The teacher trap

Reimagining teachers’ careers in schools and multi-academy trusts

The routes into and through a rewarding career in education are changing, yet the constant need for the best workforce we have ever had in our education system has never been stronger. A career that is often described as a vocation and a “job for life” is also changing as teachers take career breaks, consider new professional journeys and move into new roles at different stages, which has created a less stable and secure employment landscape.

In this white paper, Affinity Workforce will shine a light for education professionals that will help illuminate and explain the new career pathways now open to all. They also highlight the many opportunities on offer through becoming part of the MAT workforce that enable more teachers, leaders and support staff to consider their career progression in different schools whilst remaining with the same employer.

This white paper refers to the ‘teacher trap’, where talented, capable teachers become frustrated at being ‘trapped’ in their jobs, unable to make the progress they desire, as a consequence of lack of movement in their current team, the need to remain in a particular geographical location or as a result at times of inflexible working arrangements. Likewise, brilliant non-teaching

staff working in and for schools sometimes do not realise their potential either. We need to escape the thinking trap that new teachers can only land into the profession straight out of university and consider different routes into our profession whilst ensuring that we preserve the rigour of traditional training routes.

I believe there is hope and optimism about the ways in which we take better care of the professional and wellbeing needs of our workforce, and much of this is driven by changes in the way that schools are working more collaboratively. MATs are bringing about tangible, meaningful improvements to schools and better career development to the people who work for them. In a MAT, there is a strong focus on unearthing the most effective practice. Classroom doors are opened with the result that strong teaching strategies are shared with more people. The old model of the ‘sealed’ classroom, in which a single person has absolute, isolated autonomy, often doesn’t deliver the best teaching and learning outcomes for children – and nor is it sustainable for teachers to withstand that kind of personal and professional pressure. Staff can access a MAT-wide pool of resources and experts to help them teach and support learning in the best way they possibly can.

What MATs are doing, in helping teachers to develop their careers, is ultimately about ensuring our children get a better education. MATs accelerate best practice, and we should be helping them to do so. I’m pleased to see that the likes of Affinity Workforce are digging deep into their detailed research and sharing information about teachers’ career choices and schools’ staffing options. The more we can share and utilise the myriad of options now opening up for a long, fulfilling career in education, the better our education system will become.

Foreword by Sir David Carter

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Sir David Carter was the National Schools Commissioner from February 2016 to August 2018 and is now Executive Director of System Leadership at The Institute for Teaching and Ambition School Leadership.

Contents

03 Foreword by Sir David Carter

04 Jobs in the education sector are changing

06 Retention and recruitment

08 Reimagining teachers’ careers 12 How to tackle the teacher trap

14 About Affinity Workforce

Research methodologyAffinity Workforce undertook comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research to inform this report.This comprised of:

Interviews with 101 recruitment decision-makers within schools, academies and Multi-Academy Trusts within England. This was made up of Head Teachers, HR/resourcing professionals and senior leaders, of primary and secondary schools with more than 250 pupils. All schools were either currently part of a MAT or planning to be part of a MAT within the next two years.

Interviews with 500 primary and secondary school teachers in England, working across all school types, and both permanent and supply teachers.

In-depth qualitative interviews with 4 senior executives within MATs in England.

All research was conducted by Insights Avenue.

The Affinity Workforce view:

Teachers need support to be able to progress their careers and make the most of the kinds of opportunities now available. MATs are in a great position to offer:

• Better training provision. Working across a number of schools means MATs can pool their resources to offer broader, more regular training. MATs’ central processes means they are often in positions to negotiate with training providers, and have protocols in place to work alongside other MATs.

• Better insight into where teachers might need career support. The beauty of working for a larger organisation that supports multiple academies is that there can be a central point of support dedicated specifically to HR functions. This includes career support and workforce planning. MATs identify pressure points in the workforce centrally, to manage recruitment, retirement and everything in-between - but also to develop and support teachers in their careers.

• Standard policies on promotion, progression and development. Schools will often have their own ways of working, and this is often an important part of a school’s culture and atmosphere, for both staff and students. But there are times when a centrally-agreed process can help smooth out the discrepancies that can cause issues. Managing opportunities for promotion and development is a case in point. A MAT’s standardised, transparent approach can be enormously beneficial to teachers who wish to progress, or move within, their career paths.

Appetite vs. hunger?None of this passivity is to say that teachers have no appetite for change in their careers. Increasingly, teachers report feeling undervalued and overworked – and 72% of the teachers we spoke to for our latest research said they wanted more access to training. A surprising proportion, though (48% of teachers in state schools), said they would be open to changes but aren’t actively looking for new opportunities. Why not? We think part of the problem is teachers simply not being aware of their options, and not being sure of how to find out about them.

