North East teachers inform DfE project to recruit talent to challenging areas
SCHOOLS NorthEast has facilitated a series of focus groups for the Department for Education (DfE) looking at the issues around recruiting teachers into challenging areas and schools.
The focus groups brought together 22 teachers from 11 schools across the North East who had taught in a range of schools in both disadvantaged and more affluent areas. The groups were split by length of teaching experience and gave everyone involved a chance to discuss their own personal reasons for working, or choosing not to work in, a challenging school, as well as the broader issues around recruiting teachers into challenging areas.
Some of the key themes to come out of the groups were:
- The experience that teachers had had while on placements had impacted their decision about the type of school they wanted to teach at – the opportunity to have a placement at a challenging school had led a lot of teachers to want to go back to that type of school
- The quality of leadership plays a crucial role in teachers making a decision to move to or stay in a school – attendees saw this as particularly important in a challenging school
- Many teachers chose to work in a challenging school because they felt that they could have a greater impact on the children in those schools
- Schools in challenging areas can offer a greater range of opportunities to develop teachers’ experience and skills sets
- Opportunities for spousal relocation would impact a teacher’s decision to move to a new area for a job
- Opportunities for work/life balance and flexibility are very important
- Schools need to offer prospective staff the chance to meet the children as part of the recruitment process
- Schools in challenging areas need teachers that care about the children – this is something that schools in challenging areas could be more upfront about – children’s behaviour has to come before learning
- Staff emotional wellbeing has to be key in schools in challenging areas
- Recruiting the right teachers is as important as recruiting enough teachers
- To recruit into schools in challenging areas you have to showcase the positives, as well as being honest about the challenges
- If teachers don’t buy into a schools ethos, they don’t stay – most often it is the culture of a school that attracts staff
- Challenging schools need staff that see teaching as a vocation, rather than a job
- Recruitment processes need to be personal
The DfE will be looking at all of the key themes that came out of the focus groups and will keep SCHOOLS NorthEast updated on how this could start to impact on future policy.