Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I share the right reverend Prelate’s concerns about rural schools. We have particular funding pots within the overall formula—sparsity funding, for example—which give a typical small rural primary school an additional £135,000 a year and a small secondary school £175,000. We are committed to the various ongoing training programmes. Only this morning, I was addressing a group of some 80 people involved in professional development training and encouraging them in what they were doing. I absolutely support what the right reverend Prelate has said.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I broadly welcome the announcement. There is a lot in it that offers hope for the future. The challenge will be in implementing it. I think it is overclaimed. I do not think it is the biggest change since teaching became an all-degree profession. Indeed, there are not many individual proposals that have not done the rounds before, so it is worth learning from them. The advanced skills teacher has been redesigned under a different title.

I have two questions. I very much welcome the protected time that will be offered for new teachers. I listened to what the Minister said about the amount of money that will be put into the system. Can he confirm that it will be ring-fenced when it gets to school level? Otherwise, in times of diminishing budgets, it will not get spent on the purpose for which it was intended. Secondly, how is he going to overcome the problem of making excellent schools that are not academies part of the school-led improvement system if he is going to give a lot more power to multi-academy trusts?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I will have to write to the noble Baroness to confirm whether the money will be ring-fenced at school level. Certainly, our preference is to give autonomy to schools, but I will check on it and come back to her. Support is aimed beyond academies at all state schools. Only just over 50% of pupils are in academies today, so it is not our intention to see those still in the local authority system left behind.