Recruitment and Retention of NQTs in Oxfordshire Schools

The full report can be found here: RR-Full-Report

Rationale for the study
The study was commissioned by the Strategic Schools Partnership Board for Oxfordshire in November 2015 in response to increasing evidence from schools within Oxfordshire and concerns expressed by head teachers and governors about the challenges involved both in recruiting sufficient new teachers to Oxfordshire schools and in retaining those staff that were successfully recruited.
The local concerns that had prompted the commissioning of the research were confirmed by a report of the National Audit Office1, published in February 2016, which acknowledged that:
– The DFE had missed its targets for filling training places over the past 4 years, with the margin of failure increasing from 1% in 2012-13 to 9% in 2014/15. Secondary places had proved particularly difficult to fill.
– Only around 80% of trainees who commenced a (final) year of training in 2013/14 were known to have been recruited to teaching in England within 6 months of qualifying (of which an unknown proportion were working in independent schools).
– The recorded rate of vacancies and temporarily filled positions in state-funded schools had doubled between 2011 and 2014 from 0.5% of the teaching workforce to 1.2% (a figure which the DFE accepts is unlikely to reflect recruitment difficulties fully).
– Nationally, of teachers newly qualified over a 10-year period approximately 12% left state-funded schools within one year of joining while 28% had left within five years.

Research aims
The main aims of the study were to map patterns of recruitment and retention of newly qualified teachers across the county: to determine both the extent and nature of the difficulties faced by primary, secondary and special schools in attracting and retaining staff; and to identify the key factors that contribute to early career teachers’ decisions to stay or leave employment within the county. Specifically the study sought to address the following questions:
1. What attracts NQTs (in different subjects/phases; and from different training routes/locations) to work in Oxfordshire schools?
2. What obstacles are there to the effective recruitment of NQTs in Oxfordshire?
3. Why do many early career teachers in Oxfordshire schools leave the schools to which they were recruited as NQTs?
4. Why do some teachers recruited as NQTs to Oxfordshire