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Jobs in the education sector are changing

The political is personal Teaching and support staff often end up carryingthe day-to-day burden of a sector undergoingconstant and fast-paced change. And the first thing to go in a busy working day, or in a pressurised career, is the headspace to be able to take stock of success. This often means teachers are unable to take time to reflect on their options and consider career moves.

A changing landscape of opportunity More than this, though, the market for teachingand education roles is also in constant flux. Careerprogression from NQT to Senior Leadership Teamis no longer ‘standard’ at all. MATs, in particular, have changed the recruitment landscape in education.Many teachers, previously able to rely uponprogression by default if they were successful inthe classroom, are now afforded opportunitiesthat simply didn’t exist even just a few years ago.

Teachers actively looking for a new teaching job

Teachers open to a new teaching job, but not actively looking

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8%

42%

12%

49%

13%

48%

Managing recruitment: good tools for a harder job Recruitment in education has recently become both more complex and more accessible. Some leading MATs have focussed on making managing the processes of recruitment and retention smoother, easing the workload on head teachers and centralised admin and HR teams. But this is in the face of an increasingly challenging market: 60% of schools think recruiting high quality staff has become harder over the last two years.

Helping teachers see the wood for the treesHow can teachers get better access to this wider, more complex employment market? MATs have a role to play in helping teachers understand, access and make the most of this mercurial market. For example, the perception amongst teaching staff is that it’s increasingly complicated to source, sift and pursue vacancies. MATs can support their staff in this by offering a range of opportunities across schools.

Research shows that poor school reputation and reported poor behaviour can make schools particularly hard to recruit into, and it can be especially difficult to retain staff in a challenging school environment. MATs can help here, too: they can mobilise staff working in difficult schools, both to make sure they get experience and to offer opportunities in schools with a different balance of strengths and challenges.

The fear factor Why are teachers so reluctant to move position, or move school?Our research reveals that teachers tend to want to choose a school and stay there: just 53% of respondents rated opportunities to move between schools more readily as important. But they also want to develop their own experience, and rate lack of training opportunities highly amongst their dissatisfactions with their careers and current employment. So why the disparity?

Our conclusion from the research is that teachers are reluctant to move into new schools because of the ‘fear factor’. What if the new school is a poor cultural fit for me? What if the reported behaviour of the pupils, and the values of the management, don’t ring true once I’m in? Will I get ‘stuck’ in a school I dislike, or be denied opportunities to move and progress if I don’t fit in?

The grapevine The ‘fear factor’ is something both fuelled by, and mitigated by, the grapevine. Teachers network and share stories a lot – both professionally and personally. They rely on other teachers’ opinions of schools, and understandably so. To work inside a school, where personal, political and performance pressures run high, and often short on budget, time and resource, you need to feel well supported and that your employer values you. It’s little wonder that schools’ reputations are made in cafes and pubs as much as they are in classrooms and reports. In the absence of other clear, impartial sources, teachers trust each other about schools. It’s also where many teachers glean information about vacancies and recruitment.

Schools can do much to help improve this situation, and it’s often easier for MAT schools to do so. MATs have more access to the resources required to advertise, share and clarify all aspects of a school’s performance. They’re also better placed to better communicate these, both in terms of the quality of reporting and getting clear and accurate information out about recruitment.

Retention and recruitment

The Affinity Workforce view:

It’s important for schools to be open and transparent about their cultures and their recruitment. This can be tricky in an individual school, where recruitment is often managed by a time-poor, pressurised team. MATs can counter this with dedicated recruitment management resources – which can both smooth the process and apply a publicly available recruitment policy. MATs can both counter the nervousness and/or passivity in the teaching job market and offer equality of opportunity for development. And a MAT’s oversight of its workforce, and its public business reporting, holds recruitment process and policy to account.

Creating an employer brand, to help with recruitment and retention of the best quality staff, is where a Crown Commercial Service (CCS) accredited provider can really add value. At Affinity Workforce, we help hundreds of schools and academies meet their everyday staffing needs, and our managed service helps MATs to understand what they’re offering to their staff. By managing this centrally, we can free up school staff’s valuable time, allowing them to focus on education and getting the best outcomes for children.

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63% of teachers are unsure of the benefits of working in a Multi-Academy

Trust (MAT) as a teacher

95% of teachers rate the reputation of the school as a ‘good

employer’ as important or very important when deciding whether to work there

When I joined the Trust, everybody did recruitment differently. They used local job boards and tests. We had no consistent application form… There was no sense of Trust identity in the process. So that was a big change, to bring in consistency of practice and process.There was no sense of trust identity in the process. So that was a big change, to bring in consistence of practice and process.

