we need to know. Thank you. See footnote.

Bim Afolami

In the NAO Report, it says that roughly £555 million is spent on the recruitment of teachers, and that about £36 million is spent on the retention of teachers. Bearing in mind all we have heard and what you have said, does that strike you as the right balance?

Jonathan Slater

No, which is why we are proposing to do more work to help schools to retain teachers. I will give you one example; we can go on to others as and when you like. A recommendation you made at a previous meeting was that we should carry out a detailed evaluation of the money we spend in supporting new teachers coming into the profession. You definitely would not want us to turn that tap off, given the level of demand required, until we are very clear. That is a very detailed evaluation and it is looking into the bursaries right now. It finishes in April and we will publish it in the summer. It will then give us the ability that you quite rightly asked us to have to compare and contrast. However, we clearly need more support for schools on retention.

Layla Moran

To Mr Kett, do you now know why people are leaving the profession? Do you feel the Department has a handle on that?

Paul Kett

We’ve got a better understanding than we had previously. We have drawn on research from the National Foundation for Educational Research that was cited in the NAO Report. We have also had a number of different conversations with both school leaders and the various reference groups of headteachers that we work with as a Department. There is a very high degree of consistency in the reasons people have been giving. I heard the previous panel citing workload as one of the concerns, but also access to good opportunities for progression and support for professional development. That is one of the reasons why, as the Permanent Secretary was saying, we are focusing on how we can provide that—particularly in that three to five-year bracket where there seems to be a change in the numbers of those leaving the profession.

Layla Moran

Do you understand the difference between the three to five-year bracket and the early retirees? Is there a difference in the reason why they are leaving?

Paul Kett

No, I do not think we do. In the conversations I have had with those three to five-year leavers, the reason tends to be the opportunities for progression and the workload. One thing we have seen in the workload analysis is that teachers at an earlier stage in their careers tend to be working longer. How do we support those teachers to manage the workload that those later in their careers find easier to manage?

Jonathan Slater

It is also helpful, isn’t it, to look at what happens to them and where they go, as that research shows us. The NAO have highlighted the fact that slightly more than half of those who leave early go to other jobs in schools, so they are just doing different jobs within the schools. That is obviously good news for the schools, but it raises questions about workload being one factor, which we will come back to. Others go into further and higher education, so as the Permanent Secretary for Education that is a win for me. One in 10 of them, about 10% of teachers who leave teaching early, go into jobs outside education. That is the group of people I am most interested in, but equally I am interested in those who choose to go into caring responsibilities, who we might well—if we can make the progress that you were discussing with your headteachers earlier—keep in by providing more flexible working. Given that more than 40% of women in the economy work part-time, and fewer than 30% of female teachers do, that has to be a great opportunity for us. See footnote.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

I have two questions on that. Those people who have left the profession seem to be an obvious pool that you should be fishing in. Why do so many people leave the profession and come back as teacher assistants? Surely that is a failure of the system?

Jonathan Slater

As Paul said, there is definitely a workload issue here that we have to make progress on. In February, we published our updated plan for what we are doing about it and how we are helping schools. The good news is that 40% of those schools that have used the advice on the back of the 2015 plan, which followed loads of consultation with teachers about what gets in the way—the marking, data and planning, and the waste of time in those areas—and have taken the benefit of the recommendations to focus on those areas have got their workload down. One fifth of them had got it down by more than two hours per teacher per week. The bad news is that only about half of the schools had taken advantage of those tools. My task is to ensure that all schools are getting the benefit of those tools and taking advantage of those opportunities, because we need them to do so, don’t we? See footnote.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

People go through changes in their lives; they leave because maybe they are having a family, but they may well want to come back into the profession. Using those tools, and given Mr Kett’s comments about progression, are there more initiatives the Department could take to encourage teachers to come back into the profession?

