Teaching profession needs to be talked up amid recruitment crisis concerns
Ofsted’s Chief Inspector has called for the teaching profession to be “talked up” in order to ensure it comes across as a great career path to follow.
During his evidence session with the Education Select Committee, Sir Michael Wilshaw admitted that the rhetoric around the teaching profession hinders recruitment: “so much of what we hear is negative: workload, children misbehaving. We need to say this is a really noble profession to go into”.
He added that coastal and rural areas with few Teaching Schools have “a real problem”.
His comments come after the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) published findings which reveal that nine out of 10 secondary schools are struggling to recruit. Their survey of 900 school leaders found that 89% of respondents are “experiencing difficulties” in recruiting teachers, and 73% think the recruitment situation is now worse or much worse than it was a year ago.
Malcom Trobe, ASCL Interim General Secretary, said “We agree with Sir Michael that teacher shortages are jeopardising improvements to the education system. We also agree with him that everybody in the education sector has a role to play in promoting the profession.
“The Government must provide more incentives to encourage people to become teachers, but we must all do more to talk about the tremendous positives of teaching as a career.”
Prior to launching the region’s newest recruitment portal created by schools, for schools, SCHOOLS NorthEast conducted a similar survey in the North East. We found that 89% of school leaders in our region (across all types of schools) had experienced difficulties with recruiting staff in the past year, and 73% predict recruitment will become more difficult in the future.
Jobs in Schools | North East aims to ease the recruitment burden on schools by giving them the opportunity to advertise all their vacancies (teaching and non-teaching) for a small annual fee. If your school would like to sign up, or if you wish to find out more, please contact info@schoolsnortheast.com.