Dr Christian Bokhove appeared on BBC radio Solent on the 30th of August.
It was in reaction to a new report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) that assessed the state of the teacher labour market in England, and contained recommendations on how to especially get more maths and science teachers.
You can here the contribution from 37 minutes via the BBC solent website, but key points (in a different order) were:
- Good that recruitment and retention emphasised as big challenge. This has been denied for too long, especially by the government.
- Rather than recruitment, retention is probably more important. A record number of teachers are leaving, and we should try to find out why. Although money plays a part, workload through bureaucracy, working hours, marking, even more important.
- With current funding cuts it’s hard to justify monetary incentives for *some* new teachers. This is likely to just cause resentment.
- I am not aware of monetary incentives in the long run (retention) really being successful. It should not become just like bursaries and grants to train to teach; the National Audit Office’s findings were not positive: schoolsweek.co.uk/nctl-cant-be-s…
- We need good subject knowledge and stringent requirements regarding degrees can perhaps deliver that. But it is not a given they are or become the best teachers and, more importantly, last five/six years saw lot of pressure on entry requirements *because of* teacher shortages. So when you raise the bar, expect larger shortages.
Posted By : MSHE