NFER says pupil behaviour, stagnant pay and inflexible working practices contributing to exodus from workforce.

Teachers in England are abandoning the classroom over worsening pupil behaviour, stagnant pay and inflexible working practices, leaving vacancies at their highest rate on record, according to a report.

It warned that this month's spending review was the government's "last chance" to meet its manifesto pledge of hiring 6,500 additional teachers in state schools, as younger teachers continue to abandon the profession since the Covid pandemic and fewer graduates sign up as trainees.

More than six teaching posts in every 1,000 were left unfilled last year, according to the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER), double the vacancy rate recorded before the Covid pandemic in 2020 and six times higher than the NFER's first measure of vacancies in 2010.

Jack Worth, the NFER's school workforce expert and a co-author of the report, said: "Teacher recruitment and retention in England remain in a perilous state, posing a substantial risk to the quality of education.

"The time for half measures is over. Fully funded pay increases that make teacher pay more competitive are essential to keeping teachers in the classroom and attracting new recruits."

The NFER said pupil behaviour was "one of the fastest-growing contributors to teacher workload" since the pandemic, and was likely to be linked to pupils' mental health and challenges in supporting children with special educational needs.

"Teachers and [school] leaders' perceptions of pupil behaviour in their school have worsened considerably since 2021-22, while the proportion of teachers who say they spend too much time responding to pupil behaviour incidents has increased substantially," the report said.

It called for the government to develop "a new approach for supporting schools to improve pupil behaviour", reinforced by improved support services and additional funding in the spending review, to retain more teachers.

Source: The Guardian.