Jonathan Slater

I will bring Paul in. The good news is that, while increasing numbers of people have been leaving at a particular point in their career, an increasing number of people have been returning. That is why class sizes have remained constant, with the same pupil-teacher ratio as we had 10 or 20 years ago, because the two have kept in step with each other. We have been piloting—well, piloting is not quite the word, but trying some small-scale ways in which we might support people to return. Possibly Holly had not come across the scheme was because we tried something on a small scale, which did not achieve all it might have, as the NAO Report said. We are exploring how we can help them to do that more, through refresher training, one-to-one support and that sort of thing.

Paul Kett

Absolutely. It is worth saying that 14,000 people return into the profession anyway. The challenge is to ensure that any support we provide is getting at those who were not going to come back anyway. The initiatives that the Permanent Secretary referred to were particularly targeted at those subjects where we know that there are particular challenges, such as physics and maths and, this past year, modern foreign languages as well. We provided support to the prospective returner based on some user research we had done with those who were considering coming back about what would help them to do so. Often it was about confidence in being able to return to the classroom—so offering them a package around getting back up to speed and so on, and also personalised support from an adviser, similar to the model that we use for those in high-priority subjects for our graduate recruitment, which is about giving them tailored advice on their application and getting them experience in schools. The evaluation that we did of those small-scale initiatives was that they were a positive experience for those candidates, but one of the challenges was the concern that a number of schools still had about whether to take someone who had not been in the classroom for a long time. That is the next challenge that we are working on: how do we work with the sector to address the concern that schools have in taking back those who have been out of the classroom for a long time. We are looking at whether we could provide a version of our various initiatives on teacher subject-specific training that was particularly targeted at those returning.

Chair

A quick question from Bridget Phillipson and then back to Ms Moran. I know that another couple of people want to come in.

Bridget Phillipson

That all sounds great, but I want to know how we can make that happen more broadly. For those with caring responsibilities who might want to return to teaching, it is not always just the issue of flexible working; sometimes it is the expectation that they go through an agency or take up unpaid work to demonstrate that they are classroom-ready. How can we make that happen across the country, not just in those target pilots?

Paul Kett

Absolutely. I would highlight two challenges. First, I would come back to the fact that there is already a highly-functioning returners’ market, and we don’t want to spend public money that would otherwise go to those who were coming back into the profession anyway, so there is a question of targeting. We might be able to do that where we know that there is a mismatch between supply and demand, and where there are large numbers of potential returners who are looking for part-time roles, but there aren’t enough part-time roles being advertised to meet that demand. The previous panel said that it would be great if we had the single national recruitment service available. We have a prototype for that under way, which we hope to launch a pilot of in the spring and then scale that up. We think that that will be the most effective way of helping reach those looking for flexible opportunities.

Layla Moran

Mr Slater, how confident are you that those initiatives will make a difference in time for, say, next term? How soon do you think they will have an effect?

Jonathan Slater

It will be through a combination of things, won’t it? We have managed to help schools to keep teacher-pupil numbers in sync. We have managed to support schools in that task over the last few years. In primary schools, pupil numbers went up from about 14% and teacher numbers went up by about 13%, so class sizes stayed about half a child extra per class. Secondary school teacher numbers went down, but so did pupil numbers, so we have managed to keep them in sync. We absolutely have a bigger challenge. My point is that we have some success to build on, but it will be harder because it is in secondary, so we will need to continue with the success of the returners’ programme, which I think we will succeed in doing. That is on an upward trajectory, and we have some good evidence for what works and what doesn’t. We absolutely need to make more progress on initial teacher training at secondary level. The good news is that we had a marginal increase in the number of secondary school initial teacher-training applicants in the last year. We are now starting to move upwards as we need to, but we need to go further than that. The biggest opportunity that we have not tapped sufficiently so far is the retention issue, which is of course where you started. There is a tremendous opportunity and we are completely focused on it.

Layla Moran

We have seen ratios going up. Is there an ideal ratio in your eyes? What would be a trigger for the Department?

Jonathan Slater

We don’t—you’ll be surprised to hear—have a view about what is the right number of children to have in a class on average. The numbers move along, actually. Back in 2000, the average pupil-teacher ratio was 17:1 in a secondary school. It is 16.5:1 today. See footnote.

Layla Moran

Of course, in secondary, that hides big fluctuations between different subjects. Would you say that it is time to institute a maximum class size, as in primary? Are you considering that?

