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female teacher with a student

Do you know anyone who could make a good teacher?

28 January 2019

It is a big day at the Department for Education with the publication of their teacher recruitment and retention strategy. If your workload is too high to find the time to read the whole thing, then they’ve summarised it in a nice, one-page PDF. Do take a look!

The secondary school population is now rising fast and there simply aren’t enough of you to teach them! Do you know anyone who could make a good teacher? You say you do…

But there’s no point in getting new people into the profession when we haven’t yet got the early career structure right. This is the time when teachers are most likely to drop out of the profession. The DfE proposals extend the period of time where early career teachers have a reduced timetable and put in place a framework of things they should learn over this time. It is amazing to see that almost all of you are involved in supporting early career teachers in some way. Three-quarters of schools currently have some sort of trainee teacher in their school right now.

And for one-in-five of you, a trainee teacher has taken over one of your timetabled lessons.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the timetabled lessons they take tend to be those from teachers with a bit of experience rather than NQTs (the rate falls for very experienced teachers because they tend to have fewer lessons to be given away!)

Mentoring trainee teachers is such an important part of their initial induction into the profession. Two-thirds of you have been a mentor at least once before and, for the most part, are really positive about it. It can be time-consuming, but it also can be a useful way to reflect on and improve your own teaching. Just one-in-ten of you would have liked to receive better training before taking on a trainee.

The draft Early Career Framework sets out a list of things that new teachers should be able to demonstrate they know and they can do. The list is very explicit and perhaps more amenable to a knowledge check than the current
Teachers’ Standards. Should we have a test to check what new teachers have learnt? Existing teachers don’t seem to be very keen on this idea, though headteachers are more positive than everyone else!

There are also some curious EdTech solutions in the proposals – Damian Hinds loves technology! We thought we’d find out what you know about their last idea – the teaching vacancy service. Turns out, you really like the idea in principle…

…but you haven’t actually used it yet! Do think about taking a look at it if you are recruiting or seeking a new role over the upcoming recruitment period.

Searching job adverts remains an important way of finding opportunities at new schools, though headteachers were more likely to report that they were asked to apply for their job.

Do you like collecting?

A few of you might have spotted a badge on the app, awarding you for having answered 10 days in a row. This is the first of many badges we plan to hand out to our keenest tappers. Find out more here.

It’s time to catch up with any tips you missed…

The wrong approach to INSET

How to control screen time for children (tips for parents)

Small things that can improve teacher retention

How an academy chain adopted Rosenshine’s Principles

Some education memes suck (here are the worst 5)

7 ways to improve your education explanations