Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to retain teachers when they become parents.

Great teaching is transformational for children’s life chances, but the department cannot achieve its ambitions unless there are sufficient teachers. The department recognises there is more to do to ensure teaching remains an attractive, high-status profession, and to recruit and retain the best teachers. The department wants teaching to be an inclusive profession where all teachers, regardless of background or circumstance, are supported throughout their career journeys.

The department’s ‘Teacher Recruitment and Retention’ strategy, published in 2019, outlines the department’s approach to improving teacher retention, including activities which contribute to supporting teachers returning from parental leave or those with caring responsibilities.

Well-designed flexible working can enable individuals to reconcile work and caring responsibilities. The department is taking action to promote flexible working in schools, including by publishing non-statutory guidance and case studies on GOV.UK, a flexible working toolkit, and funding a programme focused on embedding flexible working in schools and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs).

This programme includes the delivery of supportive webinars and peer support provided by flexible working ambassador schools and MATs. This funded programme offers practical support with combining flexible working life as a parent, including how flexible working can be navigated alongside career progression.

The department is also clear about the importance of efforts to reduce unnecessary workload and an improved wellbeing offer for all teachers. Workload is often cited as an important reason why teachers leave the profession. The department is supporting schools to act and remove unhelpful practice that creates unnecessary workload. The department’s school workload reduction toolkit, developed alongside school leaders, is a helpful resource for schools to review and reduce workload.

In September 2023, the department launched a workload reduction taskforce. The taskforce is made up of union representatives, experts and experienced practitioners. The taskforce will make recommendations to government, Ofsted and school and trust leaders by the end of March 2024.

Staff wellbeing is also crucial to the department’s commitment to recruit and retain more teachers and support teacher quality. The department has worked in partnership with the education sector and mental health experts to co-create the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter and is encouraging schools to sign up as a shared commitment to promote staff wellbeing. Over 3,000 schools and colleges have signed up to the charter since it was launched for sign-up in November 2021.