Paul Kett

Just to update on what Mr Slater said, in primary we do have a cap on pupil numbers in a class. We don’t have that in secondary schools. You are right to highlight the variation. We don’t have particularly strong data on the variation. What we do have is information on the number of teachers globally, across the system, and the subjects they are qualified in. As the previous panellists and the NAO highlighted, for the majority of subjects, pupils are taught by those with the right specialisms. See footnote.

Layla Moran

Is that data you are seeking to get? It strikes me that it is quite important. If it is the odd class in a school doing that, fine, but if there is a systematic issue—an entire school doing that—that is another thing.

Paul Kett

We do not seek to add to the data burdens on individual schools, but we certainly try to pick up through the various conversations we have with schools—through regional schools commissioners and through our conversations at a local level—whether that is happening.

Jonathan Slater

You were discussing the national position and the more local one with the headteachers, and you highlighted the need for us to have more good local data. Our first step on that journey was the supply index that we published in September, which started to give more granular data about which schools have got the greatest challenge. Unsurprisingly, you find that two schools in the same town have got very, very different levels of challenge. We need to get more data of that sort. One of the benefits of the national teacher vacancy service—we start going live next year, fingers crossed—which will help schools recruit teachers more cheaply, and will be easier for teachers. Another is that it will give really good-quality data about what is actually happening, rather than anecdotal conversations about how many people apply for job x. There is it. We will have much better data in the future. I can tell you that 90% of secondary school teachers teach the EBacc and have the appropriate qualification, but what you and I want to know is which schools are struggling. See footnote.

Layla Moran

On 5 November, The Sunday Times, did a story—I am sure you saw it, because it raised a few eyebrows—based on an FOI request looking at the number of pupils in classes. Among other things, they found 52 classes with 50-plus students. Some were in PE, but they also said that some were in maths. Mr Slater, do you feel confident that you have got an absolute handle on all of the schools where there are these problems?

Jonathan Slater

Paul will come in with more detail than me. I am saying that I think there is more data that we would benefit from, and I have talked about the ways in which we are securing it. Equally, I am nervous about the idea that I decide what the right maximum number is in a particular set of circumstances in a secondary school. Obviously, that option is available to Ministers if they want to take it.

Paul Kett

Building on the point about seeking information, I will say two things. First, in relation to the story that you mentioned, we did seek to understand what lay behind those numbers. The explanation was often one of bringing together several classes for a particular lesson at the start of a particular topic. It was choir practice in one case and a PE lesson in another. Coming back to the Permanent Secretary’s point about how we get better local intelligence, we are using a supply index, which is an experimental methodology. We have published that are seeking feedback on it. We are then going and talking to schools at the bottom end of that supply index to understand the nature of the problems they face. That could include understanding whether they are having to increase class sizes in particular subjects. We are also, from some of the early conversations with those schools, discovering what factors those school leaders think are problematic. What some of them have said to us is consistent with the NFER research. It might be about supporting teachers, in terms of workload, or about the location of the school, if it is geographically dispersed. By working with those schools we want to then make an offer to those schools to try some things out that will help them in their circumstances, which may then help us scale up how we address the problem more globally across England.

Layla Moran

I kind of don’t buy that these numbers came from two classes coming together from the beginning, because that was not what the FOI was about. Everyone does that. In fact, school assembly would mean that you would have classes of the entire school number, so I am not sure that is true. But thinking specifically about maths, do you think there is a number where it starts to become detrimental to have too many students in a class?

Paul Kett

I don’t. The people who are best placed to make that judgment are the school leaders themselves.

Layla Moran

What we are hearing from school leaders is that they feel that some classes are beyond the point and there needs to perhaps be some intervention from the Department. Why do you feel it is not for the Department? Mr Slater, shouldn’t the Department take a view on this?

Jonathan Slater

The intervention that schools are asking for my help with is not determining class sizes, but helping them recruit more maths teachers. I do not mean that in a facetious way at all. Clearly, schools face a challenge. In the circumstances where they face challenges—

Chair

That is a good answer, because Ms Moran is going to move on to that point.

