The educational crisis caused by the chronic teacher shortage was the main topic of Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman’s latest annual report.
To use a cliché, I have never read anything like it.
The report is testimony to a decade of neglect of education and children’s services. It documents shocking evidence of:
- Nurseries under threat of closure because staff can earn so much more working in local supermarkets.
- A shortage of foster carers and under staffing in children’s homes because the wages and support offered are too low.
- Children and young people with SEND not receiving the specialist support they deserve from appropriately qualified staff because schools cannot recruit and retain them.
Children’s social care is in crisis, with a chronic absence of children’s social workers who, the chief inspector reports, are over-worked, with stress and pressure increasing as their caseloads grow larger, because local authorities cannot recruit and retain them.
Indeed, the use of agency social workers, meeting at-risk and vulnerable children and young people on Zoom, is increasing, with all that entails for quality of care, personal knowledge of the child and of the area they live in.
The crisis extends to schools, too. Ms Spielman writes of a “crisis” in teacher supply. Teacher shortages in schools are having a hugely detrimental impact on the provision of a broad and balanced curriculum and enrichment activities. She warns, too, of the overuse of staff who are not qualified in the subject they are teaching (a practice which will only increase as teacher training targets continue to be missed – this year by 43%).
This is extraordinary language used by the chief inspector. It is unprecedented. It demonstrates the depth of the crisis affecting schools and colleges, early years settings and children’s social care.
Post-16 colleges cannot provide popular courses, ones that contribute directly to economic growth, such as motor mechanics, because teachers will not work for the rates that colleges are able to offer.
The absurdity of this should be apparent to all – even government ministers who prefer to ignore the damage they have inflicted on public services through their austerity policies.
This damage is now becoming irreversible – not least for those children and young people who are being denied the support they need to meet their potential.
Figures show that the number of children needing treatment for serious mental health problems has risen by 39% since last year (see Gregory, 2023). The figures include children who are suicidal, self-harming, suffering serious depression or anxiety, and those with eating disorders.
Recent NHS research has also estimated that almost one in five children and young people now have a probable mental health condition (Newlove-Delgado et al, 2022).
Many will wait more than six months for treatment. Others will get no help at all because Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are overwhelmed and suffering from staffing shortages too.
School buildings are in a dire state. The cumulative backlog of repairs to the school estate, according to an unpublished analysis by the National Education Union, is now an extraordinary £31.9bn since 2010. The Department for Education risk register, published at the end of 2022, revealed that the risk alert level over school buildings collapsing was raised last year from “critical – likely” to “critical – very likely”.
This is how, as a society, we are treating children and young people who we require to attend school, and their teachers, support staff and leaders, who must work in dilapidated school buildings with excessive workloads and totally inadequate pay. It is an extraordinary state of affairs, and it has to change. We cannot go on like this.
- Dr Mary Bousted is the joint general secretary of the National Education Union. Read her previous articles for SecEd via http://bit.ly/seced-bousted
Further information
- Gregory: Child referrals for mental health care in England up 39% in a year, The Guardian, January 2023: https://bit.ly/3GLSGDY
- Newlove-Delgado et al: Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2022, NHS Digital, November 2022: http://bit.ly/3AX0zTC
- Ofsted: Annual report 2021/22, December 2022: https://bit.ly/3UXZhyW