Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to improve the morale of (a) teachers and (b) other education professionals.

The Government’s top priority is to make sure teaching continues to be an attractive and fulfilling profession, which is why my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education announced in March 2018 that the Department will be developing a new teacher recruitment and retention strategy.

The strategy provides an opportunity to take a long-term look at the teacher workforce to determine how best to provide sufficient high-quality teachers. It will build on the work already being done to support the profession, including clarifying the accountability system, extending the induction period, increasing the support available to newly qualified teachers and providing tailored recruitment support for schools. The Department is working closely with the sector, teaching unions and professional bodies to develop this.

Reducing workload is an important part of improving teacher morale. The Department has accepted the Workload Advisory Group recommendations in full and has confirmed its support to help reduce workload in schools. The workload reduction toolkit, published in July 2018, provides accessible materials, including practical advice, tools and case studies that school leaders, teachers and other staff can use to address workload issues in their school. This toolkit can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/workload-reduction-toolkit.

More widely, schools and academy trusts as employers are responsible for the wellbeing of the staff they employ, including non-teaching staff.