Jonathan Slater

If it was a good answer I’ll stop. I’m happy with that.

Chair

They don’t have to be long to be good.

Layla Moran

I want to quickly come back to workload. There are these initiatives that have come in. We welcome those absolutely, but when do you know you have succeeded? It is roughly 55 hours a week now. Have you got a target in mind? What is a reasonable number of hours a week that a teacher should work, in the Department’s view?

Jonathan Slater

Just as I don’t want to tell them how many children should be in each class, I don’t want to tell them how many hours to work. What I am struck by, to the extent that teachers are saying this, is that they spend the time they want to be spending on counselling their pupils and on management and that sort of engagement. Where they are spending too much time is on marking, on data and on planning—not universally—and they say they do not spend as much time as they would like on other areas. You heard from Holly what she sees. This is a matter for each teacher and each head. This is my experience of engaging with schools. They do not typically say, “I’m working more hours than I want.” They say, “I am not working the hours as productively as I would like. I am wasting time on x that I would prefer to spend on y.” But those judgments need to be made at the school level. Where I need to help them is in doing the minimum possible unproductive work.

Layla Moran

So how do you know when you have done enough? Surely you need to have some kind of target to aim for. I don’t mind what that is, but I would like to know you have one. Do you?

Jonathan Slater

If I were aiming for a particular number, that would be me saying what I think is the right number of hours for teachers to work.

Layla Moran

What are you waiting for? For them to stop moaning? If that is what you are looking for, it is not going to happen.

Jonathan Slater

We published our first plan for how we might support teachers to bring down the amount of unproductive work in those areas in 2015, along with a survey that drew attention to the size of the problem, and we said we would publish a new survey with an updated plan every two years. In February just gone we published a second survey, which is why I was able to say that 40% of schools had achieved x and 60% had not. So now I am focusing my efforts on supporting those schools that have not, and we will do another survey in two years. I would want to see continued reduction at more significant levels in schools that are concerned about the level of unproductive working, because it is really a significant challenge. Do you want to add anything, Paul?

Paul Kett

I can offer more on how we are going about doing that.

Jonathan Slater

But I do not have a particular number. See footnote.

Layla Moran

I am not sure I am satisfied, but I am not sure I will get to the bottom of this. We might be better off moving on. On pay, we know that the Department allowed flexibility for schools to vary pay, but we are told by the School Teachers’ Review Body that very many are not doing that. Mr Slater, do you know why?

Jonathan Slater

I will bring Paul in, but yes, you are right. When we speak to schools, we do not see much in the way of examples of schools in practice using those flexibilities. You are right that they don’t. Paul, do you want to say something more about that?

Paul Kett

We have been trying to find that out, so we have visited a number of schools to find out whether and how they are using those flexibilities. On the whole, they are cautious to do so and they tend to stay with the standards across the system. The places where they are using them a bit more are in recruitment and retention allowances in some schools, and sometimes greater use of allowance, but it is very much at the margins. That is why the STRB highlighted those flexibilities and encouraged schools to consider how they could use them, and we support that.

Layla Moran

What are you doing to help schools recruit teachers with the required experience? The headline from the Report was that the number of schools that cannot fill roles seems to be increasing. What are you doing to fix that?

Paul Kett

I would refer to some of the examples I have already given; through things like a national teaching vacancy service, we can provide easier routes to advertising and reach more candidates. Ultimately, through our efforts on workload, we are trying to encourage more people to stay in the profession so that more teachers with appropriate experience stay. Similarly, we are making efforts on professional development and career paths for those at the three to five-year stage, which we have highlighted, who might leave the profession. So the more we can keep them in, the more choice there will be for schools.

Jonathan Slater

Where we have—

Layla Moran

In Oxfordshire—sorry.

Jonathan Slater

The obvious question we ask ourselves—sorry, I promise that I will answer it—is, where we have an opportunity to invest new money, can we use that money in support of specialist subjects and/or those areas of the country that need teachers the most? The Government have announced their loan forgiveness scheme, that is an obvious opportunity—isn’t it?—for would-be science and MFL teachers. When we spend money on the teaching and leadership innovation fund, as well as focusing it in opportunity areas, we also focus it on things like physics. So along with the national stuff, where we do have opportunities to spend money in support of those particular shortage subjects, that is what we do.

