Recruitment and Retention of Teachers

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

The Government have provided figures on the failings of the Teach First programme, which have revealed that we are losing more recruits from Teach First than we are gaining every year. The Government’s management of the Teach First programme has produced very poor results. Even among Teach First ambassadors, over a third left teaching after two years and nearly half after five years. We are now losing more Teach First graduates from secondary education every year than are joining. The Government’s intention to expand recruitment makes little sense if it leads to an ever-higher turnover.

The problem is not that teachers are failing the system but that the system is failing them. These results are no reflection on their commitment to education but must surely be a reflection of their experience of teaching under this Government. How can we possibly hope to rebalance our economy away from its over-reliance on the City of London and the banking sector and towards manufacturing, high-tech industry, IT and engineering if we cannot even find the teachers to teach maths and science?

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a serious problem in parts of London, in particular? In my constituency, house prices average £606,000. That means that even if a teacher can be recruited, keeping them is a real challenge.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend anticipates my next point.

The problem does not start and end with encouraging people to become teachers in the first place. Retaining experienced teachers is better for schools, better for pupils, and of course better financially as it is so much cheaper than recruitment and training.

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[Mr Gibb]

We are not complacent at all. One of the Secretary of State’s objectives is to take action in underperforming areas of the country where schools are not reaching the standard that we would expect of them. We are determined to do so. The national teaching service, for example, is a scheme by which we are encouraging high-performing teachers to second themselves to areas that have had problems in recruiting high-calibre teachers, so that we can raise standards in those areas. We are far from complacent, and we are determined to ensure that we have high-quality schools in every area and that every parent can send their child to a good local school, wherever they are located, including in areas of deprivation, rural areas or the coastal strip.

Of course, as the economy continues to recover and rebalance towards manufacturing, demand for STEM skills is increasing. Since 2010, we have therefore significantly increased the value of bursaries available to top graduates entering teaching in priority subjects. Those bursaries are now worth up to £25,000 tax-free, and we have worked closely with the leading learned societies—the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and others—to develop prestigious scholarships for specialists in those subjects who want to teach.

[Meg Hillier]

I wish to bring the Minister back to the issue of housing costs in London. Is he having discussions with other Departments about how we can address the fact that teachers on these salaries are still a long way from being able to rent in London, let alone buy a property?

[Mr Gibb]

Those challenges face young people in London whatever their chosen profession, and that is why we are committed to addressing the housing shortage and building more houses. London is an attractive place for young teachers to teach, and Teach First and other organisations engaged in placing newly qualified or qualifying teachers into schools find London the least problematic place to place trainee teachers.

Even with generous bursary and scholarship schemes, we know there is still more to do to recruit high-quality mathematics and physics teachers—