New National Teaching Service “sticking plaster on a teacher shortage crisis”
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan revealed plans to create a new National Teaching Service that will “get our best teachers and middle leaders into underperforming schools in areas where they are needed most” such as rural and coastal towns.
Mike Parker, Director of SCHOOLS NorthEast, welcomed this as a step to address need in struggling schools, but added: “However, it is 1,500 teachers by 2020 to work across a section of the 23,000-plus schools in England – a figure that increasingly looks like a sticking plaster on a teacher shortage crisis that all indicators suggest will worsen over the next five years.
“At a North East level, Nicky Morgan has missed a real opportunity to demonstrate the value of the NTS. The planned pilot of 100 teachers in 2017 could have shown the Government was intent on supporting efforts to drive up educational standards in the region.
“Instead we get the same old love bombing of the North West under the guise of supporting the Northern Powerhouse.”
Former SCHOOLS NorthEast Chair David Pearmain echoed Mike’s thoughts on the teacher recruitment crisis and questioned whether the planned National Teaching Service will help tackle the issue. You can read his statement in The Journal.
As reported last week, the programme will launch in September 2016, to be piloted in the North West first, and the service will have deployed 1,500 outstanding teachers and middle leaders to schools that need them by 2020.