Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help improve teacher retention rates in Gloucester constituency.

Retaining more skilled teachers is key to delivering our pledge to recruit 6,500 additional teachers. Our ‘Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff’ service, developed alongside school leaders, provides a range of resources for schools to review and reduce workload, and improve staff wellbeing.

We are also providing targeted retention incentives worth up to £6,000 after tax for early career teachers in key subjects, with three schools eligible for this in the Gloucester constituency and 18 in the wider local authority. These incentives are available alongside a pay rise of nearly 10% over two years for all teachers.

We lose too many female teachers from the profession. We will fund schools to double the period of full maternity pay from four weeks to eight weeks.

We are also funding a programme focused on embedding flexible working, an important driver for teacher retention, in schools and multi academy trusts (MATs). These schools and MATs champion flexible working and provide bespoke peer support to other local schools.

The flexible working ambassador school for the South West, including Gloucester, is Malmesbury School and can be contacted through the programme website: https://flexibleworkingineducation.co.uk/about-fwams.