Layla Moran

Back to workload, does your answer mean that you reject the first panel’s testimony that contact time is too high? They all said that contact time is too high, which increases preparation time. Is that something you recognise? Your answers were suggesting not.

Jonathan Slater

I was simply answering the question about whether you think I should set a number. I see that workload is a problem and that when staff are spending time on activities that they themselves find unproductive, we should be helping them to reduce that. There are all sorts of practical ways we can do that. It is striking—

Chair

What Ms Moran is saying—on the bigger, more strategic picture, clearly you are not managing a school as the two heads are. But if a teacher is well prepared going into the classroom and can do a differentiated lesson and get more out of their pupils, there must be some analysis somewhere in the vast Department you are responsible for of the impact of that on pupil attainment. Or is that something beyond your ken?

Jonathan Slater

I am sorry—I am not sure I quite understand the question. We have lots—

Chair

Okay. If you have a teacher with enough time to prepare excellent lessons and therefore every lesson is prepared as well as it could be—we are talking the absolute perfect model here—what we heard from our first panel and from some of the evidence we have had is that those lessons would be excellent lessons. But non-contact time is used for what you call non-productive things. Do you have any idea or measure of the difference in quality of teaching when you have got a teacher who is able to prepare well, compared with a teacher who is basically a bit squeezed on that preparation time?

Jonathan Slater

Absolutely, we have all sorts of data. We are absolutely happy to share it. To take a practical example, the sorts of activities that teachers themselves find do not add value and stop them doing what they want to do—I think that is the same thing; I am probably using jargon, and apologies if I am. In a typical “requires improvement” school, the teachers will spend one hour more—more!—marking per week than in a typical “outstanding” school, as measured by Ofsted. So the irony is that schools often spend more time unproductively preparing for an Ofsted exam, hoping to get through—obviously “exam” is not the official term—

Chair

We let that slide, Mr Slater. There you go.

Jonathan Slater

A bit Freudian—I hope my mum is not watching. Yet your typical outstanding school is doing less unproductive work than your typical RI school, which, when you think about it, is not that surprising. The question is: how can we help them do less unproductive work? That is why we worked with teachers on practical tools, pointing out the actual stuff that some teachers think they need to do but they just do not need to. You can see why perceptions take time to change and why, for example, the new Ofsted regime asks teachers to what extent their school is supporting them in reducing workload, rather than the opposite. There are all sorts of ways in which we can help schools.

Chair

But there is a bigger picture here. With the funding situation as it is—we have raised this with you before—and with schools having to look at taking non-teaching time off staff so that they can do cover and other activities, there is going to be a squeeze. Just the financial squeeze can make it difficult for schools directly to provide that. You would acknowledge that there is an impact of funding.

Jonathan Slater

As you say, we have discussed this before, and no doubt we will discuss it again. Clearly, things are going to get a bit easier for Holly when the national funding formula comes in, because she is going to get a 7% increase—

Gareth Snell

Not in Stoke, she won’t— See footnote.

Chair

I will bring in Mr Snell in a minute. Hold the thought, Mr Snell; I can see that you are itching to get in. Mr Slater, finish digging yourself into the Stoke hole, and Mr Snell will then help you out.

Jonathan Slater

The Government—the Department for Education—will make available to schools like hers a 7% increase in funding on the back of the national funding formula. It is true that local authorities will have some choice as to how they allocate that funding within Stoke.

Chair

Well, let’s not go through that choice of taking from Peter to pay Paul again. I have to say, if Stoke is a beneficiary, my borough is not. We are already having to lose teachers as a result. But I will park that one; tempted though I am to go down that path, I have had an opportunity to do that before. See footnote.

