Just try and get hold of an early-career geography teacher in the north east.
Over the past couple of years there hasn’t been a single course in our region producing new teachers in this subject.
I have to hope that somebody who has moved out of the area for teacher training then moves back so that I am able to recruit them.
Finding the right people in what feels like a dry pond is hard enough, so once we have them, we have to make sure that they stay with us. It’s a sub-optimal situation to say the least.
That’s why recruitment and especially retention is critical for us at Consilium Academies, a MAT of eight secondary schools in two regional hubs across northern England, including my patch, the north east.
It’s one of the reasons why I’m talking about the issue at the MAT Summit with Supporting Education Group’s Penny Swain, who has written in Schools Week about the challenges we all face – and the possible solutions.
Keeping hold of staff is an even bigger challenge today because the expectations of education professionals have changed markedly in recent years.
As Swain has written, the sector has to adjust to the reality that expectations of teaching careers are shifting and that professionals want flexible working, better career development, more work-life balance and improved wellbeing, as well as autonomy and a sense of purpose.
At our trust we’re unable to offer nine-day fortnights, but we have brought in a cluster of smaller measures that, combined, make a strong offer for our current and prospective staff.
We’ve flexed timetables so that teachers have their non-contact time towards the end of the day or end of the week, with the understanding that if the work’s done they can go home.
This is as much the responsibility of policy makers as it is for leaders like me
As part of our workload charter, we’ve adopted live marking in the classroom, urging our team not to mark for the sake of it and only when the work isn’t where they’d expect it to be.
We have also built a central curriculum, allowing staff to use off-the-shelf lesson plans that they can customise to their pupils’ needs.
Other initiatives include improved exit interviews to understand why staff leave, keeping hold of good people even if it means overstaffing, better relocation support and staff benefits usually seen in the commercial world.
This is all underpinned by that sense of purpose that Swain stresses is such an important part of the expectations of the modern workforce. We want our colleagues to belong, to be part of our moral crusade to improve the lives of children and young people from very disadvantaged backgrounds and communities.
The result is that our retention rates have improved significantly. The number of employees leaving our trust in 2024 has fallen by almost 40 per cent compared to the previous year.
It’s obvious that trusts and schools can make a difference, but we are part of a system that has to fully recognise that a recruitment and retention strategy is as much the responsibility of policy makers as it is for leaders like me.
There must be a co-ordinated strategic focus that is not just about improving schools but improving every facet of the system, including recruitment and retention.
The mood music from the department for education is encouraging, but we need to see specifics. For me, these should include introducing regional heat-maps setting out where teachers are training, detailing their subjects and specialisms, and making sure that supply matches need across the country.
As I’ve said, recruitment and retention can be difficult in the north east – especially when it comes to geography teachers. But our struggles pale when compared to the challenges faced by my colleagues in the Lake District or Carlisle.
We leaders can make a big difference to a point, but a national strategy has a huge part to play.
Catch Michael McCarthy at today’s MAT Summit, where he will be co-presenting a workshop on future-proofing your workforce with Supporting Education Group‘s Penny Swain and Thrive directo, Tom Preston.
