Examples from the UK

Examples fr0m the UK
Presenters: Nick Givens, Caroline Parsons and
Nigel Skinner
UK Project Team: Karen Walshe, Lindsay Hetherington, Nigel Skinner, Nick Givens , Keith
Postlethwaite, Andrew Dean
http://www.retain-project.eu

The Problem: Teacher Retention
In the UK, teacher turnover remains high in comparison
with other countries.
 Over 10 years (2003-2014), 12% of NQTs left after 1 year.
 Between 2000 and 2009, 28% left after 5 years.
 Only 80% of trainees who qualified in 2013/14 were
employed in teaching posts within 6 months.
 Recent figures estimate that almost 40% of NQTs leave
the profession within a year of qualifying (the exodus of
new recruits has almost tripled in six years).

 Retention problems affect secondary schools to a greater
extent than primary schools
 Particular shortages in certain subject areas, notably
Science and Mathematics, where recruitment is more
challenging and leaving rates for existing Maths and
Science teachers are above average.
 Teacher turnover is higher in disadvantaged urban
schools (employ greater numbers of novice teachers)
 More early career teachers leave the profession
 Regional differences in teacher recruitment and
retention issues exist, with greater vacancy rates in
London, the East of England and the South East.
According to research…..

The solution?
 Research suggests that teacher resilience is key.
 There are a wide range of professional, social,
emotional and motivational factors which impact
on teachers’ sense of their own resilience.
 These include both personal and contextual ‘risk’
and ‘protective’ factors.

 Research suggests that a supportive school culture that is
‘integrated’ in supporting both experienced and novice
teachers is a contributing factor for teacher retention and
the development of teacher resilience.
 Project set out to develop and trial a set of tools (toolkit) to
support school leaders and teachers in developing an
inclusive, creative, and integrative school culture. We argue
that these tools can be effective in mentor/SLT support for
beginning teachers.

Collaborative Research Project
The UK project team worked with members of the
senior leadership team and teachers in a total of six
schools in the South West of England.

Literature Review: Reasons for staying
 Vocation
 Professional freedom
 Supportive colleagues

Literature Review: Reasons for leaving
 Workload
 Seeking new challenges
 School situation (e.g. poor behaviour, poor
management)
 Salary
 Personal circumstances
 Decline in public respect for the profession

Survey: Reasons for staying in the profession
 Love of job
 Sense of teaching as a vocation
 Advantages: salary; pension; holidays; job security
 Quality of support
 Sense of accomplishment e.g. seeing students’
progress – academically and holistically
 Variable nature of job
 Need to stay e.g. financial commitments
 Sense of responsibility for students

Survey: Reasons for leaving the profession
 Workload (impact on family life, fatigue, focus
on administration rather than teaching)
 Balancing act - keeping on top of planning,
marking, assessing, reporting; not knowing
what to prioritise
 Focus on meeting national targets, rather than
fostering students’ enjoyment of learning)
 Constant awareness of accountability /
monitoring / inspection (‘OfSTED’)
 Performance related pay
 Pressure from parents/government/governors

 Poor public perception
 Breakdown of the profession (e.g. unqualified
teachers)
 Lack of support; bullying from management; A lot
of work not valued/rewarded
 Parents not understanding they need to do their
part
 Prescriptive curriculum and lack of resources
 Class sizes, poor student behavior, apathetic
students
Survey: Reasons for leaving the profession

Key Factor = Stress
 The result of attempting to cope with workload
 Too many things outside of teacher’s own control
 Not wanting to let anyone down

Co-construction, Co-design & Collaboration
Strong link between collaboration and positive school
outcomes; high levels of motivation; and effective
implementation of change.
Research suggests that there are three key issues in
teacher retention that collaborative working may help
to address:
1. Teacher resilience
2. Risk management
3. Innovation

Tool 1: Framework for Collaborative Dialogue
Rooted in Activity Theory – supporting teachers in
exploring how they can take action for change in
relation to a key issue/problem.
Activity Theory notion of ‘tools’
Designed to scaffold collaborative conversations

The Framework for Collaborative Dialogue (FCD)

Worked Example of the Framework for Collaborative Dialogue (FCD)

Key findings…
Comments taken from Teachers’ evaluations of the project:
• ‘It’s very like the forms I used on my PGCE (pre-
service )training, it feels familiar and helped to
frame our ideas.’ Teacher of 2 years
• ‘Useful – the questions in the boxes helped frame
discussion.’ Teacher of 5 years
• Gave an opportunity to look closely at the teaching
standards and see how they were relevant’ Teacher of
4 years
• ‘Questions useful, but having to record answers
were more difficult.’ Teacher of 3 years
• ‘Wonderful to have time to talk effectively.’ Teacher of
3 years

Tool 2: Lesson Study
 Supported by the FCD
 Supports teacher collaboration to address a key issue or
develop an innovative and creative pedagogy
 A group of teachers (usually 2-3) undertake to
collaboratively plan a lesson which one will teach whilst the
other(s) observe.
 Fosters shared ownership of the lesson
 Meeting to debrief enables critically reflective thinking
about the impact of the teaching on pupils’ learning
 Go through the process again as illustrated in the next slide

Flexible
Schools may use both tools in a wide variety of ways,
for example:
 Whole school approach
 Members of the SLT
 Team of teachers e.g. a department
 Triad of teachers e.g. SLT; Senior teacher; Novice
teacher
 Team of teachers and support staff

Promoting Factors
 Collaborative nature of the project team (university
and schools steering group)
 Some of our schools in particular, recognised that
they had retention issues and were keen to address
these
 The toolbox was most effective when it was
integrated into already existing CPD goals and
opportunities

Promoting Factors
 Strong positive trusting professional relationships
between school managers and teachers. School
managers with attitudes that genuinely
complemented the values and approach of the
project were able to make best use of its contents.
 School selected tools which were seen to be
relevant for the context within which they work.
 The initial success of some of the tools trialled in
round 1 was a promoting factor and fuelled schools’
willingness to engage with other tools in the
toolbox

Challenges
The key challenge for schools was that of capacity,
for example:
1. High turn-over of staff (particularly
Headteachers)
2. High workloads and lack of time (and
resilience) for teachers to engage with the
project.
3. Danger that some teachers might see some of
the tools (e.g. Lesson Study) as another
management tool for monitoring them.

Challenges
5. Conditions of national accountability in England at the
moment which means that schools are driven by the
need to show immediate impact with regards to any
intervention – what is the impact on pupils learning
now?
6. Some tools were felt to be very time consuming and
would therefore add to teachers’ workload and
associated stress rather than reduce it

Preliminary Conclusions
 The toolbox assumes that the goal is to help
schools to create open and inclusive working
environments, which assumes that schools want to
achieve this and that schools would see the benefits
of this.
 Schools with high retention issues were the ones to
drop out suggests that the tool box might be better
seen as a PRE-EMPTIVE / ‘health tool’ (i.e.
preventative tool) rather than an ‘emergency tool’
when the issues have already arisen.

 For the toolbox to be effective teachers need to
trust that they are free to take risks (e.g. with
Lesson Study) and try something completely new
without fear of judgement.
 A key thing that we’ve learnt is that it’s not the tool
itself, but how its purpose is understood and how
its location in the school culture is constructed e.g.
lesson study could be seen as either another
performance monitoring tool or as a genuine CPD
tool.

Examples from the UK

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