The Department for Education has announced new measures to improve recruitment and retention of teachers.
Included in these measures is new investment, worth £1.5 million, that will help with the delivery of a package of mental health and wellbeing support for at least 2,5000 school and college leaders. Alongside this, the government has also committed to publishing new guidance for schools on how to prevent and tackle the bullying and harassment of school staff.
The guidance is expected to be completed in the spring of this year and comes as part of a package of measures that have emerged from ‘extensive’ consultations with education leaders.
Damian Hinds, School Minister, commented:
“Great teaching is the key ingredient to academic success – and while we now have more teachers than ever before – it’s crucial that we continue to ensure that teaching remains an attractive and rewarding profession.
“That’s why we have announced new investment and reforms today to support teacher wellbeing, ease workload pressures and tackle bullying and harassment of staff.
“Thanks to the hard work of teachers and pupils, standards in education have risen significantly since 2010, with nearly 90% of schools now rated good or outstanding.”
Separately to these measures, recommendations have been agreed to by the Workload Reduction Taskforce that will help to encourage the reduction of a teachers’ work week by five hours within the next three years. The taskforce is made up of unions, teachers, and education sector leaders, and will now work on making final recommendations on how the causes of teacher workload can be addressed.
Two years on from the launch of the Educational Staff Wellbeing Charter, the Department for Education is also honouring its commitment to publishing a progress update. This update has outlined progress made on the pledges, with this include the embedding of staff workload and wellbeing considerations into government decisions. The charter has been adopted by more than 3,000 schools and colleges so far.
Image credit: iStock