Gareth Snell

Just for the record, the situation in Stoke-on-Trent is that the city council are taking £3 million of the £4 million extra cash allocated to Stoke-on-Trent to fund other things. They currently have an application pending with your Department to approve that moving of cash. We have not had a response, so if you could take that back, Mr Slater, we would be very grateful. Clearly, that money was designed for Holly’s classroom and it should go to Holly’s classroom. I should probably declare my interest in this: I trained to be a teacher before I did many other things. I would dispute partly the idea that marking is unproductive time. Assessment of learning and assessment for learning are incredibly important parts of planning the—

Chair

Question.

Gareth Snell

Yes. On flexible funding, you said that a number of schools that you had spoken to had the opportunity to do flexible funding for pay but chose not to. How many of those schools told you that the reason was that they simply could not afford it?

Jonathan Slater

Before Paul answers that, can I just make it clear that I am not suggesting, particularly as the father of a nine-year-old girl, that I do not want her teachers to mark her work any more? One of the things that schools found for themselves—that teachers told us—was that there was triple marking going on. Triple marking of the same piece of work. Just imagine the workload involved in that.

Chair

Realistically, how often is triple marking happening?

Jonathan Slater

In many schools, teachers still think this is what Ofsted are going to be looking for when they come.

Gareth Snell

But is that not a failure of the Ofsted system—that it created a myth culture around teaching so that teachers feel they have to do that to—

Jonathan Slater

I am not blaming anybody; I am describing the world as I see it. Obviously, we want to help schools and teachers move away from that, and Ofsted themselves have published myth-busting campaigns. There is more of that to be done. There is absolutely more of that to be done.

Layla Moran

Mr Slater, is that happening more in schools with more NQTs particularly?

Jonathan Slater

Now you are getting beyond—

Chair

Well, Ms Moran has a point. Her question is pertinent. Surely, trainee teachers will have the work that they have marked looked at by someone more senior.

Jonathan Slater

To be clear, I do not think there is a difference of view between the profession and the Department, or indeed the experts. The Education Policy Institute published in October 2016 its assessment of where there was inappropriate workload, and it said that the three areas that I described were the right areas to be working on. That is all I wanted to say.

Gareth Snell

Mr Kett, my question was, specifically: you said that you had spoken to schools that had the flexibility to vary pay but had chosen not to do so. How many of those schools said that the reason for not doing so was that they simply could not afford it within their budgets? It is all very well and good to say that you will pay teachers more money, but if you have not got the money to pay them then that is really not a privilege.

Paul Kett

I do not have the exact numbers in front of me in terms of how many. Certainly, the amount of funding available in the system was one of the factors. However, the flexibilities are quite broad, so it was not just a question of insufficient funding but one of wanting to stick within a framework that was similar to that in other schools in the area—that was the most common. There was also a concern, particularly among individual schools, about the complexity that arose. Those that were more interested in applying those flexibilities were the chains of schools—multi-academy trusts—where they could use that flexibility more.

Jonathan Slater

Equally, I do not want to give the Committee the impression that we think that that flexibility will be the thing that fixes the teacher supply issue that we have been discussing. I have referred to workload, CPD—all sorts of things. We would love schools to use those flexibilities where they can, but it is not the absolute answer to the question.

Layla Moran

I will ask about push factors, and indulge in asking about my local area. I declare the interest that I am a qualified teacher and a school governor. In our school and in Oxfordshire, we struggle to keep hold of teachers in the three to five-year bracket because house prices are so incredibly high that they just do not feel that they can bear living there. In fact, they are moving to London because they receive London weighting. Are you aware that that is happening?

Heidi Allen

Same in my area.

Layla Moran

Yes. And, Mr Slater, are you planning to do anything about it?

Jonathan Slater

As to next year’s pay regime, if that is what we are referring to—

Chair

That will not solve the housing problem.

Jonathan Slater

Or we might have been referring to house building. But on the subject of the flexibility available to schools and the pay regime for future years, the chief secretary has written to the school teachers’ review body to say that, in the light of the Government changing their policy on public sector pay and lifting the 1% pay cap, they are looking for opportunities to increase flexibility and funding where they see an opportunity to do so. Next week is the Budget. Following that, the Secretary of State for Education will follow that up with her own advice. She will seek advice from the pay review body, which will consult and come back with its recommendations next year.

