Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of teachers in Selby and Ainsty constituency.

Recent data shows that there are now over 468,000 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state funded schools in England, which is an increase of 27,000 (6%) since 2010. This makes it the highest number of FTE teachers on record since the School Workforce Census began in 2010. The number of FTE teachers in North Yorkshire Local Authority rose to 4,582 in 2022, an increase of 342 (8%) since 2010.

The Department is taking action to increase teacher recruitment and retention.

The Department recently announced that the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendations for the 2023/24 pay award for teachers and head teachers have been accepted in full. This means that teachers and head teachers in maintained schools will receive a pay award of 6.5%. This is the highest pay award for teachers in over 30 years. The award also delivers the manifesto commitment of a minimum £30,000 starting salary for school teachers in all regions in England, with a pay award of up to 7.1% for new teachers outside London.

The Department announced a financial incentives package worth up to £181 million for those starting initial teacher training (ITT) in the 2023/24 academic year. The Department is providing bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000 to encourage trainees to apply to train in key secondary subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing.

The Department is also providing a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 annually for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools nationally, including within Education Investment Areas (EIAs). North Yorkshire is an EIA. There are 30 schools in the North Yorkshire Local Authority area eligible for the Levelling Up Premium, including three schools in the Selby and Ainsty constituency. The eligibility criteria and list of eligible schools is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/levelling-up-premium-payments-for-teachers.

The Department has created an entitlement to at least three years of structured training, support, and professional development for all new teachers, underpinned by the Initial Teacher Training (ITT), Core Content Framework (CCF) and the Early Career Framework (ECF). Together, these ensure that new teachers will benefit from at least three years of evidence based training, across ITT and into their induction.

To support teacher retention, the Department has worked with the education sector and published a range of resources to help address staff workload and wellbeing and to support schools to introduce flexible working practices. This includes the workload reduction toolkit and the education staff wellbeing charter. More than 2,800 schools have signed up to the charter so far. The education staff wellbeing charter can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter. The workload reduction toolkit is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit.

The Department recently announced that it will also convene a workload reduction taskforce to explore how we can go further to support trusts and head teachers to minimise workload.