Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to implement a staff retention strategy in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools.

The within school factor that makes the biggest difference to a young person’s educational outcome is high quality teaching. Recruiting and retaining more qualified, expert teachers is therefore critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost the life chances for every child.

​This government has inherited a system with critical shortages of teachers, with numbers not keeping pace with demographic changes. That is why the government has set out the ambition to recruit 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament.

​​​The department has made good early progress towards this key pledge. 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. Alongside teacher pay, we have made £233 million available for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle, which is an increase of £37 million from the 2024/25 cycle, to support teacher trainees with tax-free bursaries of up to £29,000 and scholarships of up to £31,000 in some shortage subjects. The department has also expanded its schoolteacher recruitment campaign, ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’ and the further education teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Share your Skills’.

​A successful recruitment strategy starts with a strong retention strategy, and 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. There are four schools in the Twickenham constituency where teachers are eligible for targeted retention incentives.

We want to ensure teaching is an attractive profession to a wide range of people, including parents. This is why the department is enabling schools to offer greater flexible working, such as allowing planning, preparation, and assessment to be undertaken from home, as well as making key resources to support wellbeing, developed with school leaders, available to teachers.

The department is also funding bespoke support provided by flexible working ambassador schools and multi-academy trusts, ensuring schools are capturing the benefits of flexible working whilst protecting pupils’ face-to-face teacher time. Charles Dickens Primary School is the flexible working ambassador school providing local, tailored peer support for Twickenham schools.

The department has established Teaching School Hubs across the country, which play a significant role in delivering initial teacher training and development. Wandle Teaching School Hub supports teacher training and development across Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames and Wandsworth.

No notices of reduced or ended funding have been issued regarding teacher recruitment or retention schemes since 30 October 2024.