Teachers and leaders in disadvantaged schools are less experienced than those working in affluent schools, according to a .
The Education Policy Institute (EPI) highlights a “substantial and persistent gap” in teacher experience between those working in disadvantaged and more advantaged schools, as well as in subject expertise, turnover and absence rates.
The Closing the Workforce Quality Gap report, commissioned by The Sequoia Trust, says that teachers in disadvantaged secondary schools have, on average, three years’ less experience than those in affluent schools.
Primary schools have a narrower gap, of about two years’ experience, between disadvantaged and affluent schools.
Disadvantage gap ‘lays bare starkest issues’
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the analysis showed the additional challenges involved in working in disadvantaged schools.
“This report lays bare one of the starkest issues in our education system - that children and young people who would most benefit from being taught by our strongest teachers and leaders are the least likely to experience this,” he said.
The EPI examined differences between the teaching workforces at disadvantaged and affluent schools by constructing indirect measures of the quality of the school workforce, including:
- Skill and experience, using measures of teachers’ experience.
- Teachers’ subject-matter knowledge, using the proportion of teachers with an academic degree or specialisation in the subject they teach.
- Workforce stability, using measures of the turnover rate of staff and teacher absence patterns.
It used these measures to examine the difference between the most and least affluent quintiles of schools, based on the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals.
Leadership and expertise gap widening
The report says that the gap in the experience levels of school leaders has widened between affluent and disadvantaged secondary schools, from 6 percentage points to more than 10 percentage points in recent years.
And while there was no gap in headteachers’ experience in 2010, there was a gap of three years’ experience between affluent and disadvantaged schools in 2023-24.
Teachers in disadvantaged schools are also less likely to have a relevant degree. The expertise gap in secondary schools has widened: the proportion of lessons taught by teachers with a relevant degree in disadvantaged schools has declined by 11 percentage points since 2016-17 (from 58 per cent to 47 per cent).
Science, technology, engineering and maths - Stem subjects - show the most severe gaps, with disadvantaged schools now trailing affluent schools by 15 percentage points in the proportion of lessons taught by subject specialists.
Disadvantaged schools experience much higher levels of teacher turnover, the EPI says. Annual teacher turnover in disadvantaged secondary schools exceeds affluent schools by 5 to 8 percentage points.
This means that nearly half of the teaching workforce in disadvantaged secondary schools turns over within a four-year period, compared with only 35 per cent in affluent schools.
However, the primary school turnover gap shows signs of improvement: it has halved since 2010-2011.
Retention payment schemes ‘insufficient’
The EPI says the government needs to provide financial mechanisms “large enough to retain experienced subject specialists in disadvantaged settings”.
The report states: “The existing retention payment schemes have proven helpful, but the persistence of the experience gap over a decade indicates they have been insufficient.”
It also highlights research indicating that more supportive professional environments can accelerate teachers’ learning, potentially “mitigating some effects of the experience gap”.
The EPI calls for “better measurement of actual teaching quality across different school contexts”.
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