On 25 June, the Education Policy Institute (EPI), in collaboration with Capita, hosted a public webinar titled “Workforce sustainability in the modern school system”
This was the first in a series of three webinars, drawing on the insights from the EPI’s Effective Schools Group Tool.
Access to high-quality teaching is the single biggest lever schools have for improving educational outcomes, particularly for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. The government has pledged to recruit 6,500 teachers by the end of this parliament but retaining the teachers and leaders we already have is also key to achieving positive outcomes for children and young people, and meeting the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity for all.
However, teachers are continuing to leave the profession before retirement; EPI analysis of the latest DfE statistics on the state of the teaching workforce shows that the pandemic recruitment boost has stalled and retention rates continue to fall, citing challenges including pay, work-life balance and workload.
It’s not surprising that in EPI’s Effective School Groups project, multi-academy trust (MAT) leaders identified recruitment as their biggest challenge. The associated data tool provides measures of teacher and teaching assistant turnover annually and cumulatively for individual school groups. They show that MATs typically lose around a third of their classroom teachers over a three-year period.
So what are the potential solutions to the recruitment and retention crisis? And what role can more effective use of data and their insights play?
Watch the replay to discover our experts' thoughts ➥
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Capita’s partnership with EPI, or explore the Effective School Groups project and related data, please reach out to Caitlin.Bell2@capita.com
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