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Policy briefing: Teacher recruitment and retention in Wales
14 October 2020
On 14 October 2020, we held a policy briefing on teacher recruitment and retention. Building on our 2017 policy briefing, this year’s event presented the most up-to-date picture of the situation in Wales.
Hosted alongside the Welsh Government, the briefing brought together over 160 stakeholders in education to explore themes arising from comprehensive data analyses and research.
After an opening address from Kirsty Williams MS, we began the session by looking at the key findings of our analysis of data across a range of areas. We looked at themes like the Welsh language, leadership, induction and recruitment to ITE programmes.
Attendees then heard about emerging trends in teacher recruitment and retention across the UK and globally, and some of the strategies used to address these.
The final round of presentations looked at the latest plans to address recruitment and retention issues. This included a presentation from Dr Hazel Hagger, chair of the EWC's ITE Accreditation Board, who focused on the Welsh approach to ITE. Attendees were then told about a new website due to launch in spring 2021 and an advocacy service, already up and running, all part of a national campaign to promote careers in the registered education professions.
To end the session, attendees had an opportunity to ask their burning questions to a panel of experts, which included EWC Chief Executive, Hayden Llewellyn. He was joined by Kevin Palmer (Deputy Director of Pedagogy, Leadership and Professional Learning, Welsh Government), Dr Hazel Hagger, Elaine Sharpling (Director of Teacher Education), Huw Powell (Headteacher, Mary Immaculate High School), Matthew Evans (Headteacher, Ysgol Gyfun Glantaf).
Documents
Policy briefing 2020: PowerPoint (bilingual)
Policy briefing 2020: PDF (bilingual)
Previous policy briefings
Headteachers and leadership: December 2017
The Education Workforce Council held its second policy briefing of 2017 on Thursday, 14 December at the Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay. This analysis presented data on school headteachers, deputies, and assistant and executive headteachers and registrants with NPQH who are not in a leadership role.
This event was for all stakeholders with an interest in education policy and headteacher recruitment / retention. We drew on unique data from the register gathered over 10 years to reveal what’s happening in headteacher/leader recruitment, retention, and career progression in Wales.
We presented data extracted from the register of education practitioners to provide a profile of in-service headteachers and registrants that hold NPQH in terms of age, gender, years since QTS, qualification which will show the overall profile of registrants in headship roles or progressing to headship.
We hope the session will help guide the development of education policy in Wales in areas such as workforce planning, NPQH, headteacher retention, gender balance, the Welsh language strategy, and devolved pay and conditions.
It also offered an opportunity to look at barriers to headship and views on NPQH with evidence from qualitative research.
This event was sponsored by Darren Millar AM.
An infographic depicting the statistics can be found here .
You can download the slides from the presentation here .
Recruitment, retention and career progression of school teachers in Wales: May 2017
In May 2017, the Education Workforce Council held a policy briefing on data relating to the recruitment, retention and career progression of school teachers in Wales. The event was for all stakeholders with an interest in education policy and teacher recruitment / retention. It drew on unique data from the register gathered over 10 years to reveal what’s happening in teacher recruitment, retention and career progression in Wales.
We are very grateful to Llŷr Gruffydd AM for sponsoring this event.
Slides from the presentation are available here