NFER’s new Teacher Labour Market in England Annual Report 2024, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, reveals that both recruitment and retention issues are persisting - the latter made worse by increased teacher workload pressures since the pandemic.
Data from both the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Government’s Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders (WLTL) survey shows that teachers’ working hours significantly increased in 2022/23 compared to the previous year.
Despite workload reduction being a policy priority for Government, NFER’s report finds that rising teacher working hours mean that the Government may face a challenge in meeting its workload reduction target. Teachers continue to work longer hours than similar graduates in other jobs during a typical working week.
This is particularly worrying as workload is the main reason why teachers leave the profession, and the WLTL survey data also suggests that the number of teachers who are considering leaving increased by 44 per cent in 2022/23 compared to the previous year.
