214 NEW ECONOMY

Staff room RICHAHD PtAHSON li STEPHEN hlORRlS

Institute for Employment Studies Morns is d

same Institute The challenge is to raise the

effectiveness of the existing teachers ~ e = a ~ h officer.>t the

he education system is in the front line of the debate on improving economic competitiveness and our social fabric.

To this end it has been through a period of unprecedented, often controversial change, and as the performance of the education sys- tem comes under increasing scrutiny, so does that of teachers. With a total pay bill of over €1 lbn, there is clear pressure to increase their effectiveness.

challenge is finding ways of getting the most out of the large pool of teachers and potential teachers that we already have.

Who are our teachers? There are over 450,000 qualified teachers in England and Wales currently teaching in over 25,000 schools varying in size from small single-class nursery schools to the large comprehensives with over 2000 students.

T

As such teachers are never very far away from the headlines. Funding pressures are leading to re- dundancies and increased class sizes. On the one hand we are told that teachers are to blame for falling stand- ards in our schools and that 15,000 of them are ineffec-

''Higher unemployment rates are also associated

with an increased propensity to choose teaching

as a careerN

tive and need to be sacked. While on the other hand teachers claim that they are underpaid and overworked and it is said to be difficult to attract or even retain good teachers.

What is really happening? What can be done to ensure that we have enough effective teachers to meet our needs in the next cen- tury? The problem is not, as is often claimed, a lack of teachers. There are plenty. Recruit- ment problems are not endemic and few teachers do leave the profession. The real

There are also another 300,000 trained teachers not currently teaching, many of whom say they might return to teaching, representing a large pool of potential re- cruits.

Teaching is increasingly becoming a female profes- sion. Women now account for

65 per cent of all teachers and 80 per cent of those in the primary sector. It is also an ageing profession: two-thirds are now aged over 40, up from one in five twenty-five years earlier. The proportion aged under 30 had fallen to a mere 14 per cent in 1994. This ageing popula- tion has implications for the salary bill as sala- ries rise with length of service, while the num- bers retiring will also rise, approximately 150,OOO before the year 2010.

It is widely claimed that teachers are badly

1070-3535/96/040214 + 05 S012.00lO 0 1996 THE DRYDEN PRESS

STAFF ROOM REPORTS 21 5

paid, overworked and generally fed up and that this is an explanation for supposedly in- effective teaching and falling standards in schools. By comparison with many other pro- fessions, this is manifestly not the case.

Myth I : teachers are badly paid On the pay front, in 1995 nearly 80 per cent of teachers earned over E20,OOO pa with 83 per cent of Heads and deputies earning over €30,000 pa. It is true that teachers' wages have fallen relative to non-manual earnings over the last two decades and lag behind that of some comparator professions, but are ahead of, for example, social workers as is shown in the Chart.

Myth 2: teachers are overworked

A lot has been written about the low morale in the profession but it is a difficult concept to idenbfy and measure without regular

length of their working week is not dissimilar to that of other professions and lower than that of many managers and administrators. Furthermore teachers' morale should not be seen in isolation from the decline in the mo- rale of the wider workforce where the old middle class certainties of a 'job for life', 'clearly-defined career' and 'security' have disappeared under corporate restructuring,

staff surveys. Status in the com- munity, workload, administration, and man- ageable levels of stress have all been high- lighted as problems. On the positive side, teachers value relationships with other staff, their pupils and parents; they enjoy the re- sponsibility and job security that teaching offers.

The Teacher's Pay Review Body has con- sistently linked issues of morale and motiva- tion to workload. Classroom teachers work on average between 45 to 50 hours a week in term time and in some exceptional cases over 55 hours. Teachers put their long hours down to a heavy workload resulting from, among other things, the introduction of the National Curriculum and testing. The decline in appli- cations for head teacher posts are also cited as evidence of low morale and a reaction to an increasingly heavy and stressful workload.

But these things must be seen in context. Although teachers work long hours, the

redundancies and more short-term contracts. While this does not make it any better for teachers, we need to be clear about the par- ticular causes of their low morale if we are to be able to encourage them and improve their performance.

