How to keep teachers teaching

Nearly half of all teachers in the maintained sector leave the profession within 5 years of qualifying*

"Improve initial teacher education", some are shouting. Yes - a worthy and vital endeavour which will play it's part in improving education in the long run, but what about the students in school now? What about their learning experiences?

David Weston, Chief Executive of the Teacher Development Trust commented recently:

"If we suddenly think we've come up with a great new recipe [for ITE], we're going to be waiting until about 2025 until those teachers are even over 50% of the system".

David's comment highlights the need to look after and support the teachers currently teaching, helping them to develop and remain in the profession.

The teacher retention problem has led to there being less years of experience in the profession overall. Our secondary teachers are the second youngest in the world with 20% under 30 years old. Primary teachers under 30 make up 31% of the workforce (OECD 2013).

With less experienced teachers, there's less capacity for modelling, an activity that is shown to be highly effective in developing leadership. So, to raise standards of our education system now and in the long run, we need to build capacity, work with our young teachers, ensure they feel valued and supported to become those more experienced professionals.

How can you build capacity?

Can we expect new teachers to emerge from training as good or great? Can you go on a course and come back to school as a super star teacher?

Considering the  research says only 5% of what's learnt on a course gets put into practice, unfortunately it's quite unlikely!

This challenge isn't one that can be patched here or there. I recently heard Professor Toby Greany speak at a Westminster Education Forum seminar, he highlighted the danger of delivering training, CPD and leadership development in separate silos as opposed to a joined up, continuous approach. Instead of treating different stages of a career as separate events, we need a model to support teachers though all stages of their careers.

In the white paper "Going Beyond CPD", Graham Newell, Director of Education for IRIS Connect discusses a model for all stages of a teachers career:

• A newly qualified teacher may enter the classroom with a ‘fair’ understanding of the theory but will require scaffolding in the early years through a process of modelling and coaching from more experienced colleagues

• As skills develop and a teacher becomes ‘good’, coaching may still continue but peer mentoring and self review will become more important

• As a teacher becomes ‘great’ they will start to initiate collaboration both within and across schools and, as professionals at the front line, they will reflect more deeply on their own teaching skills

• Some teachers will become ‘outstanding’ and they will contribute to the teaching, coaching and mentoring of colleagues at earlier stages of the professional journey

Graham's model highlights the needs for different levels of input and support throughout careers. Read Going Beyond CPD for further discussion on this.

So, how do we keep teachers teaching?

It's not just about keeping our best teachers teaching (of course that's important), it's about recognising the potential in all of our teachers to be great and supporting them throughout their careers to be highly effective at what they do.

Do teachers in their 4th year of teaching receive effective on-going CPD or does it fizzle out after NQT+1? What's you experience?

*according to Alan Newland in "Working in Teaching"