Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the report entitled Teacher Wellbeing Index 2024, published by Education Support on 20 November 2024.

Supporting our teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost the life chances for every child, as the within-school factor that makes the biggest difference to a young person’s educational outcome is high quality teaching.

The department wants to improve the experience of being a teacher and re-establish teaching as an attractive profession, one that existing teachers want to remain in, former teachers want to return to, and new graduates wish to join. Fair pay is key to this, which is why we accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools for 2024/25.

​In addition, new teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing in the first five years of their careers will now receive a targeted retention incentive of up to £6,000 after-tax if working in disadvantaged schools. These targeted incentives are helping schools to retain those specialist teachers in the shortage subjects and schools that most need them.

Our ‘Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders’ study also shows the importance of reducing teacher workload, improving wellbeing and increasing opportunities to work flexibly in retaining more of our excellent school staff. Already we have taken action to remove the requirement for schools to use Performance Related Pay from September 2024 and clarified that teachers can undertake their Planning Preparation and Assessment time at home.

The department is also making available workload and wellbeing resources that were developed with school leaders, through our new improving workload and wellbeing online service, and continuing to promote the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, which currently has nearly 4,000 school and college signatories. The department is funding mental health and wellbeing support for school and college leaders, which includes professional supervision and counselling for those who need it. More than 2,000 leaders have benefitted from the support so far. Support continues to be available and can be accessed by visiting Education Support’s website.

High quality continuous professional development is also key to ensuring we have and retain an effective teaching workforce. That is why we have committed to introducing a new teacher training entitlement, to ensure teachers stay up to date on best practice with continuing professional development. This builds on the work the department already does to ensure teachers can access high quality development at key points in their careers, underpinned by our Initial Teacher Training and Early Career frameworks, and onwards through our suite of national professional qualifications.

We are committed to resetting the relationship with the profession and will continue to work with partners to tackle retention issues.