2025 is now in full swing and we see the Government determined to continue to drive change across the education sector. Much of this change I am sure we all support, some of it we will have concerns about, and these are being well voiced.  But one fact remains true: recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers and other school staff continues to be an incredibly challenging problem.

The Government has committed to recruiting an extra 6,500 new teachers. Given the current rate of churn of school staff, many of us have concerns about how pragmatic this is. There is no doubt it is the role of Government to manage the supply of teachers into the profession and ensure there is a good national recruitment strategy. However, it is also clear that retention of great teachers and other school staff lies in the hands of schools and our Academy trusts. All the research and evidence we see in our sector demonstrates it is the school culture and climate that impacts whether staff choose to stay. The Education Endowment Fund demonstrated this very clearly in their research. It is also backed up by other extensive work such as the Retention reports published by Edurio.

So, the emphasis is on trusts and schools to become great places to work. When we do this collectively, we retain the brilliant people already in our system. When our profession and sector becomes a place where people believe they can thrive and grow their career, we attract new people.

What should a trust and/or school focus on if it wants to become a truly great place to work? Developing the skills, abilities and experience of all leaders at every level is vital, so they can become the very best people leaders they can be. We are pretty poor at this in our sector. We invest huge amounts of time and resource into developing our leaders’ educational knowledge and abilities. This is of course the right thing to do. However, we tend to throw leaders into the deep end when it comes to leading people and teams. This often translates into difficult HR processes that are costly, time-consuming and frankly unnecessary. We’ve all heard the mantra that people leave a boss not a workplace, and we’ve all heard the horror stories of when things go wrong.

Staff have a right to be managed well. Leaders have a right to be properly supported and developed into their role. It ought to become a core part of our offer that we help them to become the very best people leaders they can be. Every new leader is entitled to an experienced mentor who can guide them through difficult people challenges as well as how to build a great team in a positive way. Every leader should have the right development support to help them get the skills and knowledge they need.

In addition to developing our leaders at all levels to become the very best people leaders they can be, we also need to look at the working conditions in our schools and start to modernise the offer for our workforce. It can’t be right in the year 2025 that there are still schools that refuse staff any form of flexible working no matter how small the request. Through the DfE flexible working ambassador programme, schools and trusts have demonstrated practically how to create flexible working conditions for the benefit of both staff and pupils. These pioneering schools across all phases in our sector are smashing many myths. As a result, they are delivering great education to pupils. They are creating workplaces people choose to work and stay in and are seeing strong retention as a result. Creating better flexible working and supporting staff well-being takes effort and energy. It’s not an easy thing to approach and requires commitment and courage from our leaders. We know leadership is not always easy. To get it right we have to question the way we’ve done things and approach old ways of working with a different mindset. It’s a credit to see many leaders taking this approach when it comes to flexibility in schools and often it is the small changes that make the biggest difference to staff. We need a collective drive on this across the whole system.

We also need to get much better at how we position trusts as employers, and how being part of a trust makes a difference to our workforce. Getting good quality employee communications right, coupled with great marketing to external recruits, is vital. Too many times in staff surveys, ‘perceptions of the trust’ receives a low score. Often staff say they just don’t know what difference it makes to them and their school being part of a trust. Some trusts are fantastic at connecting all staff to their mission – and they are not always the ones with a ‘centralised’ approach. High quality and impactful professional development is often an area staff flag as real value from being in a trust. Continuing to share great practice in this area is important.

Finally, our sector needs a significant shake up when it comes to the role, status and focus of the HR profession. The profession is around 20 years behind that in many other sectors. In many sectors, HR has become a true ‘people partner’ to leaders: helping to create great places to work; bringing organisations’ values to life; innovating in new ways of working to ensure staff bring their best to work every day. In Education, we still too rarely see this way of working. HR departments are often bogged down in policy and processes, hampered by lack of data and poor technology, and drowning in paperwork. Many trusts have woken up to this and are creating a different kind of approach and expectation for HR, drawing on the expertise and knowledge of people from other sectors. This is an incredibly exciting development and already bringing fresh thinking to how we create our schools as great places to work.

In 2025 Talent Architects will continue to focus on these great challenges and opportunities. We are excited to work alongside Trust Inclusion (www.trustinclusion.org.uk ) to launch our new Inclusive People Leader programme with five pioneering trusts. This programme aims to equip leaders with those people leadership skills needed to create the very best places to work. We will continue to work with trusts to reform HR performance, recruit talented HR/People leaders and invest in their coaching and development so they can truly make an impact on recruitment and retention in their workplaces. To focus on supporting trusts to get better at communicating with their existing staff and potential recruits, we have expanded the Talent Architects team with new communications/branding expertise.

The challenges around recruitment and retention are significant but the solutions are clear. We cannot wait to continue to work with our truly wonderful sector to address those together. Happy New Year!

 

Mandy Coalter is the Founder of Talent Architects www.talentarchitects.org.uk with the mission to help schools become great places to work.   She is also the Co-Founder of Trust Inclusion www.trustinclusion.org.uk.   Mandy is a Trustee at E-ACT and the National Teaching Awards. Mandy also leads the CST, Developing People Strategy Masterclass.

 

Contact Mandy on 07739698985 or mandy@talentarchitects.org.uk