News

Spring State of the Region Survey: Your snapshot of the current situation in NE schools

Can you believe we’re seven months into the 23/24 academic year already? We imagine it feels like only a few weeks ago you were psyching yourself up for a fresh start in a brand new school year, and now?

Well, dare we say it, the summer holidays are on the horizon once more…

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Until then, there’s more work to be done, and all you can do is keep trying your best despite the hurdles that are placed in front of you.

As part of our mission to help you ‘stay low and fly high’ over said hurdles, Schools North East sends out a ‘State of the Region’ survey once per term to better understand how our schools are currently coping in different key areas.

Hot off the Google drive is our Spring  23/24 survey, which was sent out in February and collected responses that represent 0ver 170 North East schools.

Let’s dive in and explore the general situation around critical topics such as attendance, wellbeing, and recruitment and retention.

Staff attendance

Pupil attendance has rarely been out of the headlines this academic year, but how are schools coping with staff attendance?

Only 60 percent of responses said they had staff levels above 95 percent; last term, 75 percent of responses said this, which shows quite a significant drop. This picture becomes uglier when we then consider that over 80 percent of responses said they’re struggling to access supply staff to cover these absences.

Recruitment and retention 

Bad news or good news first?  Recruitment of permanent staff has shown slight improvements over the last five terms, which is great (we’ll take what we can get). However, those grappling to recruit permanent staff is still over 60 percent.

On a more positive note, retention of staff this term has improved notably in comparison to last year, which is a sure sign that we’re moving in the right direction!

In the 22/23 academic year, our surveys had an average of 41 percent struggling to retain staff, but in both surveys for the 23/24 Autumn and Spring terms, this figure was just under 30 percent. Brilliant.

Staff wellbeing

As always, we asked respondents to rate staff wellbeing on a scale of one to five, with five being good.

The graph below shows the results for the last academic year in comparison to the Autumn and Spring terms of this academic year. What’s the first thing you notice about this graph?

Your answer should be that it shows this academic year has (so far) seen an improvement in staff wellbeing! Yes, this term is the first time that the majority of responses have rated staff wellbeing as positive (four or five).

As noteworthy as this is, we cannot let it overlook the fact that our region’s staff are still nowhere near as satisfied as they should – and deserve – to be. Considerable concerns include:

• Increasing demands and responsibilities on schools and staff
• Staff resilience and exhaustion as a result of workload
• Motivation in education as a whole is suffering
• Staff looking for jobs outside of education, stating the stresses of the role and poor pay are the reasons for leaving

So while these improvements are great and indicate we’re (slowly) getting back on track, we must remember that we’ll never see a majority of fours and fives until we address the above points with a long-term, strategic plan. 

Student attendance

School is the best environment for the vast majority of pupils to learn in, so of course it’s always alarming when we see reports of poor student attendance across our region.

The results from this term’s survey is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, fewer have reported attendance above 90 percent, however, a higher proportion of that group reported attendance as above 95 percent.

It’s clear that some schools are seeing improvements in attendance, which is excellent, but it’s evident that they’e still struggling to return attendance to pre-pandemic levels – and it’s not for lack of trying!

Schools have put in place a range of support and interventions, including recruiting attendance officers, despite this stretching already limited resources and involving school staff taking on additional responsibilities.

Students wellbeing

We can celebrate that there appears to have been a gradual improvement in student wellbeing this term, with 70 percent of responses reporting positive student wellbeing (a rating of four or five).

The vast majority of students have a positive experience of school, which is really lovely to see when we consider how supporting pupil welfare, and ensuring students are ready to learn, has been a key priority for schools. 

That being said, the growing minority of students struggling with mental health and wellbeing is of course impacting this outcome as well as absences.

Behaviour

Almost 70 percent of responses said they were seeing more behaviour-related issues than usual for the Spring term, which aligns well with our understanding of the current behaviour landscape within schools.

As we’ve said before, often these behavioural issues reflect unmet need, with responses highlighting the rise in complex needs in the past few years. This isn’t just the impact of the pandemic, but also caused by the financial pressures families are facing.

SEND

Perhaps most concerning is that nearly all responses said there had been a rise in students with SEND (96 percent). Responses particularly highlighted increases in autism diagnoses, SEMH, and speech and language issues. 

The lack of places in special and alternative provision means more students with profound needs are not in the right provision and therefore fail to receive the right support. In fact, 84 percent of responses said that they didn’t have the capacity and resources to adequately support SEND students. 

Priorities

When asked to list their current priorities, most school leaders mentioned, you guessed it, funding!

The  key issue facing schools right now are the pressures on school budgets, and that comes as no surprise. Lack of financial support means they’re restricted from addressing and fixing all the issues mentioned in this article, such as recruiting quality staff, addressing persistent absences, and meeting both the academic and wellbeing needs of students.

On the broader education policy landscape, schools want to see greater support from DfE and Ofsted. While many schools have now had a recent Ofsted inspection, they remain concerned about the high stakes accountability system, and the workload pressures put on staff as a result. 

Rightfully so, schools want to see a more supportive process, rather than just one-word judgements. The current system doesn’t seem to value or understand the work schools do, and school leaders want education policy to be de-politicised, giving the system stability and some well-deserved respect towards the education profession.

So, what happens now?

The purpose of this survey is to monitor these key priorities so that we can understand which issues in particular Schools North East must amplify as the Voice, Glue, and Bridge of North East schools.

Armed with this information, we can ensure education stakeholders and policymakers get an accurate picture of the current environment and challenges faced by North East schools. Our briefings are sent to a range of strategic stakeholders – including the DfE, Ofsted, and all North East Members of Parliament – as well as local and national media.

Since we published our Autumn State of the Region Survey (1 December 2023), we’ve had a further 19 press requests from:

• ITV News
• BBC Radio 4
• Sunday Times
• ITV Tyne Tees
• BBC Radio Tees
• BBC Look North
• Tes
• The QT
• ITV Tyne Tees
• Metro
• Observer
• Daily Mirror
• BBC News
• ITV Tyne Tees

In January, Chris Zarraga (Director of Schools North East) was interviewed by BBC Look North on the topic of attendance; in February, we shed light on the subject of school suspensions with the Daily Mirror; and only five days into March, Chris was booked in with the BBC to discuss the Spring Budget 2024 announcement.

As the Voice of North East schools, our responsibility extends far beyond simply ‘gathering information’ from our region’s schools. We gather, analyse, understand, and then use it as a weapon to lobby and achieve coverage of these issues.

Now we’re equipped with the latest information from our Spring 2024 State of the Region Survey! As always, we’ll keep you updated on its progress.