Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether a dedicated teacher retention strategy will be informed by evidence on teacher mental health and workplace wellbeing.

A well supported, high-quality education workforce is critical to our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for children and young people, which is why recruiting and retaining our expert teachers is at the heart of the government’s Plan for Change. Detailed plans on how we will recruit and retain more teachers in our 6,500 additional teachers delivery plan are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/every-child-achieving-and-thriving.

We will promote best practice in workload and wellbeing management, including flexible working opportunities, and tackle the external pressures where schools are filling the gaps.

We will invest in a new programme that provides training, resources and peer support to help schools learn from each other, to normalise flexible working and manageable workloads. We will also invest £1 million additional funding each year for wellbeing support, providing up to 2,500 leaders annually with a safe and confidential space to develop new strategies to manage their resilience and capacity to thrive in their role.

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