Employee engagement is down. And this declining engagement affects the education sectors as well. A study from the National Foundation for Educational Research found that only about half of teachers are engaged with their work. The same study found that while teachers don’t often consider leaving education behind, recruiting and retaining new teachers is harder than ever. However, the number of students is on the rise. With fewer new teachers entering training, and more students every year, the result is teacher shortages.
To be clear, most teachers love teaching, but the perception is that policy changes and the expectation that teachers must do more with less has made the job harder. While there are certainly more teachers engaged and invested in teaching, there are still more teachers leaving than new teachers being recruited.
The opportunity seems to lie in engaging and retaining ambivalent teachers before they become disengaged. According to the NFER study, the pressure of feeling overworked, without any recognition or support from leadership is what often leads to disengagement, and ultimately teachers who don’t want to teach anymore.
So how do we engage teachers on the verge of checking out, going to another school, or leaving the profession altogether?
1. Recognise the signs. Ambivalence and disengagement will always show up in performance. Objectively, you might see a decline in student performance, and while one student’s outcomes aren’t necessarily an indication of declining teacher engagement, depressed outcomes overall, combined with semi-frequent absenteeism might be a warning sign.
2. Resources, support, and development. While it’s important for teachers to ask for support, it is up to leaders to see the warning signs and offer support. It’s not enough to pay lip service to the idea of support: School leaders and administrators must also provide resources for teachers struggling to balance the workload in the form of training, planning time, or wellbeing strategies that help relieve some of the mounting pressure.
3. Show them they’re valued. One of the biggest complaints in the NFER report was that the job of being a teacher has become increasingly harder with little reward. On the other hand, teachers who feel valued by leadership are more likely to be engaged. While teacher pay is certainly a factor in feeling valued, NFER suggests that other forms of reward and recognition like paying private healthcare or subsidising child care expenses, are a way to provide better support for teachers.