Myth 3: No one wants to be a teacher The number of teachers leaving the profes- sion for other employment has fallen in re- cent years and has not started rising with economic recovery. Such losses remain tiny at under 0.1 per cent of the total. The numbers leaving due to ill-health and premature re- tirement, are, however, rising again. Overall the numbers leaving the profession, includ- ing retirements, stil l remain small at under 15,000, less than five per cent of the total. Losses are among young teachers (as in other professions), in London and from senior posts.

216 NEW ECONOMY

Among those qualrfying there is also a very low loss rate into non-teaching employment. In recent years, over 70 per cent of teachers completing a postgraduate teaching course have moved straight into teaching, while oth- ers took time off. In 1995 less than 3 per cent took up employment outside teaching, with no intention of returning.

Recruitment difficulties and skill shortages typically follow the economic cycle and the selective shortages of the late 1980s virtually disappeared in the first half of the 1990s. The official vacancy rate is now steady at only about 0.4 per cent of teaching posts, having fallen from a high of over one per cent in 1991, and there are few signs of recruitment dif- ficulties other than in some inner cities, London and for some senior posts.

The shortage problem is, however, to some extent hid- den as in some cases teachers are teaching subjects for

pects deteriorated, or other factors. The majority of teacher training places,

18,000, are now on postgraduate courses, with a further 12,000 studying on first degree courses; the Department for Education and Employment set intake targets for these courses. Applications for places on these courses have been growing fast with those for postgraduate courses up by 75 per cent over the last 6 years. In part this reflects the massive expansion in higher education and the dou- bling of the numbers graduating from the uni- versities. Despite this the targets at secondary level have not always been met and there was

estimated to be a ten per cent

“There is a need for a more substantive,

professional body to assess and support the long term development needs of the teaching

profession”

which they hold no qualifica- tion. For example, in the late 1980s, eight per cent of those teaching physics were not quali- fied in the subject. Nor do the vacancy data measure posts that are left unfilled due to lack of funds or covered by a succession of supply teachers. In the current economic upturn there is little sign of skill shortages returning, with the massive increase in the numbers graduating boosting the pool of potential teachers and filling alternative vacancies.

The teachers of the future So what about those joining the profession? The numbers entering teaching rose steadily during the 1980s, reaching a peak of over 32,000 in 1990. They have since plateaued along with vacancy levels. Since the mid- 1980s new entrants have outnumbered re-en- trants. It is not clear whether this preference for new entrants is due to their lower salaries, their greater availability as the numbers qualifying increased and alternative job pros-

shortfall in 1995/6 with par- ticular problems in technol- ogy, maths and science.

Measuring the ’quality’ of trainee and new teachers is controversial. Traditionally A Level and degree results are used. On these measures, the academic attainment of trainee teachers lags well be-

hind that of the average entrant to higher edu- cation. In 1994, nearly 40 per cent of all en- trants to degree courses had good A level scores, compared to only 12 per cent starting first degree teaching courses. There were also less with firsts among those completing a postgraduate courses than among the wider graduating population.

Finally, although OFSTED has a reputation for being critical, its recent Review described the standard of lessons taught by new teach- ers as satisfactory. It also said this was a nota- ble achievement, given a background of sig- nificant change within education. They did, however, consider that a minority, 10 per cent, of newly qualified teachers were unsuitable.

Why teaching? Career choice is a complex issue and it is hard to be definitive about why people consider teaching as a career but econometric studies do allow us to isolate a number of measur-

STAFF ROOM REPORTS 217

able factors influencing this decision. For ex- ample, a one per cent rise in relative teacher starting salaries, would lead to a four per cent increase in graduates wanting to enter teacher training. A decline in relative teacher

ratios are to remain unchanged, or even im- proved as many would like, s i w c a n t num- bers of extra teachers will be required (subject to constraints on funds). More will also be needed to cover the imminent increase in re-

salary progression also leads to fewer people entering teaching, and the like- lihood of teachers leaving increases. Higher unemploy- ment rates are also as- sociated with an increased propensity to choose teaching as a career, especially high graduate unem- ployment. The ability to combine work with childcare was influ- ential for women, as was their social class.