Layla Moran

But are you aware of the specific issue with the London weighting?

Jonathan Slater

Typically, to be honest, I hear London schools telling me that they are struggling to keep people, rather than that they are getting them from Oxford. I had not heard that story before. But I am acutely conscious of the challenge that schools face in hanging on to teachers who want to start a family in areas where house prices are rising.

Layla Moran

What more can you do for schools in London and the south-east to help to retain their teachers? What can the Department do to intervene? Specifically on the cost of living.

Jonathan Slater

I have to use the resources I have as efficiently as I possibly can across a series of competing needs. It is true that I am focusing resources where I can in those areas of the country where the schools are struggling the most. There is obviously a balance, which you were discussing with those two headteachers, between the resources we put into schools in areas that have been lower funded that are struggling the most to get good teachers and where the exam results are the worst across the piece. I only have a certain amount of money to go around. I am trying to get the balance right in that.

Layla Moran

So is the answer nothing?

Heidi Allen

I am looking for something strategic to address this particular point, not a generic answer.

Layla Moran

How closely are you working with local authorities to ensure that they have the right housing stock to have teachers living there?

Heidi Allen

Keyworker housing initiatives.

Layla Moran

Are you involved in keyworker housing initiatives?

Jonathan Slater

We are increasingly working with local authorities at sub-regional partnership, but I cannot give you—

Chair

Can I give you an example of something that is in your control? Your Department funds pre-schools directly to the provider. A number of those—there is one in my constituency and I am sure we all have examples from around the country—are on a site where housing has been built as part of the package. When I corresponded with Mr Lauener in one of his many previous roles on this, I pointed out that if housing was provided that was affordable for teachers—not necessarily teachers at that school, but teachers in general—that would be the thing that would benefit my schools most. I have received a lot of evidence in preparation for today’s session from headteachers, and housing is top of the list. They lose teachers because those teachers do not want to live in a shared house any longer. After two or three years, people are moving. Could some of that housing on the land that your Department pays for be earmarked for teachers as part of an education dividend, and not just swept back in to pay for physical buildings? Surely that would be a logical and sensible approach to help tackle this problem. That is not completely in your gift, Mr Slater—I recognise you are part of Government—but that is something you have more control over. Have you considered that, and if not, why not?

Jonathan Slater

I have been involved in conversations with individual multi-academy trusts and individual local authorities, as have my staff, on supporting initiatives like that. I do not want to overclaim though; we are supporting individual initiatives and I cannot give you the confidence that we have a comprehensive strategy that definitely meets the level of need. That is work we are doing at a more tactical level.

Chair

Is that work that you think needs to happen? Are you making any commitment to us today that you are going to look at the issue?

Jonathan Slater

I am looking at the issue. I do not think it is within my gift as the Permanent Secretary in front of you to announce—

Chair

No, we are not asking that.

Jonathan Slater

You can see that a policy on prioritising one group of people over another group of people for housing, while definitely desirable for me as Permanent Secretary, does exceed my pay grade. That is all I am saying. It is a reasonable challenge.

Chair

Are you putting the argument across Government? You meet your colleague Permanent Secretaries. You have the ear of your Secretary of State. Are you ensuring that this issue is being raised as the Government profess to tackle the housing problem and that the issue of teachers’ housing is part of that?

Jonathan Slater

I absolutely am, because I completely recognise where that is an issue. It certainly is an issue.

Layla Moran

Let us move on to Spanish and physics in particular, Mr Kett. We know that these are two problem areas at the moment. You spoke about initiatives to help them—can you be more specific?

