Hello - and Happy Wednesday.
I hope this week’s newsletter finds you well.
I’ve had several conversations with colleagues near and far over the last fortnight about why teachers leave the profession.
Below is some thought I’ve given to the ideas about the 3 top reasons the DfE’s research identified as contributing most to why teachers leave the profession.
1. Workload
Marking. Excessive use of coloured highlighters and symbols means teachers spend more time marking children’s learning than doing something to respond to what they need next.
Planning. Indeed it is a crucial and necessary part of teaching - but poor long term curriculum plans means too many teachers are planning too many lessons from scratch. Identifying how knowledge is built sequentially so skills can be practiced over time gives everyone a roadmap for planning learning.
Duties beyond the teaching role. One example is excessive subject coordinator work is a prime example of detracting strategic direction for how curriculum subjects are taught.
Too much time spent working. Not every school plans professional development time to agree what needs (and doesn’t need) to be done and to what level. Instead, in some schools there’s too much of an attitude consisting “Well, they’re teachers, that’s their job”. Excessive and/or unnecessary meetings are also a culprit here. More needs to be done to build a cultural mindset to know the amount of time you spend in school does not equate to your effectiveness as a teacher.
2. Stress and ill health
The teacher wellbeing index survey found:
-84% of teachers described themselves as stressed.
-89% of senior leaders said the same.
-45% of teachers feel compelled to work even when they are unwell.
The other factors on the DfE list (workload, school leadership, inflexible teaching policies, government policy and pay) all contribute to exacerbating the feelings, stresses and anxieties of staff.
Growing and building wellbeing is achieved by changing the culture, articulating the vision and values, and taking action to build a shared future of the school.
3. School leadership, policy and approaches
A perceived lack of support from SLT. In some schools seniors leaders, who are often also stretched at maximum capacity, are perceived to be unsympathetic to workload challenges, don’t engage enough in constructive dialogue with colleagues, and too invested in monitoring than supporting.
Schools, and especially schools right now, should be a hotbed for leaders to coach their staff. If you place monitoring as a higher priority than coaching - then something needs to change. No teacher will ever get any better without being coached, listened to and enabled to become a reflective practitioner.
Almost half of primary teachers (Source: DfE), do not feel trusted to do their jobs because monitoring activities are so high, not useful, intrusive and had an impact of being demoralising above all else.
If leaders say “We need to do some monitoring because we haven’t done any yet” or “We always do them in week X of term Y” - then the monitoring activity is not designed to build capacity in staff. It’s to tick a box.
A culprit of ineffective leadership was identified as leaders only taking forward their own ideas, rather than a shared vision of the school.
This is known as homophily. Leaders reflecting their own ideas back at each other without ever speaking to other members of staff.
In the research, some teachers felt that SLT had lost touch with being in the classroom and making decisions with the absence of contact with teachers and pupils.
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What does this tell us?
There are some schools in need of cultural change. This can only happen if behaviour and attitudes change - and it has to start with leaders.
The whole system needs reassessing. We need to start asking ‘Why do we do those things in that way?’, instead of insisting we do them because we always have done.
To retain teachers, the professional development dialogue must shift away from monitoring and towards coaching. Let me be clear by saying that monitoring can still happen - but in the form of a longer term coaching cycle where objectives, action research and presentation of findings takes place.
The DfE research paper mentioned above: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/.../Factors...
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Until next time.
Best wishes,
Simon Bolger, That Wellbeing Guy
Website: www.thatwellbeingguy.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thatwellbeingguy
Twitter: @simonbolger
Read more: thatwellbeingguy.substack.com