Degree subject is also important; those with degrees in financial subjects, economics, science, or law, having a lower propensity to enter teaching as do those with higher classes of degree. Finally more qualitative studies show that a history of teaching in the family is a positive influence on potential entrants, as are informal contacts with those already in teaching jobs, work experience, and careers advice. In contrast, the often negative por- trayal of teaching in the media puts off many would-be entrants.

Getting better teachers What then needs to be done to ensure an effective teaching profession for next cen- tury? Although there are few recruitment dif- ficulties at the moment it is clear that improvements are going to be needed.

On the one hand, we will need more and more teachers in the future. Pupil numbers are projected to rise by about eight per cent over the next decade, with most of the growth at secondary level (see Chart). If teacher-pupil

tirements. As few teachers leave for em- ployment elsewhere, we will need to focus on recruiting new en- trants and re-entrants.

While there are signs of alternative job prospects for gradu- ates improving, and still some difficulties meeting training tar- gets in particular sub- ject areas at secondary level, the pool of po- tential candidates is growing fast and the

increasing female participation in the labour force also favours the teaching profession. Add to this the 300,000 or more trained teach- ers who are not actively teaching, many of whom are potential returnees, and we can see that the problem is not one of numbers per se but one of attracting or rather not deterring the right people from becoming teachers.

Attracting new teachers What can be don2 The factors attracting and motivating teachers are complex and not al- ways clear.

Salaries do play a part. There is a need to develop a structure that rewards both the good classroom teacher and those who take on key managerial and leadership roles; at present the marginal increase in reward does not seem enough to encourage more teachers to take on senior roles. But there are many other factors of equal importance related to lifestyle and the job itself.

We need to know more about what moti- vates different groups of teachers and to ad- dress their intrinsic needs. For example, many

21 8 NEW ECONOMY

women, and increasingly men, want work- place flexibility, yet the incidence of part-time working remains suprisingly low. Around seven per cent of teachers, a lower proportion than for the workforce as a whole and sign& cantly lower than in a similar, female-domi- nated profession, nursing, work part- time.Greater use of career breaks, job sharing and cr&es could all help at the margin. Re- fresher courses, training and retainer schemes can help those not currently working main- tain and update their skills.

Making sure that staff are working effec- tively is not just about recruitment. At the current rate of losses it would take more than 30 years to replace the existing teaching work- force with new entrants. So concentrating on initial teacher training will not be enough.

Inspiring existing teachers The real challenge will be how to raise the performance and effectiveness of the existing teaching workforce, a large and diverse group with a big salary bill. Perhaps one of the saving graces of the retirement bulge is that their replacements will cost less, freeing money, if it is not clawed back by the Treas- ury, for improvements in the system.

Reviewing, and focusing the role of teach- ers on teaching could offer great potential re- turns. This has been shown by those schools using more ancillary workers and specialists, freeing teachers’ time for what they aspire and are trained to do, namely teaching. This could be of particular help at senior levels

where few heads, and potential heads, joined teaching to be managers. The managerial revolution that is overtaking the senior levels of teaching needs more explicit recognition in terms of recruitment, selection and training.

More regular appraisals and feedback for staff could help focus attention on perform- ance and, allied to training and development, increase motivation and effectiveness. How- ever research has shown that it is not easy to measure performance and translate it into a simple and effective pay system that im- proves motivation. Many attempts to date have proved ineffective and divisive.

Conclusions Given the key role teachers play in society and the economy, their numbers and cost, it is surprising that their management and de- velopment receives so little sustained, na- tional attention. With management being increasingly devolved to schools, there is a need for a more substantive, professional body to assess and support the long term development needs of the profession draw- ing together the inputs of OFSTED, the Teachers Review Body and the ad hoc re- views.

Education is now high up the political agenda. Its key role in society is at last get- ting the recognition it deserves. The next step is to improve the way we develop, use and reward our teachers, and ensure that their contribution is recognised in what is said and done 0