‘I couldn’t imagine not teaching full-time – until I had my baby’

Hayley Clarke

Education reporter

“I really loved my job, and I loved working full-time. I couldn’t have seen that changing before I had a family.”

After eight years in teaching, primary school teacher Alice Cole says that all changed with the arrival of her first child, Oliver, last May.

With Alice’s partner working shifts, Alice says a full-time return to work would have made her family time “non-existent”.

“Working flexibly now has given me that precious time with my son which I wouldn’t change for the world,” she says.

Alice returned to work three days a week at Oasis Academy Warndon in April and is on a flexible working arrangement for the next year, which means she can also take Oliver to regular baby group sessions.

She believes delivering more flexible working options for teachers – especially those who are new parents – is going to be key to addressing ongoing issues with recruitment and retention in the profession.

She wants all new parent teachers to be offered such flexibility, to allow them to “feel confident that taking that step forward in their personal life isn’t going to lead to a step back in their professional life”.

It’s an area of teaching the government is trying to improve as part of its pledge to recruit 6,500 new teachers.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said more schools should offer flexible hours when she announced plans to give teachers a 4% pay rise earlier this year.

Pay and working conditions have been key drivers for many teachers deciding to leave the profession in recent years, and to fewer deciding to join.

Annual data released on Thursday suggested the overall number of teachers has fallen by 400, and 1,400 fewer teachers entered the profession in 2024-25 than the previous year.

It is the lowest year on record for new teachers joining the profession overall, at 41,736, or 9.2% of all teachers, and targets for trainee teacher recruitment were again missed for both primary and secondary schools for the ninth time in 10 years.

Despite remaining high compared to previous years, the number of teachers leaving the profession in England has slightly improved compared to 2023-24.

The government said Thursday’s data showed there were 2,346 more teachers in secondary and special schools in England compared to last year.

Responding to the data, the education secretary said the government was “delivering on our pledge to recruit an additional 6,500 expert teachers, with more joining the profession in our secondary and special schools and over a thousand more people intending to train to become teachers this year compared to last, fundamental to improving children’s life chances.”

However, those figures have become a source of contention, with Conservative shadow education minister Neil O’Brien accusing Labour of “abandoning” their pledge by ignoring the falling number of teachers in state nurseries and primary schools, which had driven the overall numbers down.

Primary pupil numbers are decreasing, though, as birth rates fall, and staffing issues have been felt most acutely in secondary schools – particularly in specialist subjects like maths, science and languages.

Computer science teacher Sam Alner says he loves the “dynamism” of teaching, but regularly wonders how long he can sustain it.

“Relentless is probably a word people would use when they talk about teaching,” he says.

Now 12 years into his teaching career, Sam is also vice principal at Bridge Academy in Hackney, east London, where more than half of the students receive free school meals.

During the busy exam season, his day can begin at 05:00 and regularly finish late for parents’ evenings, which he says can be “really, really full on”.

Sam has no plans to go anywhere anytime soon, saying he loves the “hustle” of school life. But he says he has seen other experienced staff members leaving to find a better work-life balance, or higher-salaried jobs, in recent years.

“There’s always more you can do because you can always spend that little bit extra time on making a lesson better,” Sam says.

“When you’re young and fresh that’s OK. But when you’re having to make the choice between that work-life balance, I think that’s when people look at teaching and go: ‘I can’t sustain or justify this.'”

For Sam’s subject, computing, the government hit just 37% of its national target for recruiting new teachers for 2024-25.

Data gathered by survey tool Teacher Tapp, commissioned by teaching charity Teach First, suggests 15% of schools in the poorest communities cannot offer computer science GCSE, compared to 4% of the wealthiest schools.

Many schools in disadvantaged areas find it harder to recruit teachers, especially in specialist subjects, meaning disadvantaged pupils may have fewer opportunities, Teach First chief executive Russell Hobby says.

“What we really need is to flip the dial on that,” he says.”Otherwise, if we don’t do that, we will continue to see these inequalities perpetuated.”

Dan Botting, executive principal of Portsmouth Academy, which also has a high proportion of pupils on free school meals, says finding staff to teach computing has been “really challenging” for his school.

Coastal areas like Portsmouth have historically found it harder than other regions to recruit and retain teachers, so the school has had to be creative.

A member of the senior leadership team has been retrained to deliver classes in computing, instead of “continuing to search for candidates that just aren’t out there”.

They have had to limit the number of pupils who can take it at GCSE, Dan says, despite high demand – which he says has been a “shame”.

The school can provide for just one class of pupils per year for a GCSE in the subject at the moment, which Dan thinks “we could probably triple”, as the students are enthusiastic about technology.

Portsmouth Academy works closely with local universities to try to recruit new graduate teachers, and has hosted a “get into teaching” event.

Across all subjects, Dan says he believes it is crucial to recruit teachers who will stay in the profession long-term.

“It’s really important to retain those people,” he says, adding that it is crucial they have “the right skills and expertise to be able to deliver for the pupils who need it most”.

Additional reporting by William Dahlgreen