53% of teachers want opportunities to move between schools to

be more readily available

Supply teaching, and perceptions of it, are shifting. Teachers are now in a position to be able to make the most of these changes. Providers like Affinity Workforce have a role to play - because we’re on the government’s Crown Commercial Service (CCS) supply framework, we can support workforce planning, help staff mobility and facilitate efficient networking. Having a supplier support a MAT also means we can ensure compliance easily – procuring supply support, for example, is made easier working through an approved provider, and reduces the burden on the individual school or MAT.

Option one: consider strategic supplyWhat was once seen as emergency cover is now a much more strategic endeavour. Schools appreciate that using supply teachers is a long-term solution, and are moving towards agreeing planned, flexible resource rather than ‘just a pair of legs at the front of the class’. This means teachers can reconsider their preconceptions of working in supply, too. Supply is now more reliable, more school- or MAT-centred, and more rewarding in terms of teaching activity.

The prevalence of supply and its increasing importance in schools brings with it credibility and positive attitudes and practices relating to both supply positions and teachers working supply. The view that supply work is ‘bottom of the barrel’ is well and truly outmoded – as is the preconception that supply teachers are necessarily nearing the end of their careers, or unable or unwilling to teach in a ‘proper’ role.

The education sector is moving from clamping down on supply spend, as it has been for the past few years, to needing to spend more, proportionally, on supply. This is in no small part down to the pressure of pension provision changing the recruitment and employment market for schools. More staff working on a supply basis will become the norm in the coming months and years.

Reimagining teachers’ careers

It’s a bit of a halfway house. At the moment, [recruitment] is still individually school-run. We have a central HR team who support all the schools. When there’s a vacancy, we still broadly go through separate school recruitment. But with our HR team, because we place advertisements centrally, it gives us an opportunity to see whether there’s anything we can join up with vacancies in other schools. Culturally [this is] quite a big change. We’d have to manage that very carefully, and we have to have the schools feel that they have a buy-in to the way recruitment decisions are made.

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We realised that we were spending a lot of money on supply last year. Across the country, spending was at £1.4 bn last year on supply, which is a pretty incredible amount of money. So we have appointed our [own] kind of internal supply… recruited to ensure that we’ve got consistency and quality in terms of delivering.

Schools increasingly appreciate that, as they put together long-term people strategies, they need to factor in sufficient flexibility and resilience to teaching roles and resource planning. Barriers to fulfilling careers and work/life balance are increasingly being broken down in society, and teachers can no longer be expected to align to the dated stereotype of dedicated, life-poor careerists.

43% of permanent teaching staff say they would consider consider becoming

a supply teacher in the next five years

21% of teachers think it’s important to have greater visibility of the entire

workforce in schools (including supply teachers as well as permanent staff)

48% of teachers are open to a new teaching job, but not actively looking

Option two: join a MAT

Another option to make changes in your teaching career without going all-out into supply contracting is to consider moving to a MAT.

Why make the move to a MAT?A MAT can offer teachers easier, more transparent and more frequent opportunities to:• Move between schools, to develop or broaden skills, or take a break from one particular type of school• Develop skills and train in specialist areas• Work across schools that, while separate, have a consistent feel and culture

MATs also offer consistency and transparency in recruitment and retention.

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How can teachers go about it?When switching to join a larger organisation that works across a number of schools, there are a couple of key things that will help teachers to find the right fit.• Reliability is crucially important: much like supply teaching, following through with work- place commitments is important. Particularly to MATs who want to maintain a top-performing pool of excellent, motivated and capable supply staff• Reputation is a powerful force for both teachers and schools in the education sector. Building and maintaining a professional network and reputation is simple advice that pays enormous dividends in an employment sector that re lies on personal feedback and word-of-mouth recommendations

The Affinity Workforce view:

MATs need to work harder at addressing teachers’ concerns:

• Many teachers are unclear on what benefits MATs can offer – both to the constituent schools and to the teachers they employ • The education sector is pressurised, and is in constant flux. Political and personal pressures mean teachers have very little headspace to actively seek out information about MAT structures, policies and culture. Word of mouth will often fill the void, or act as a shortcut. It also means that many in the education sector feel under pressure of takeover – MATs need to be mindful that schools maintain their identities and don’t make staff feel their schools are being taken over by a faceless bureaucracy• Teachers seek autonomy and are well- informed, discriminating employees. MATs need to ensure that compliance and mandatory procedure and paperwork is handled lightly wherever possible. Teachers, under constant pressures of complicated, ever-changing curricula, will have little time for more perceived ‘hoops to jump through’

If you look at the big MATs they tend to recruit into the brand of the MAT rather than the individual school. I think there are big advantages. You can provide an offer as a MAT to staff, so people understand they are entering into a bigger pond than just a single school.

