A new strategy has been announced by the Education Secretary Damian Hinds MP to improve the retention and recruitment of teachers within the UK in all sectors. Teachers in England will, according to this strategy, receive early career support (to avoid teachers leaving the industry within the first few years) increasing amount of opportunities for flexible and part-time working along with, and most importantly, a reduction in their workload. After implementation, Damian Hinds hopes that this will boost the number of teachers applying and staying in the profession within the UK.
The Education Secretary hopes to build on the 30,000 classroom teachers the government wants to recruit each year, which would support the already 450,000 working teachers in England. To ensure that teachers stay within the profession in the first few years, new teachers will receive a two-year package of support and training including a reduced timetable; this will be backed by a minimum of £130 million a year in extra funding.
Bursaries and extra financial incentives will be offered to talented teachers so they stay in the classroom, schools will give teachers staggered additional payments throughout the first years of their teaching career. The government will also assist school leaders to help reduce workload for every teacher by observing their activities, then the unnecessary tasks will be stripped away to ensure that all educators are working efficiently.
With the help of this new strategy, this may assist with our countries education recruitment problem, however, only time will tell.