1. The Committee announced its Secondary Education inquiry on 4 November 2002, with its focus on four areas: Diversity of Provision; Pupil Achievement; Teacher Retention and School Admissions.

2. So far we have produced reports on our visits to Auckland and Birmingham, on Diversity of Provision, on Pupil Achievement and on School Admissions. Following publication of this report we intend to produce a sixth report looking at the general conclusions that may be drawn from our exploration of secondary education.

3. The aim of this part of the inquiry was to scrutinise the Department's policies relating to teacher retention and recruitment and the evidence upon which they are based. In examining those issues we looked at the variety of factors influencing teacher retention including recruitment, initial teacher training, workload and continuing professional development.

4. During the course of the inquiry we took oral evidence from Mr David Miliband MP, Minster of State for School Standards, the General Teaching Council, Professor John Howson, Director, Education Data Surveys and Visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes University, Professor Bob Moon and Mrs Elizabeth Bird of the Centre for Research in Education, The Open University, the National Employers' Organisation for School Teachers, the Secondary Heads Association, the National Association of Head Teachers, the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, [1]the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the Professional Association of Teachers, the National College for School Leadership and the Teacher Training Agency. We received 23 written memoranda. We are grateful to our specialist advisers, Sir Peter Newsam, Professor Alan Smithers and Valerie Bragg, for their assistance with this inquiry.

The issues

5. In seeking to establish an accurate picture of the extent to which teacher retention is a real problem, a distinction needs to be drawn between turnover (teachers resigning from a school) and wastage (teachers leaving the teaching profession altogether). While turnover is more of an issue at individual school level, although not for all schools, wastage represents a loss of experience from the system in general and arguably a diminished return on the investment made in teacher training.

6. One of the factors which suggested that there was a problem is that in the years 1998 to 2001 there had been a steep rise on the number of teacher resignations demonstrated by figures produced by both the DfES and by the National Employers' Organisation for School Teachers (NEOST)[2]. Another was a survey of teachers carried out by MORI for the General Teaching Council and published in January 2003 which suggested that 36% of teachers did not expect to be teaching in five years time. A breakdown of that figure showed 18% planned to retire, 12% wished to find alternative jobs in education, and 6% wanted to change profession entirely.

7. On the other hand, the DfES argued that:

"Teaching is a profession with good job security, comparatively good prospects of advancement, long holidays and, over the last five years, pay rates that have appeared increasingly favourable by comparison with other parts of the public sector. Nevertheless, in times of economic stability, public-sector employers find it hard to compete with the material rewards on offer in the private sector.

The Government and the Teacher Training Agency have taken measures to help ensure that teacher recruitment over the last three years has been able to buck the economic trend…

The effect of these incentives on recruitment has been dramatic with full-time equivalent regular teacher numbers up to 423,900, their highest level since 1982."[3]

In 1982 there were just over 7.7 million pupils (full-time equivalents) in maintained schools, against just under 7.6 million in 2002-03[4].

8. As our inquiry progressed, a further factor came into play, namely the difficulties caused to schools by the changes in funding formula introduced for 2003-04. We have reported previously in some detail on the schools funding issue,[5] but the questions which arose from it which have relevance for this report are; how many teachers lost their jobs and how many posts remained unfilled because schools did not have sufficient money in their budgets?

2   See Factors affecting teachers' decisions to leave the profession, Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson, Centre for Education and Employment Research, University of Liverpool, April 2003, para 1.10. Back

3   Ev 161 Back

4   Statistics of Education Class Sizes and Pupil Teacher Ratios in England, Department for Education and Skills, May 2002, Table 1, p 9, and Department for Education and Skills Departmental Report 2004, Annex J, p 125. Back

5   Education and Skills Committee, First Report Session 2003-04, Public Expenditure: Schools' Funding, HC 112. Back