All state school teachers should given the right to work away from the classroom on lesson preparation, marking and pupil assessment to stem a growing retention crisis in the profession, the education secretary says today.
Bridget Phillipson told the Observer it was vital more schools offered teachers some flexible working away from the classroom as is already the case in many academy schools, without reducing contact time with pupils.
Her move comes as the Department for Education (DfE) reels from a mass of data showing high numbers, particularly of young female teachers, drifting out of the profession.
A recent Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders survey shows a big jump in respondents citing the lack of flexible working opportunities as a reason for considering leaving the state education sector in the next 12 months – up from 34% in 2023 to 47% in 2024.
Women aged 30 to 39 are the largest group quitting teaching, while also being the largest in the workforce. The equivalent of over 9,000 full-time female teachers left in 2022-3.
Phillipson said: “Children’s life chances suffer without world-class teachers in our classrooms – that’s why it’s never been more urgent that we grip the teacher recruitment and retention crisis raging in our schools.
“That’s what this government will do, by taking innovative examples from academies in offering more flexibility without reducing the teaching time with pupils.Our new children’s wellbeing bill will transform children’s life chances, helping us break the link between their background and what they can go on to achieve: that means driving up standards across every school.” In the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, published last Tuesday, there are provisions for all non-academy schools to have the same freedom to allow flexible working for their teachers as academies.
Dixons Academies trust, which has schools in Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and Liverpool, says it is encouraging more remote working which includes giving more planning, preparation and assessment time “and making it manageable from home or another remote location”.
While seeing the right to flexible working as key to addressing retention issues, Phillipson said she was aware teachers’ face time with pupils also needs to be protected at all costs.
“Both are vital. We need to get both right,” said a government source.
The government has accepted the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) to look at further flexibility in completing planning, preparation and assessment work away from the classroom to allow them to accommodate family life better. Ministers will now ask the STRB to look at what further flexibility around pay and conditions could be incorporated.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: “Since the pandemic, employers across the board have introduced more flexible working patterns. In a very competitive labour market, it is extremely important that the education sector is not left behind. Allowing teachers to work from home when possible is a necessary and welcome step in the right direction to address the ongoing recruitment and retention crisis. This, however, must be coupled with improved pay and reduced workload to really have a significant impact on the numbers who are attracted to teaching or see it as a sustainable long-term career.”
Almost as many teachers left the profession as joined last year. The latest DfE data showed that overall the teaching workforce grew by only 259 teachers last year – down from growth of 2,844 the year before.
The new Labour government signalled an immediate shift in relations with teachers by announcing a 5.5% pay rise in July, pushing starting salaries for teachers up to a minimum of £31,650 in England and £38,766 in inner London from September. Academies can set their own pay.
But the 2.8% pay rise the government recommended this month for 2025-26 has had a far frostier reception from unions, especially as it looks set to come with no extra funding.
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Recruitment remains a big issue across the state sector. Headteachers report that it is common to post job advertisements several times that turn up no suitable applicants. The battle to retain teachers has reached a similar crisis level, with a third of new teachers leaving within their first five years. The 6,500 new teachers that the Labour government has promised to fund by putting VAT on private school fees in its flagship announcement, risks being cancelled out by the more than 9,000 experienced women in their 30s who left last year.
Emma Sheppard, founder of the Maternity Teacher Paternity Teacher Project, whose recent research highlighted that this group of mainly overworked mothers was the largest cohort leaving state education, said “too many” had decided teaching was incompatible with being a parent.
“They say, ‘You want me to put children first, but not my children.’ We found that what teachers really value is ad hoc flexibility, when school covers for you because it is your child’s nativity play or the childminder hasn’t turned up,” she said. But she added schools were often so short-staffed those “small asks” weren’t possible.
While pay has dominated the headlines, surveys suggest workload stress and lack of work-life balance are also major factors for those leaving.
About 10% of teachers’ non-contact time, when they aren’t teaching, is supposed to be ring fenced so they can do marking and lesson preparation in school and not late at night or over weekends. But many report this is taken up with other work demands.
Headteacher Andrew O’Neill said he “couldn’t recruit teachers for love nor money” when he took over then-failing All Saints Catholic College secondary school near London’s Grenfell Tower in 2016. But he said improving conditions for teachers had transformed hiring and retention.
One innovation was allowing staff to come in at 10.45 one morning a week. “One teacher told me having a late start was a gamechanger for the end of term when everyone’s exhausted. She had a lie-in,” he said.
He feels strongly that teachers should be trusted to do marking and lesson preparation at home, saying: “In every other profession we are happy for people to regulate themselves. Why does it have to be different for teachers?”
