Teachers get a year’s paid sabbatical to help ‘recharge’

TEACHERS will get sabbaticals as part of a raft of new measures aimed at making the profession more attractive, the Education Secretary will announce today.

Damian Hinds will earmark £5million to pay for experienced teachers to take a year off school to work in industry or on academic research. The fund will pay their wages.

School leaders have been calling for sabbaticals to stop teachers burning out and keep them motivated. Ahead of the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers, the union’s London regional secretary Kevin Baskill proposed a motion that teachers should be given the opportunity ‘ to do something away from the chalkface, just to recharge, do professional development’.

Now, in a speech at the conference today, Mr Hinds will announce the new sabbaticals as a reward for teachers with ten or more years of experience, to enable them to work on projects that complement their work in the classroom. Participants will be expected to show how their work will benefit their pupils when they return to school.

It follows warnings about a teacher shortage caused by rising pupil numbers and an improving private sector job market. Announcing the move today, Mr Hinds will say he is keen to attract more talented people to the profession.

‘All of us have a shared goal of making sure teaching remains an attractive, fulfilling profession,’ he will say.

‘We will take an unflinching look at the things that discourage people from going into teaching or make them consider leaving … and we will also look at how we support teachers to get better at what they do and hone their experience and career progression.’

While there are currently a record number of teachers working in schools, the increase in staff has not kept pace with the explosion of the pupil population following a period of sustained migration.

The measures proposed by Mr Hinds are aimed at encouraging more people into the profession to plug the shortfall. Other offerings include introducing ‘flexible working practices’ and extending on-the-job training for new teachers.

And in an olive branch to the profession, the Education Secbranded retary will also announce proposals to drop an accountability measure that names and shames ‘coasting’ schools. It has been hated by teachers since it was introduced three years ago as the Government had originally said those iden- tified would be forced to become academies.

Currently, school exam results are judged on two measures – a minimum ‘below the floor’ standard, and a ‘coasting’ standard aimed at exposing those that are not performing as well as expected even if they meet minimum requirements. Teachers have the measures complicated and unfair. Mr Hinds will now revert to one minimum standard, with a consultation on how that should be set, and no threat of the measure being used to force schools to become academies.

Only schools deemed failing by Ofsted will now be in line for conversion into academies.

Mr Hinds will say today: ‘I have a clear message to schools and their leaders: I trust you to get on with the job.’

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, welcomed the proposals. ‘ Teaching is such a rewarding profession, so it’s disheartening to see teachers leaving due to the pressure of workload and high stakes accountability. A fund for sabbaticals is exactly what we’re asking for.’

‘An attractive, fulfilling job’