Why Schools Should Act Like Businesses To Retain Teachers
By Nathan Burns
Nathan Burns compares the current benefits of teaching, with what happens in the non-education private sector, to see what can be parachuted over to make teaching a more desirable profession.
Teacher numbers are falling, teacher training applications are tumbling. Staff seem more unhappy, more overworked and more likely to leave the profession than ever before. Something needs to change, or there really are not going to be enough teachers to be stood in front of classes up and down the length of the UK.
There are of course a huge number of benefits of teaching, which often revolve around being able to work with students – the joy they, and we get when they finally crack a problem, the success they feel when they learn something new, or seeing students in a tutor group make new friends. All of these factors are incredible pull factors to the profession of teaching. Equally, there are a number of push factors from teaching, including workload (how much marking?!), limited social time with other adults, a fear of being off ill, as well as poor student behaviour, which is exhausting and draining. Though some of these factors are also prevalent in the private sector, instead this piece is going to focus on factors that are comparable between the two, mainly around pay, flexibility and incentives.
So let us start with teaching. As a new trainee teacher, pay is actually good. Starting salaries are high, and with progress up the main pay scale occurring each year for the first few years of service, consistent pay rises are pretty much guaranteed. Add in the possibility of a TLR, or a double band jump if you move schools and are in a desired subject, then the prospects for quick pay progression are very good. But then, that’s it, really. Unless you want to go into leadership, there just is no more pay progression. You could get to your peak pay point in your early 30s and never earn a penny more, apart from when the government gives us our intermittent and relatively poor pay rises.
Imagine 30 years of never really earning more and feeling relatively poorer. Is it really any wonder that pay causes so much anger and so many strikes? Even those who move onto leadership can get stuck – moving up the leadership pay scale is slow and differences in levels are minor, especially when you consider taxes and pension contributions which occur.
Somewhat of a stronger positive is pensions. They may not be as good as they once were, but they certainly are still one of the best pensions you could hope to get during your working career. With such high employer contributions and a very good return on monies paid, someone working in teaching for their whole career should come out of teaching with a good pension. Though there are better schemes out there in the private sector, there are also worse, so this is certainly one area that cannot be scoffed at.
Holidays are also the other major bonus – or at least they seem to be on the face of it. Six summer weeks, two at Christmas, two at Easter and a further 3 weeks of half term – 13 weeks off is glorious, right? Well, yes – it certainly is good – but it isn’t quite 13 weeks. Subtract a few days of work and prep, the bank holidays (which we would have off anyway if they weren’t conveniently in the holidays) and all of sudden you are down to a good 10 weeks. So, this is certainly far more than the average in the UK – a ‘good’ job would give you maybe 6 or 7 weeks in total, but when you include bank holidays, a lot of people will be closer to 7 or 8 weeks off. Really, there isn’t a huge difference. One thing that there certainly isn’t, is flexibility. Our holidays are the same, each year, every year. As are the holidays of hundreds of thousands – millions even – of other people. This means that activities and holidays anywhere cost a fortune, days out are packed and in-term flexibility is completely nonexistent.
Beside these three areas, there aren’t really any other ‘business’ points to consider. Teachers can’t earn a bonus and there are no other incentives. There are, however, things schools can do to improve wellbeing, specifically around efficiency and workload for staff, which is true also of the private sector.
This brings us to the question of what more schools can do, then. What can schools do to replicate some of those financial and non-financial incentives that the private sector has on offer?
Pay is never going to be an option – not whilst budgets are small and shrinking yet further. I am sure that schools would love to offer some double band pay jumps, increase some of their TLR payments and even increase the number of TLRs on offer. But this isn’t reasonable with the budgets that schools currently have. Equally, there is nothing that schools can do regarding wage growth when staff get into the Upper Pay Scale – that is a government issue to sort (if they ever do). This means therefore, that schools will need to focus on non-financial incentives that can closely align with benefits offered by the private sector. In fact, these incentives may need to be greater where wages are higher in the private sector.
The first thing schools really need to look at is trust and flexibility around time off. If we are trusted to be able to get a class of Year 11 students through their GCSEs, then we need to be trusted that when we say we have an appointment at the doctor, we actually have an appointment at the doctor. We also need to be trusted that when that appointment is right in the middle of the day, there is nothing we can do about it (we would have to provide the cover anyway, I’m sure we’d love it outside school time). The frequent lack of trust from some schools around this area is astonishing. We’re professionals and need to be treated as such! Equally, appointments, especially those around healthcare, shouldn’t just be left until the holidays, which I know a lot of schools suggest. Leaving someone waiting weeks to get to a medical appointment to avoid a couple of covered lessons is a poor way to manage staff.
There also needs to be flexibility around time off for childcare and family events. Teachers should be able to go to their own children’s sport days and shows. Holidays are no good if a child never has their parents come to any school events because they are ‘always working’. I have also heard of schools being inconsiderate of funerals (for example suggesting that the funeral isn’t of a close enough family member to justify time off), and weddings. These are once in a lifetime events, and making teachers stressed and upset from missing them is certainly not worth a few covered lessons. Schools can be so much better and be much more flexible in these areas.
PPA is another area where there needs to be more flexibility. If staff have PPA, then they ought to be able to work remotely, as so many other industries are now allowing. Once more, teachers need to be trusted as professionals to get their work done in a way, in a location, at a time, that suits them. Sometimes being forced to stay in a school building – where it may be loud or uncomfortable, rather than getting on with work quietly at home, in a library or a cafe – is not going to be the most productive use of a teacher’s time.
Overall, you can see that it comes back to trust. Teachers know what they need to do, and they know the importance of what they do. Controlling hours, preventing flexibility in working spaces and needlessly restricting time off for important occasions are not ways to improve performance.
There are also some other things that schools can do. Examples of these include:
- Electric charging points in the school car park for staff with electric cars.
- Deals with local car garages to allow for staff to organise for their vehicles to be serviced and repaired whilst they work (e.g. car collection and drop off).
- Supporting and encouraging union involvement
- Providing the opportunity for free, high quality CPD where staff are actually given the time that they need to complete it.
- Arrange discounts and deals at local shops and attractions for staff as a reward for working at your school.
There are plenty of other incentives that you can offer too. All it takes is a little creativity and consideration of your local context. I’m sure you’ll find things that staff need in your local area.
To conclude, there are lots of things that schools can do to incentivise joining them and staying there. However, this is all set in a context of dwindling budgets for schools and a pay structure that appears confused, and to a large degree beyond the control of schools.
