The ongoing challenges of recruiting and retaining teachers in Scotland has been in the headlines recently. But Scotland is not alone in facing these issues and we at Teach First believe there are lessons to learn from countries across the globe.
The Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee recently invited Teach First to provide evidence to its inquiry into teacher workforce planning. They wanted us to build on our experience of recruiting prospective teachers in England and Wales, although many of our lessons are also drawn from our partners further afield.
Teach First is part of the global Teach for All network operating in more than 40 countries. Each country has its own approach and regulations for training teachers. We don’t have a programme in Scotland, although we have had about 400 graduates from Scottish universities over the years. A Scottish programme that was part of the Teach for All approach would chime with and support many of the Scottish government’s ambitions for attainment and leadership. However, it would need to be a bespoke model, designed in Scotland, that meets the needs and unique characteristics of the education system.
Tackling recruitment problems will require the entire education sector to come together and think creatively about how to attract more talented people. As is the case with addressing any systematic issue of this nature, we must carefully consider what the evidence actually tells us. We believe that teachers should be the cornerstones of our communities. The opportunity to make a tangible difference in the world - to take on a vocation, not just a job - has always been an incredibly attractive proposition to many young people.
The latest UK Graduate Careers Survey reveals that being “interested in the content of the work” and “wanting a graduate role where you can make a real difference” are the top two reasons for choosing teaching. Yet fewer than one-in-10 final-year students were applying to the teaching profession. This continues a steep downward trend that started in 2012, when just over 15 per cent of graduates intended to become a teacher.
Our experience tells us that the problem lies not in the attractiveness of the profession, but an inability to keep up with change in the wider graduate recruitment market. The education sector must get better at responding to the needs and preferences of graduates. Put another way, major private sector graduate recruiters have upped their game. We need to up ours.
The careers survey points to three main issues. The first is about the perception of teaching. The second is how graduate recruiters are communicating with graduates, and how and when they access information about their career choices. The third is about how the profession evolves to meet changing labour-market trends.
Lagging behind
In the latest dataset, graduates ranked teaching as 15th out of 22 professions on “perception scoring”, lagging behind professions such as doctor, investment banker, army officer and research assistant. Key issues included starting salary and access to paid internships, with teaching seen to compete poorly.
Talented graduates are increasingly savvy and make more considered and nuanced decisions earlier in their university career. Of those considering teaching, the majority do so in their penultimate or final year at university, predominantly through websites and careers services.
However, 46 per cent cited exposure to work experience as more influential in their decision-making. Graduates who choose careers other than teaching are generally engaging with these pathways earlier and through more influential methods, such as work experience and internships. Our offering to graduates has to adapt to this.
The labour market is ever more fluid, with talented people demanding the flexibility to leave and re-enter professions to expand their experiences and networks. Teaching is generally not structured to accommodate this. Nor is the profession geared to providing the paid, meaningful work experience or internships that are increasingly key influencers for graduates.
Developing policy responses requires collective leadership and creative thinking. We need to be open-minded about new and innovative solutions. The good news is that we have already started to see both the Scottish government and the high-quality university sector proactively responding to this with new ideas and models.
Since placing our first cohort of teachers in London in 2003, we have worked with the best universities to recruit and train nearly 10,000 qualified teachers, and now partner with schools serving low-income communities in every region of England and in Wales. As Teach First approaches its 15th year, our programmes continue to be incredibly popular. We have made plenty of mistakes, but we have over the years continued to try to learn from the evidence that is available and develop innovative ideas to make teaching more attractive to Britain’s top graduates.
It is worth reflecting on one particular success, as it chimes with much of the Scottish government’s stated aspirations for education: a focus on leadership. Teach First is as much about leadership as teacher training. Indeed, we believe teaching is the most important form of leadership - helping others achieve more than they believe is possible.
Our Leadership Development Programme, developed and delivered with universities, offers a dual qualification in leadership and teacher training. This provides opportunities for graduates to develop their leadership credentials and, crucially, the support to demonstrate leadership in classrooms in deprived communities.
In our view, this bolsters the core attraction of teaching itself: the opportunity to make a meaningful difference to children’s lives. Key to this is ensuring the training and support is of the highest quality, with rigorous academic training, led by universities, resulting in all our teachers being fully qualified.
It is important that the shortage of teachers is considered in context. Scotland is not alone in this challenge. (In fact, Scottish universities are among the biggest sources of graduates entering teaching, with St Andrews and Glasgow both in the UK top five.) Scotland has its own unique circumstances, but the profession, across the UK and beyond, faces a wider perception and communications issue.
Addressing this will require a collective effort by all of us to consider the evidence available and develop creative and innovative solutions. It may entail going beyond our comfort zones, thinking outside the box and abandoning long-held assumptions about what works.
James Westhead is an executive director at Teach First
