On 19 September, Teach First launched a new report entitled Tomorrow’s Teachers, promising a roadmap to recruit more Gen Z people (those born between 1995 and 2012) into teaching in England. The report highlights a range of issues and reasons why many young people are unlikely to join the teaching profession, even if they have considered it. Teach First uses the findings to promote itself, including its teacher qualifying programme running since 2002, as well as more recent initiatives it has expanded into. One thing Teach First fails to consider is whether its own 22-year legacy has anything to do with the report’s findings.
Tomorrow’s Teachers was written in collaboration with Public First, a firm founded and run by former colleagues of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. Public First was found to have been “unlawfully” awarded a £500k contract at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In a witness statement defending the contract, Cummings argued: “Obviously I did not request Public First be brought in because they were my friends. I would never do such a thing”.
Giving the lie to the ‘lie-in’ generation
Alongside focus groups with young people and interviews with five “sector experts” (two of whom were Teach First ambassadors), the focus of Tomorrow’s Teachers was on the findings of a survey of 3,031 young people.
The 69-page report includes a range of interesting findings. For example, Gen Z respondents rated work-life balance and salary as the two most important aspects of finding a job. In contrast, flexible working was rated at the bottom end of importance, just ahead of location. In relation to what would incentivise respondents to become teachers, better salaries were by far the most significant factor, with issues related to flexibility again rated much lower. Similarly, when it came to the main disadvantages of teaching as a career, the top three responses were that it is stressful, there is a poor salary and that there is a lack of funding.
Agenda-setting in the media
As with most reports that stem from Teach First or Public First, Tomorrow’s Teachers gained widespread media attention, something that is helped by both organisations’ network connections (Teach First counts the king amongst its many supporters). Strangely though, the coverage tended to emphasise flexibility, rather than the far more prominent issues like salary and funding. See the following headlines:
The Guardian: “Teachers in England offered lie-ins to make job more appealing.”
The Independent: “Teachers offered lie-ins and three-day weekends in efforts to combat retention crisis.”
Daily Mail: “Now teachers are offered lie-ins as well as WFH options and nine-day fortnights in bid to make job more appealing to Gen Z.”
This emphasis was likely encouraged by Teach First’s own efforts to place flexibility front and centre. For example, its press release announcing the report opened with the statement: “Today Teach First has released a new report that sets out a bold new vision for increasing flexibility in the way in which teachers are trained, supported and retained.”
The emphasis on flexibility could be seen as an attempt to ensure the findings link with the agenda of the new Labour government, which has made it clear that improving flexibility for teachers is part of their future plans. Looked at more cynically, it could also be viewed as an attempt to position Teach First for future public contracts and government influence.
Spinning the wheels?
There may be other reasons why Teach First and those covering the report are focusing on flexibility instead of other areas, and that is Teach First’s own history.
Following a proposal from the management consulting firm McKinsey, Teach First was launched in 2002 with the explicit goal of addressing educational inequalities. This would be achieved through focusing on recruitment of the best and brightest graduates into teaching. The irony of relying on those with the highest educational attainment to address inequality in educational attainment was seemingly lost on those involved.
In his 2012 book Success Against the Odds the founder of Teach First, Brett Wigdortz, doubled down on this commitment, pledging that by 2022 the Teach First vision could be considered a success if the disadvantage gap was narrowed in key areas such as GSCE attainment and university graduation. If not, he recognised, Teach First may just be “spinning our wheels”.
Despite this pledge, and the rapid growth of Teach First, educational inequality has persisted in England. This is even acknowledged by the current CEO of Teach First, Russell Hobby, in the foreword to Tomorrow’s Teachers: “…the education gap is widening”. This is also confirmed in a range of reports including from Institute for Fiscal Studies, Sutton Trust, Education Policy Institute and by Teach First itself. While the educational attainment gap has undoubtedly been exacerbated in recent years by the Covid-19 pandemic, all this just further speaks to the naivety of relying on attracting high-achieving graduates from selective universities to address such a complex issue as educational inequality.
