Call for new ‘expert teacher’ role to boost career development

A new report on the future of teaching has recommended that an ‘expert teacher’ role should be created, to recognise and reward expertise in the classroom. The report, Shaping The Future Of Teaching, is from the Teaching Commission (TC), which is chaired by former National Education Union (NEU) leader Mary Bousted. The report aims to examine the needs of teachers at different stages of their careers - from early career professionals, through mid-career to leadership - and says long-term reforms are needed in order to deliver a ‘thriving’ profession.

One of the main recommendations is the creation of the ‘expert teacher’ role, which the report says could be linked to Chartered Teacher status, and should come with ‘appropriate financial incentives to make the role attractive to teachers’. There would be an expectation that expert teachers would provide models of good professional practice to colleagues within and beyond their schools. This would be a way for teachers to advance their career and professional development while remaining in the classroom, although potentially with a ‘lesser timetable’. In practice the role could be similar  to that of ‘advanced skills teacher’, which was introduced in 1998 but phased out from 2013. An Ofsted study found that most advanced skills teachers had improved the quality of teaching in their school ‘significantly’.

The TC also want structures to be created to enable collaborative teacher development and learning to happen, both within and beyond schools, with an appropriate balance of choice and direction. The report notes that continuing professional development (CPD) provision has become ‘increasingly prescriptive’, and that ‘teachers are more likely to be committed to their CPD if they feel it answers their professional needs and aspirations’.

Elsewhere in the report, the TC calls for the remit of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) to be expanded to ‘review excessive working hours and provide specific protection for leaders on working time, holiday working and guaranteed access to leadership and management time’. They would also like to see more done to promote and enable flexible working arrangements, both for classroom teachers and those in leadership roles. The report specifically calls for more support for returner mother teachers, particularly in the first year of their return, ‘to help them accommodate the combined demands of very small children and work’. The authors’ note that this support may be particularly important to female secondary school teachers and leaders, who leave their school at a higher rate than their peers in primary.

Writing in the report’s introduction, Mary Bousted calls teacher supply a ‘social justice issue’, noting that ‘children and young people who most need experienced teachers who are qualified in the subjects they are teaching are the least likely to get them’. On the report’s recommendations she says they are ‘far reaching and challenging. There is much that the profession can do for itself. It takes time and requires the shared commitment of leaders and teachers to work together to achieve change. There is also much that the government should do to support improved teacher supply. This report is not a quick fix. It is a direction of travel towards the Commission’s vision of the profession.’

Responding to the report, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said:  ‘The NEU wholeheartedly welcomes this report. The report offers strong, evidence-based and practical solutions to address workload, pay, accountability, funding, professional trust, career development and job satisfaction’. He added that: ‘Attracting and retaining good teachers is about the whole package: professional trust, career development and job satisfaction….alongside better pay and conditions’ and called for the TC’s recommendations to inform the upcoming Schools White Paper.

Full report: https://teachingcommission.co.uk/report/

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