Paul Kett

Certainly. The first one I might mention in terms of our recruitment efforts has been for this coming recruitment cycle, and that is the loan forgiveness pilot for those studying science or modern foreign languages. That will affect up to 800 potential modern foreign language teachers and 1,700 science teachers across the spectrum. We will be forgiving them the cost of their student loans in the first 10 years of their career. That will be a benefit in attracting them in and in retention. You did not specifically cite maths, but I would put it with physics and modern foreign languages. Those three are at the top of our in-tray in terms of our focus. We have also introduced a new form of bursary for maths this year, which goes all the way back to some of the challenge that this Committee gave around how we use the bursary funding. We have introduced a bursary that gives £20,000 up front, but two early career payments of £5,000 after their third year in the profession and after their fifth year, provided that they keep teaching maths. We are trying these approaches to attract in but also then keep in. In relation to Spanish teachers, we are also looking at opportunities such as working with Spain to bring their teachers here and supporting schools to bring them on. We have got a scheme that would allow 90 or so modern foreign language teachers from Spain to work in our schools, and we are supporting them to make the transition.

Layla Moran

As ever, Brexit plays in this. What impact will Brexit have on these modern foreign language teachers coming over?

Jonathan Slater

About 3.5% of secondary school teachers currently are from elsewhere in the European Union. My task is to share that data with my colleagues who are working on the overall Brexit strategy and negotiating with the European Union. On the back of that, as they are developing the immigration policies that follow that, my task is to ensure that the decision makers—Ministers—are well informed about the extent to which the school system benefits from those teachers and would want to benefit from more of them in the ways that Paul was just saying to your colleague. It is a matter for future Government policy negotiated with the European Union and subsequent immigration policy. That will determine the extent to which it will be easy or not easy to attract those teachers in the future. See footnote.

Layla Moran

Do you have a plan B if they suddenly cannot come or stay?

Jonathan Slater

Most of the way in which we meet the demand for foreign language teachers is from teachers who are here already, and we are doing lots of work in support of that.

Paul Kett

In addition to the initiatives I have mentioned, you heard a little from the pre-panel about what we call teacher subject specific training—TSST—which is the extra support provided to those who might have a relevant qualification but who have not gone into teaching to teach that particular subject. We are making 5,000 places available in the next year across maths, physics and modern foreign languages, to give those currently in the profession the skills to teach those subjects as well. All our efforts on the domestic side are really focused on those priority subjects, as well as our overall recruitment and retention and workload efforts.

Layla Moran

One thing that we heard from the earlier panel that would help is flexible working and attracting some of those people from a profession. Mr Slater, what are you doing to help schools to achieve that aim, given that we were told that it will cost them a bit more money? That is a really important context to put this in.

Jonathan Slater

There is quite a lot of this already; there just isn’t as much as there could be and needs to be, so my first task is to make sure that the good practice of those schools that are experts in it, doing well and finding ways of doing it for the minimum possible additional cost, is shared more widely. We published some guidance and advice earlier this year. We are updating it for next year, on the back of a summit we held recently with a number of schools and multi-academy trusts that do it really well, to share what they do and the success of their work. Paul mentioned earlier the national teacher vacancy service. We would like, as we roll that out, to use it as a tool that can support schools, particularly in doing flexible working. In my own experience in the civil service and before that in local government, this was as much about a cultural change as it was about practical support.

Chair

What about money problems around—

Jonathan Slater

There are clearly, as you heard, some challenges that come when you recruit two people to a job. It depends partly, of course, on how you do it. That is why we need to share the good practice that we have seen from schools that have succeeded in doing it.

Layla Moran

But do you accept that on-cost is on-cost? What are you doing to address that? Are you at least looking at how we can help schools with on-costs?

Chair

The point is that you could have a school with lots of part-time teachers and it would just have a higher wage bill than that for the equivalent number of full-time teachers. That is what Ms Moran is driving at.

Layla Moran

Yes. There is nothing you can do about that.

Jonathan Slater

I agree that there are some on-costs that come with jobshares. In my career to date—okay, I have not been a teacher, but in my career to date, I have seen in the culture of the organisation I work in that that is not the first question; the question is, how do you get the best out of two people, on a jobshare basis, rather than one? There are some costs that come with it, and there are some benefits that come with it, too. The schools that we got together in a summit that we did the other day with ASCL—which are doing this the most—were not saying that they have had to spend more money than they would ideally like and that the money is a barrier. That is not what they were saying.

Layla Moran

But we have heard today from the earlier panel that it is, so perhaps you can take that away with you.

Jonathan Slater

Sure.