This online course explores the issues and offer some practical solutions for FE college leaders to implement immediately.
The teaching profession is a leaky sieve and the prevalence of unfulfilled teaching posts as well as a growth in the numbers of unqualified teachers in our colleges is proving to be both costly and damaging. One in 10 teachers left the profession in 2016. Of these, an increasing proportion left the profession for other sectors rather than retiring, suggesting working conditions rather than age were driving them out. So, why are teachers quitting the profession in record numbers? Although there are myriad reasons, topping the table in every survey is workload...
For example, a report by CooperGibson Research on behalf of the Department for Education entitled ‘Factors affecting teacher retention: qualitative investigation’ published in March 2018, found that workload remained the most important factor influencing teachers’ decisions to leave the professionand most solutions to address retention were linked in some way to workload.
So, the theory is simple: reduce teacher workload and solve the teacher retention crisis. But how can we reduce teacher workload without adversely affecting student outcomes? And is it just about cutting workload or might it also be about changing the nature of the work that teachers are expected to do?