Reimagining teachers’ careers

The advantage of using our list is twofold: one is we know that they’re okay and that we’ve checked them out and that they’re decent teachers. But secondly, they’re vastly cheaper, because we cut out the middleman in terms of any agency paying them, and so we simply have an agreed rate that we pay them directly, rather than paying the agency costs. So that’s very important. However, it doesn’t minimise all of our supply costs. And we do have to use the supply agencies, as well… actually our ambition is to monitor it further, and … we’re planning to do much greater cross-trust procurement, and at the moment, one of the things we don’t get benefits of is we haven’t negotiated trust-wide rates with supply agencies.

Don’t know 6%

Not at all 7%

Not particularly 25%

To a great extent12%

To some extent50%

Total “yes”62%

95% of teachers think greater visibility of the entire workforce would drive performance

Staff retention is an issue in my school

Staff retcruitment is an issue in my school

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The job market, and the opportunities it affords, is changing for teachers. But so, too, are the ways that jobs are advertised. Teachers need to change their perceptions of how to find, sift, and apply for opportunities. Long gone are the days of jobs boards, broadsheets on a Wednesday, or a nod from one headteacher to another.

Here, we break down the key takeaway points to help you bring your job hunting up to date and find a great job that suits you:

1. Most jobs aren’t advertised: you’ll need to talk to people Perhaps more than any other industry, teaching jobs are often only made available internally. This means that people within your school are the most important sources of information about career moves.

2. Educational supplements and newspapers aren’t the ‘go-to’ any morePrint and online, publications are excellent at bringing you the latest news in the sector, discussing issues pertinent to teaching and learning, and inspiring your career and own personal and professional development. But they’re no longer the best place to look for a new role. For your average school or MAT, they’re cumber-some to publish in, or to, and are often prohibitively costly. They’re great for giving you a flavour of the kinds of roles that may be ‘out there’, but rarely useful for direct recruitment.

3. Consider a specialist agencyJust 42% of the teachers surveyed in our latest research said they trusted a specialist recruitment agency. Much as scepticism about recruitment agencies is healthy in any sector, and admitting that some agencies have been reprimanded for poor practice, this poor take-up of readily available, specialist resource smacks of ‘throwing the baby out with the bath-water’. The vast majority of recruitment professionals have researchable credentials and accreditations, and a recruiter who understands your personal preferences for positions – as well as having the inside track on the local education jobs market – can be a hugely powerful ally. Teachers would do well to find a good agency and use them to their advantage.

4. Colleagues and friends can help – but only so muchJobs in education are publicised primarily by word-of-mouth. So it’s natural that teachers will put the word out to their formal and informal networks of friends and colleagues when they’re interested in moving on. So far, so good – and it’s a useful tool to have to hand. However, if no one has anything coming up, or no one in your network can move things to facilitate a new role for you, you can end up feeling stuck and de-spondent. The key to using any network of people is understanding that it there is a limit to its influence, and planning what to do when you reach this end. For finding a new role in teaching, start to explore what conversations you can have with an agency, an individual recruiter or directly with a MAT or school. Otherwise, it’s too easy to become despondent and, subsequently, resistant to change.

How to tackle the teacher trap

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If you’re interested in discussing the themes from this white paper, sharing your views on the ‘teacher trap’ in schools, or speaking to us about how you can develop your career in teaching, do get in touch.

At Affinity Workforce, we’re committed to helping teachers to develop and thrive, to driving performance across schools and MATs, and to providing better classroom experiences for all pupils.

Being an approved Crown Commercial Service (CCS) strategic partner means that we’re well established and able to maximize the efficiencies on offer in the MAT setup and in the changing education sector. We’re proud to be one of just four managed service providers on the new government framework. This prestigious status reflects our experience with MATs and their complicated resourcing needs, plus our experience in dealing with the complexities of legislative checks and balances, places us well to support MATs themselves, as well as talented teachers upon which they rely.

About Affinity Workforce

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Email us at:

abetterway@affinityworkforce.comwww.affinityworkforce.com

Please get in touch with us if you’re interested in discussing the themes from this white paper.

Email us at abetterway@affinityworkforce.comwww.affinityworkforce.com