England, like many other countries across the world, is facing a crisis in teacher retention and recruitment. Newly published projections from the National Foundation for Educational Research suggest that England will once again have failed to recruit the target number of trainee teachers in all but three secondary subject areas for the 2024–25 academic year (McLean et al., 2024). As well as falling short of training targets, vacancies in schools are on the rise, putting more pressure on the remaining workforce. Teacher recruitment and retention difficulties are particularly acute in schools serving disadvantaged communities, where the turnover rates are higher (Allen et al., 2016; Ghosh & Worth, 2020) and applicants per job fewer, leading to a stressful scenario for headteachers filling their vacancies (Allen et al., 2016). High teacher turnover affects both teachers and students; studies have shown that teacher turnover disrupts pupil learning and could hamper attainment (Ronfeldt et al., 2012; Borg et al., 2012).

So how can schools in disadvantaged areas attract the best teachers? To answer this, we first need to know what schools are currently doing to attract new staff. This blog post focuses on published job advertisements in English schools. Collating and synthesising the features of these advertisements, we discuss commonalities and how these map onto known evidence in teacher recruitment.

Funded by the Education Endowment Foundation, a team of researchers from the National Institute of Teaching carried out a search of live job advertisements in July 2023 (Chong et al., 2024). As a measure for disadvantage, we searched only in areas classed as ‘Education Investment Areas’ by the Department for Education in England (DfE, 2023). These areas were local authorities in England with the lowest attainment for children aged between 7 and 16 from 2017 to 2019. All classroom teacher, middle or senior leadership positions advertised in these locations on an online teaching magazine (the Times Education Supplement) and a newspaper job portal (the Guardian jobs platform) were downloaded, alongside any supporting documentation provided (job specification, school policies, and so on). We used EPPI Reviewer software to critically analyse these advertisements, using inductive and deductive coding to highlight the specific offers available to teachers. Through further thematic analysis, we created a typology, highlighting five themes that schools are using to attract staff: working environment, career development, staff welfare, financial incentives, and work/life balance.

Figure 1: Typology of five themes schools use to attract new staff

The most commonly occurring theme was the school’s working environment. Schools were keen to depict a supportive school community with transparent leadership and desirable facilities. Career development opportunities were also frequently mentioned, with promises of professional growth and promotion opportunities for newly appointed staff. Topics around staff welfare included wellbeing support and employee assistance programmes.

Financial incentives were mentioned often, which evidence suggests is a key attractor to new teachers (such as cash bursaries to study). The financial incentives mentioned in the advertisements were ‘perks’; discounted services such as cycle to work schemes, and high street shopping. There were also healthcare benefits including free eye tests and flu vaccinations. While salary is often cited as one of the biggest influential factors in teacher retention (Worth et al., 2018), recent studies suggest that some teachers would be more interested in a supportive work environment than higher pay (Burge et al., 2021). Teachers feel more valued and are more likely to stay through challenges when schools are run with a focus on support and collaboration (Gu & Day, 2013).

‘While salary is often cited as one of the biggest influential factors in teacher retention, recent studies suggest that some teachers would be more interested in a supportive work environment than higher pay.’

Recruiting and retaining teachers is not just about offering financial incentives, although those do help; it is also about creating a working environment that makes teachers want to stay. This involves promoting flexible workloads, strong leadership and a collaborative approach to school management. Overall, we recommend that schools in disadvantaged areas who are struggling to recruit staff look closely at the information in their advertisements, emphasising the ways in which they are tackling the workload challenge, how they are building trust, and how they are fostering a collaborative and supportive working environment.

References

Allen, R., Mian, E., & Sims, S. (2016). Social inequalities in access to teachers. Social Market Foundation. https://www.smf.co.uk/publications/social-inequalities-in-access-to-teachers/

Borg, J. R., Borg, M. O., & Stranahan, H. A. (2012). Closing the achievement gap between high poverty schools and low-poverty schools. Research in Business and Economics, 5(1).

Burge, P., Lu, H., & Phillips, W. (2021). Understanding teaching retention: Using a discrete choice experiment to measure teacher retention in England. RAND Europe. https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA181-1

Chong, S. W., Oxley, E., Bond, M., Negrea, V., Liu, Q., & Kong, M. S. (2024). Teacher recruitment and retention in schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas in England: Review of practice. Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/evidence-reviews/recruitment-and-retention-in-disadvantaged-schools

Department for Education [DfE]. (2023). Education investment areas (guidance). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-investment-areas/education-investment-areas

Ghosh, A., & Worth, J. (2020). Teacher labour market in Wales: Annual report. National Foundation for Educational Research. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/teacher-labour-market-in-wales-annual-report-2020/

Gu, Q., & Day, C. (2013). Challenges to teacher resilience: Conditions count. British Educational Research Journal, 39(1), 22–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2011.623152

McLean, D., Worth, J., & Smith, A. (2024). Teacher labour market in England: Annual report. National Foundation for Educational Research. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/teacher-labour-market-in-england-annual-report-2024/   

Ronfeldt, M., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2012). How teacher turnover harms student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 4–36.  https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831212463813

Worth, J., Lynch, S., Hillary, J., Rennie, C., & Andrade, J. (2018). Teacher workforce dynamics in England. National Foundation for Educational Research. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/teacher-workforce-dynamics-in-england