Agenda item

Richard Hand introduced the report (Agenda Item 13), which aimed to inform members about the activities of the teaching trade unions.

Richard Hand ran through the key points of the report focusing on the issues with recruitment and retention. As detailed in section 3.1 of the report, the recruitment crises sat behind most of the case work handled. Richard Hand highlighted that footnotes were included to show where information had been obtained from.

Richard Hand referred to statistics detailed within his report from the Talis Report undertaken in 2018, which detailed that the average age of teachers in England was 39 compared to other OECD countries where the average age was 44. It was acknowledged that this was likely to have changed and got worse since the report was undertaken in 2018. It was also noted from the Talis Report that only 18 percent of teachers in England were aged 50 and above compared to the OECD average of 34 percent. There was an experience issue and this was being seen in casework. Although it was likely also due to the time of year nearing the end of term, it was highlighted that there were increased levels of inexperienced teachers who were tired and making missteps and this was systematic in terms of where the sector was in terms of workload.

RESOLVED that the Schools’ Forum noted the report.