One of the main concerns surrounding the education sector in the UK at present is severe teacher shortages. The shortage is being caused by problems in recruiting new teachers and retaining existing ones.

A recent survey by the Association of School and College Leaders found that out of 900 heads surveyed, 810 (90%) said they were struggling to recruit new teachers, with 75% reporting that it is proving more challenging to recruit now than it was even a year ago. Moreover, this follows reports that the number of disenchanted teachers that quit the classroom last year reached a record of 50,000 – the highest since records began in 1997. This recruitment and retention problem is having an adverse effect on school’s budgets, its teachers and its students.
 
School Budget 

The BBC reports that primary and second schools in England struggling to recruit teachers spent £821m on supply staff last year. This works out to the equivalent of spending £168 per child in order to hire in extra staff to cover vacancies and staff absences.

The ever increasing demand of supply teachers has been attributed to a lack of graduates moving from higher education into teaching. The Department for Education says that 35,000 trainee teachers need to be recruited every year to solve the crisis.

These latest figures published for schools in England shows spending on supply teachers accounted for 6% of the total amount spent on teaching staff wages. Furthermore, Teachers unions have expressed concerns about the use of private supply teacher agencies, claiming that some firms are putting the pursuit of profit ahead of providing high quality teachers. 

Teachers 

90% of the heads surveyed by the Association of School and College Leaders reported that the current situation was causing increased stress for their staff due to the extra work that is involved from having a depleted, understaffed workforce. 

Increased levels of stress inevitably increase the number of staff absences schools will experience. The average length of an absence is 12.97 working days. By contrast the average stress related absence is more than twice as long at 26.69 working days – over five weeks. 

Long absence types, such as those induced by stress, will continue to force the amount of money schools are spending on supply cover spiralling upwards, at a time of increasing budget pressures.

Students

As schools generally operate on an annual budget, if an area of its spend exceeds the forecasted amount the school must reallocate money from other areas of the budget to cover the cost.  As a consequence, the expense of supply teachers is significantly reducing the amount of money available to invest in children’s education, reports The National Union of Teachers. 

Moreover, engaging supply teachers can often create problems with class room continuity and coherence, particularly important with vulnerable children. It is thought that if the recruitment pressures continue, more drastic measures are just around the corner, including appointing non-qualified staff, narrowing the curriculum or increasing class size. 

These are all measures which would affect the quality of education available to students. 

Our solution

With the pressure of teacher shortages ever present in schools today, staff absences are becoming increasingly financially costly, disruptive and time-consuming to deal with. To help schools negotiate some of these challenges, we have developed a suite of services designed to mitigate the financial risk, minimise disruption and reduce staff absences. 

We offer more than just staff absence insurance to the education sector, we offer a complete staff absence management package. This means we help schools to plan for staff absence, reduce the impact it has, if possible prevent illnesses, and where absences have occurred help to reduce the length of time taken off. 

For more information on our range of services, please visit our benefits page here. Moreover, to find out how much it would cost to cover your school, get a quote online in under two minutes.