What Labour must do to keep promise of hiring 6,500 teachers

Flexible working hours and utilising the power of AI are not usually perks associated with the teaching profession.

But creative policies and investments might be exactly what’s needed to stem the teacher shortage crisis, education experts have told i.

Labour has promised to recruit 6,500 new teachers if it wins power in the next election – but Keir Starmer has failed to provide details on how the party will achieve the goal.

It comes as a report by the Education Select Committee (ESC), released on Friday, found that a lack of flexibility and increasing workload have been “significant factors” in teacher recruitment and retention.

The report found that excessive workload has been driven by a “spillover from public services” as teachers increasingly have to deal with family issues and mental health problems – on top of their classroom role.

Here, i takes a look at what teachers say the opposition party must do to meet its recruitment target.

AI marking and flexible hours

Workplaces have modernised drastically since the pandemic set the precedent for working from home and artificial intelligence (AI) seeped into daily life – but teaching has lagged behind.

Lucy Kellaway, co-founder of Now Teach, an organisation that helps people change careers to teaching, suggested that teacher workload could be addressed by modernising the profession.

Ms Kellaway, who left her career in journalism to become a teacher, suggested that a future government could “harness AI to help teacher workload drastically”.

Read Next

She has tried to use AI herself to create worksheets but said publicly available software is not good enough yet.

“I would like to see the Government investing to get AI to do our marking for us because most teachers find marking not the most enjoyable part of the job,” she told i.

She added: “I do think it’s very important that students do regular work that is submitted with feedback.

“But I would like to see a Labour taskforce looking in detail at teacher workload and putting money behind things that might have a drastic impact.”

Sharon Hague, managing director of school assessment and qualification at awarding organisation Pearson, said: “Our latest data show that by 2026 generative AI could be saving the teaching workforce hundreds of thousands of hours per week on lesson planning and other admin tasks.

“This is an opportunity to free up teachers’ time to work more directly with students.

“But finding the right balance is important – teachers tell us that lesson planning and marking, for example, are often helpful processes for teachers to go through themselves.”

Teaching has also suffered in recruiting due to a lack of flexible working arrangements, the ESC report found.

Ms Kellaway said that teaching is “way too rigid” which is off-putting to younger age groups, particularly when people see their friends working from home.

She called on a future government to explore “flexible working” solutions such as encouraging schools to allow teachers to come in for their lessons, rather than from early morning registration.

i understands that if elected, Labour will explore any solutions that allow teachers more time to teach children with the aim of delivering better outcomes.

Attracting older workforce

Labour could meet its target of recruiting thousands of new teachers by turning towards the older workforce, Ms Kellaway said.

“That is the only demographic that is currently growing in teaching,” she said.

For the second year running, the over-forties was the only age group to increase its number of new trainee teachers – recently jumping 14 per cent compared to a national fall of 5 per cent.

The £1.7m programme, Now Teach, was recently defunded by the Department for Education despite overdelivering on its recruitment targets, she said.

The ESC report called on the Department for Education to “urgently rethink” the decision to axe the organisation’s funding because career changers are an “important group that have the potential to positively contribute towards improving secondary teacher numbers”.

The report also recommended a career change bursary to attract older professionals into the classroom.

Ms Kellaway, who co-founded Now Teach, said it will not be able to recruit any new teachers from September despite large numbers of applications.

A DfE spokesperson said: “There are more teachers now than ever before, with over 468,000 teachers in the workforce, a 27,000 increase on 2010, and 59,600 more teaching assistants since 2011.

“To continue attracting the best and brightest, we offer bursaries and scholarships of up to £30,000 tax-free in the subject areas where they are needed most, including physics and maths, and opening new routes into the profession, such as through Teacher Degree Apprenticeships.

“Last autumn the Government delivered its commitment of a £30,000 starting salary for school teachers in all regions of the country, and starting salaries are even higher in London. We are also taking steps to support teachers’ wellbeing and ease workload pressures, including plans to support schools to reduce working hours by five hours per week.”

Financial incentives

It is vital for teacher salaries to be “competitive” to attract new people to the profession, the ESC report found.

Labour has already outlined plans to recruit 6,500 new state school teachers and offer new starters a £2,400 bonus to stop them from leaving the profession.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said Labour’s commitment is “desperately needed” and is “excellent value for money”.

However, he said the pledge needs to come “hand in hand with restoring the value of teachers’ pay and attractive pay levels across the stages in a teaching career and a different approach on education policy”.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, also welcomed the pledge but said it is only “half the picture”, calling on the next government to focus on retaining teachers as well.