Best Practice Network’s Holly Kirkbride and Faye Robertson on why flexible working has to be woven into every stage of the teacher training process.
The Government’s pledge to recruit 6,500 additional teachers is ambitious, particularly across the shortage subjects.
So, if our sector is to recruit the best student teachers into the profession, whatever their personal circumstances, it needs to provide as flexible a training programme as possible.
This matters because in a post-covid world our profession is competing for recruits with sectors that have fully embraced flexible working.
Best Practice Network expanded into the Secondary ITT market in September 2024 to develop a programme that would build flexible working in from the very start.
A key priority was to ensure the company’s values were embedded throughout the programme. This meant committing to a flexible approach to ITT that aligned with NASBTT’s recent call for ‘less talk, more action’ on flexible working for teachers.
Flexible working is a trickier issue in a profession where teachers need to be out front in class but if we are going to heed NASBTT’s call to action and seriously compete with other professions, especially those chasing the graduates we want for shortage subjects, we need to grasp the challenge.
And what a challenge! Recruitment for ITT remains historically low – secondary recruitment targets have been met just once in the last five years. There was a shortfall of 8,545 trained teachers in 2023, missing the combined recruitment target by 38%.
Add to this a skewed gender balance, with far fewer male candidates entering the profession than female. Despite this we know that it is these skilled, experienced professionals that leave in the largest numbers between the ages of 30 and 39.
Flexible working can combat these retention issues and attract a broader range of candidates into the profession.
Best Practice Network has put in place support for our many student teachers who are, or plan to be, parents. For example, all our student teachers receive coaching from the MTPT (Maternity Teacher, Paternity Teacher) project to prepare them for life as an Early Career Teacher (ECT) and beyond, giving them a clear understanding of the flexible working options open to them as their lives change. We are also growing future leaders that will have similar expectations as they recruit and retain their own staff.
This flexible approach continues throughout the programme and includes a choice of either apprenticeship or fee-funded routes to qualified teacher status, and mentorship and coaching by people who understand the family pressures teacher apprentices face. Flexible delivery of training is key, with trainees able to choose learning options that fit around their lives, including face-to-face or online, live and recorded learning.
While many of our trainees work in schools with traditional timetables and working practices during their school-based placements, some work in schools piloting flexible working policies, such as late starts or early finishes and training and meetings. We’re encouraging our student teachers to embrace their placement school’s culture and use these flexible options.
We’re encouraging feedback from our trainees and have made many amendments to our programme as a result. This includes revising our session times so that from next year all training will run from 9:15AM to 3PM to accommodate student teachers’ family responsibilities and moving assignment deadlines from Fridays to Mondays to help our student teachers’ workload.
We recognise that the ever-changing number of required mentoring training hours can put schools off from hosting trainee teachers, so we have introduced a flexible mentoring model in which we provide the placement mentors, saving schools time. As well as helping schools meet their student teacher hosting requirements, this approach expands the number of potential placement schools, in many cases reducing commuting time for student teachers.
We all want teaching to remain an appealing career choice for the widest pool of talent, and retain experienced teaching staff. Embedding flexible working right from the very start of teacher training can only help.
Holly Kirkbride is the Biology ITT Subject Lead at Best Practice Network. She has worked in ITT for several years alongside roles in SLT, as Director of Science and Head of Department. Faye Robertson is the Maths ITT Subject Lead at Best Practice Network. She has worked in ITT for many years, alongside working as a Head of Maths, a Lead Practitioner and in various school improvement and consultancy roles.