Justine Greening has been secretary of state for education just long enough to know what the key problems are that the government must address. Unfortunately for her, the “to do” list is long.
School leaders across the country despair when they hear Nick Gibb, the school standards minister, intone that teacher recruitment is a challenge. “No,” they cry, “it’s a crisis!”
The recorded rate of vacancies and temporarily filled positions in state schools doubled between 2011 and 2014, according to the National Audit Office - and this figure is unlikely to fully reflect the recruitment difficulties that schools are facing.
The crisis in teacher recruitment is compounded by appalling teacher retention rates. A recent report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) revealed that English schools had one of the biggest reductions in the proportion of teachers aged over 50 in secondary schools, between 2005 and 2014. Even more startling, England had one of the highest proportions of teachers under 30, and only 48 per cent of teachers in the country had more than 10 years’ experience.
This points to an even more worrying trend - the “hollowing out” of the profession. EPI researchers asked whether the relatively young workforce might be a signal teachers were experiencing burnout before they even took leadership roles.
The feedback I receive from teachers at all stages of their career is that teacher burnout is a major factor in the exodus from the profession - with a fifth of teachers working more than a 60-hour week.
Sleight of hand
Next on the “to do” list should be providing enough school places. This is a growing problem: the number of primary pupils has risen dramatically since 2012, and is due to rise by a further 4 per cent over the next eight years, while the number of secondary pupils is due to rise by 20 per cent by 2024.
One in six secondaries is now at - or over - capacity, and the National Pupil Projections suggest there will be around 554,000 more secondary school pupils by 2024.
But the government has abandoned national planning for additional school places, instead relying on free schools to make up the numbers. (If I were the secretary of state, I’d be keeping a close eye on this. There is little evidence that free schools will plug the pupil places gap, dogged as the programme is by delay and by headline-grabbing cases of fraud and the misuse of public money.)
Ms Greening will know that parents get shirty when they can’t find a good local school. They don’t like it when schools have to consider a four-day week - something schools in West Sussex are keeping under review as they face funding shortages.
The secretary of state is prevented, by a law introduced by Michael Gove, from asking local authorities to open new schools (though councils still have a legal duty to ensure there are sufficient school places). And councils cannot require free schools and academies to raise pupil intake. Just what levers the secretary of state has at her disposal to fulfil her duty to educate the nation’s pupils is a matter which must be causing her concern.
And then there is the little matter of school quality. The Department for Education’s own figures show that 50 per cent of multi-academy trusts are seriously underperforming for value added at key stage 2, and 54 per cent are seriously underperforming for value added at key stage 4.
The previous secretary of state argued that no child should stay in an underperforming school for a day longer than necessary. What is Ms Greening going to do about persistent serious underperformance of MATs?
Given this set of problems, she might be tempted to go for a distraction. The reintroduction of selection at age 11, anyone?
Mary Bousted is general secretary of the ATL teaching union
@MaryBoustedATL
