Teacher Shortages Worsen as Rise of Home Working Makes Profession Less Attractive: Report

A teacher leads a math class in a file photo. Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

Teacher shortages have worsened in England following the COVID-19 pandemic partly because the profession offers relatively limited opportunities to work from home, a new report has said.

According to the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), the number of teacher vacancies posted by schools was 93 percent higher in the academic year up to February 2023 than at the same point in the year before the pandemic.

The data on teacher vacancies, collected by teacher job board and data scraping service TeachVac, also suggests that vacancies in February 2023 were 37 percent higher than at the same point in the 2021/22 school year.

Teacher vacancies do not only reflect teachers who leave the profession as schools may post vacancies to fill posts left by teachers who moved schools or because there is a higher demand for staff driven by increased pupil numbers.

But the report said the rise in teacher vacancies since spring 2022 suggests that “leaving rates are likely to have increased significantly in the last year.”

The NFER study highlighted how the pandemic has led to a widespread adoption of remote working in the graduate workforce, but it said teachers’ opportunities to work from home “remain very limited.”

It said: “The continued high prevalence of home-working in many jobs in the wake of the pandemic indicates that it is a particularly attractive arrangement. The lack of availability of home-working may therefore represent a threat to the relative attractiveness of teaching.”

The report calls on the government to fund research into teachers’ flexible working preferences post-pandemic, and it says school leaders should explore what flexible working options could work for staff.

Recruitment Below Target

The report warns that recruitment to initial teacher training (ITT) in 2023/24 is likely to be significantly below target.

NFER projects that primary ITT and nine out of 17 secondary subjects—physics, computing, design and technology, business studies, modern foreign languages, religious education, music, drama, and art and design—are expected to be 20 percent or more below target.

Other subjects such as maths, English, chemistry, and geography are also at risk of under-recruiting this year, while biology, history, classics, and physical education are likely to be at, or slightly above, target.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “Teacher shortages have been a problem for many years, but the situation has sunk to a new low in the wake of the pandemic.

“It seems some existing teachers took stock of their careers and decided on jobs that were better paid, less pressured, and offered hybrid working, while graduates are less attracted to teaching for the same reasons.”

‘Worsening’ Crisis

Report co-author Jack Worth, school workforce lead for the NFER, has warned that pupil attainment outcomes could be affected as headteachers are increasingly having to resort to using non-specialist teachers “to plug gaps.”

He said: “Schools are being forced to stumble from budget to budget and strike to strike without the help of a clear strategy designed to address a worsening recruitment and retention crisis. School leaders are increasingly resorting to the use of non-specialist teachers to plug gaps which will ultimately affect pupil attainment outcomes.”

He said the 2023 teacher pay award should exceed 4.1 percent—the latest forecast of the rise in average UK earnings next year—to narrow the gap between teacher pay and the wider labour market, and improve recruitment and retention.

He also called for a “long-term plan” to improve the competitiveness of teacher pay.

Niamh Sweeney, deputy general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said the government has “failed to truly recognise the scale and severity of the issue.”

She added: “Expecting teachers to teach subjects for which they are not qualified also adds to teacher and leader stress. Children and young people bear the brunt of this failure to get to the root of the problem and schools in more disadvantaged areas find it even harder to recruit and retain teachers.”

Parliamentary Probe

The NFER report comes on the same week that the Education Committee of the House of Commons launched an inquiry into teacher recruitment and retention in schools.

The committee said that schools are facing “huge teacher shortages” and the government has been “unable to meet its recruitment targets for trainee secondary teachers.”

Robin Walker, a Conservative MP who chairs the committee, said: “The current teacher shortages in some subjects in state-funded schools make it more challenging for schools to provide high-quality education across the country. It is imperative that we take a comprehensive and nuanced look at the difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers. We must urgently identify solutions to ensure pupils receive consistent and quality teaching, and that teachers feel supported in their roles.”

Walker said the committee will “examine the current situation regarding recruitment and retention, as well as actions the government has already taken.”

“Taking the right approach to supporting teachers through their training and early careers, helping to reduce unnecessary workload, and investment in professional development are all vital to ensure schools can access the highly skilled and motivated workforce they need,” he added.

PA contributed to this report.