Commenting after the passing of motion 17 at NEU Annual Conference, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
“Students and schools are suffering the consequences of a teacher recruitment and retention crisis that has been caused by the Government’s own political choices. The Government’s underfunding of schools, cuts to the value of teacher pay and sky-high workload have severely damaged the ability to compete for new recruits and retain existing staff.
“The Government has repeatedly missed its targets for initial teacher training. It has recruited only half of the secondary trainees it says it needs.
“Taken together, teacher shortages across the school system and missed recruitment targets show that the recruitment and retention crisis is widespread and deep-rooted. A fully-funded major correction to teacher pay, applied equally to all teachers and school leaders, is needed along with effective improvements to workload if we are to recruit and retain the teachers our education service desperately needs.
“There are clear and obvious measures needed to attract skilful and capable people into teaching, and to keep them there. Instead, the Government has chosen to offer combative rhetoric, prescriptive ideology, divisive pay incentives, half-baked recruitment schemes and a fragmented school system. Teachers, school leaders, students and parents deserve better.”