‘Crisis brewing’ in secondary education MPs warn
This will bite hard in rural communities….
The number of secondary school teachers has been falling rapidly since 2010, it has been revealed.
A report by the public accounts committee has shown that since 2012 more teachers have been leaving the profession for reasons other than retirement.
Although the overall number of teachers has risen, the number of secondary school teachers fell by 4.9% between 2010 and 2016.
Many teachers have said that their heavy workload is the reason for exiting the profession.
This, combined with rising pupil numbers and pressures for schools to make significant savings has led to a “growing sense of crisis” for schools in England as they struggle to retain and develop their teachers.
The report claims that the Department for Education has given “insufficient priority” to teacher retention, arguing that the current situation could have been predicted and that action should have been taken to address it.
Spending on training new teachers has been 15 times greater than spending on supporting the existing workforce, and the report argues that the department’s “disparate collection of small-scale interventions” are “inadequate to address the underlying issues.”
The report also criticises the department’s lack of understanding of the various challenges faced by schools in different regions.
Chair of the public accounts committee, Meg Hillier, said that a “crisis is brewing,” and called government action: “sluggish and incoherent.”