Labour has promised in its manifesto to recruit 6,500 new teachers. As part of a plan to boost education standards, the party intends to pay for these new teachers, in key subjects and hard-to-staff areas, by ending some tax breaks for private schools.

The manifesto states that Labour will recruit the new teachers by adjusting how bursaries – tax-free incentives to encourage graduates into teacher training programmes – are allocated. This is broadly a continuation of existing policy.

Currently, higher-achieving students and those in shortage subjects, such as physics, get higher bursaries. Possible changes could be to offer even higher bursaries for the most in-demand subjects (increasing the current £30,000 cap), and to offer bursaries in subjects such as business studies that are currently ineligible, despite consistently failing to meet recruitment targets.

But there’s a problem. With 43,500 teachers leaving the profession in England last year (one in ten of all qualified teachers), policies focused on early-career teachers risk alienating experienced teachers. After all, it could be argued that the teachers who have remained committed to the profession are the ones who most deserve a reward, not new entrants.

Labour has stated it will tackle these retention issues by reviewing the structure of retention payments. This is consistent with Rishi Sunak’s tax-free bonus of up to £30,000 over the first five years of teachers’ careers in subjects with a particular shortage – something the Conservatives have also pledged to extend in their manifesto.

But these policies fail to address the underlying truth – that teaching has become a less attractive profession due to declining pay and a more challenging job.

The Department for Education has persistently failed to recruit and retain the teachers needed to ensure that schools are appropriately staffed – and the issues are only getting worse. This year, only half of initial teacher training targets for England were met for secondary schools. New data from a National Foundation For Educational Research survey shows the number of teachers in England who are considering leaving increased by 44% on the previous year.

Since 2010, experienced teachers in England have experienced a real-terms reduction in salaries of up to 13%. During the same period, average earnings across all sectors in Britain have increased by 2.5% in real terms. To put this into perspective, my research estimates that one in three teachers would be financially better off in another profession.

While the financial returns have declined, the job has gotten more challenging. Since the pandemic, teachers’ workloads and job quality have worsened compared with other professions. This decline in the relative attractiveness of teaching has serious implications for the quality, quantity and diversity of the profession.

Making teaching pay

Labour claims it will raise £1.5 billion by applying VAT and business rates to private schools. Assuming this figure is accurate, it could be used to give teachers in England a 10% pay rise (approximately £1.4 billion). Not only would this go a long way to reversing their real-terms reduction in salaries since 2010 (13%), it would also be a great statement of change.

Another plausible option could be a performance-based reduction in tuition fees for university-led teacher training programmes, a policy which has found success internationally. In the UK, this would be both less expensive than an equivalent bursary scheme, and more effective.

The failure to make teaching more attractive could have serious implications. Education plays a crucial role in economic prosperity. As teachers are the biggest school-level determinant in educational outcomes, the persistent decline in the relative attractiveness of the profession endangers the prosperity of future generations – with widespread consequences for unemployment, poverty, social exclusion and the financial sustainability of social security systems.

As things stand, Labour’s approach to the recruitment and retention crisis is consistent with the Conservative approach: trying to fill a leaky bucket with a tablespoon, and not good enough.