Recruitment of Teachers

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I strongly agree with my noble friend. The curriculum and assessment review is important to ensure that teachers have a curriculum that promotes high standards in reading, writing and maths and is strong and knowledge-rich. It also provides the opportunity for innovation, expertise and, as she said, the agency of teachers to provide the absolutely best, broadest and richest experience for our children. That is a clear objective of the curriculum and assessment review.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has inherited a situation where we have the highest number of teachers leaving the profession and the fewest people wanting to go into teaching. As she rightly pointed out, we have a shortage of teachers of specialist subjects. Is it not time that we no longer look at sticking-plaster solutions but at the whole picture? If we are to make teaching a profession that people want to go into, we have to deal with workload problems, the salary and some of the problems that teachers face in terms of their role increasingly becoming one of social workers. If we do that, more and more people will want to become teachers.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I completely agree with the noble Lord about the challenges, not just that individual teachers have in the classroom, but that we have in attracting people to and keeping them in the profession. He has identified a range of areas that we need to make progress on as a Government and on which we are already taking action. I have mentioned some of the proposals around retention. The noble Lord is right about teacher workload and well-being. Our improved workload and well-being for school staff service, developed alongside school leaders, contains a whole range of resources to enable schools to review and reduce workload and improve staff well-being. On the other pressures that happen outside school but which children bring into school, we will have the opportunity during the forthcoming Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to consider the other initiatives that the Government are taking to support the most vulnerable children, strengthen our children’s social care services and, through a whole range of other provisions, make sure that children are able to arrive at school appropriately supported and ready to learn.