Recruitment still an issue after 22 years
Alongside this, the 22 years of Teach First have not prevented teacher recruitment from remaining highly problematic, with targets consistently being missed, leading to worsening student-teacher ratios. Tomorrow’s Teachers suggests that Teach First has not even been successful in making teaching more attractive to academic high-achievers. The report found those with (or expecting) first-class honours degrees continue to be substantially less likely to consider becoming teachers.
David Blunkett, who describes himself as “…having overseen the establishment of Teach First” during his time as education secretary, was one of many who outlined his support for the new report. However, in doing so he acknowledges the fundamental issue, that since Teach First was established in 2002, far from raising the prestige of the teaching profession, “…the attractiveness of teaching as a profession has been eroded”.
Short termism and ‘squiggly’ careers
Another aspect of Tomorrow’s Teachers that has garnered attention relates to the “non-linear” career aspirations of Gen Z. The report found that 47% of respondents stated that they would teach for a few years but not remain for their whole career. This compared to only 13% who said they would want to teach for their whole career. Teach First suggests as a solution that the teaching profession should embrace “squiggly” careers.
Writing previously for the Bylines Network, I have outlined how Teach First is already designed in a way that encourages a short-term commitment to the teaching profession. Teach First retention rates post-qualifying seem to confirm this. The very name Teach First evokes this idea of teaching as a pitstop towards something greater.
Teach First would like to frame this as meaning that it is perfectly placed to lead the way for this new generation of would-be teachers. However, in his 2012 book the founder of Teach First argued very similarly about Gen Y (those born between 1982 and 2002, also known as millennials) to justify the founding of Teach First in the first place. He claimed: “Gen Y value a high degree of freedom and autonomy not only in the way they carry out their work but also in the way they manage their own CVs… our programme and the skills gained would allow flexible career paths after they had completed their initial two years in the job”.
Young people want fulfilling jobs
The Tomorrow’s Teachers report, and those throwing their support behind it, do not sufficiently acknowledge that what is now being claimed about Gen Z had also been found about previous generations, and the implications of this. The report’s findings in this area likely relate more to the adventurous spirit of youth than generational divides.
This view is backed up by recent findings from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) that there has been little change in young people’s career preferences since Teach First was founded in 2002. NFER explicitly noted: “Shifting career motivations are not to blame for worsening teacher shortages”.
Failing to acknowledge this allows the Teach First report to essentially blame the attitudes of Gen Z for the failures of policymakers and schemes like Teach First to address ingrained problems in the teaching profession. This is despite Tomorrow’s Teachers actually finding that, for these young people, the highest rated overall career goal was simply “to be happy and fulfilled”, a rather modest goal that should be an absolute minimum for the teaching profession to provide.
Opportunity knocks, but for whose benefit?
Teach First advocate for these “squiggly” careers to be promoted through closer private sector involvement in teaching. Proposals in the report include “…exposing teachers to other professions in short term placements…”. A £7.5mn pilot is proposed to test this plan.
There are many unanswered questions in relation to this plan, including how cover would be provided for these teachers. But more fundamentally, this proposal could easily backfire, encouraging teachers to leave the profession as they gain connections and see that there is an alternative place for them in the private sector.
What this suggestion does do is promote Teach First’s existing Summer Projects programme, already based on short term internships in the private sector. This would presumably place Teach First in a good position to win contracts based on its own proposal. As I have previously explored, many of the private sector organisations that Teach First has traditionally partnered with are ethically suspect, something that should raise major concerns about them having more influence over teachers and, inevitably, those the young people they educate.
Listening to what teachers say they need
For many of those who have been trained by or worked with Teach First, this idea of floating between careers, in particular between public and private sector roles, bringing the connections and insider information along, will make perfect sense. That does not mean it makes sense for the teaching profession or those who rely on it, as 22 years of Teach First have demonstrated.
Instead, all efforts should be dedicated to making teaching a more attractive profession to join and remain in for the long haul. Teachers need higher salaries, more funding, lower workloads, more trust. That is the real message from this new report. Not lie-ins, lucrative contracts or private sector influence.
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