Staff wellbeing 'crisis' forcing teachers out of schools, charity says

Teachers' wellbeing across the UK is at its lowest level since 2019, according to the charity Education Support.

Its latest report says the education workforce is in "crisis" and warns "young people's education will suffer" if more is not done to keep teachers in the job.

Teaching unions in England said schools were facing a "tsunami of stress and pressure", and teachers were being "driven out of the classroom at a time when children needed them most".

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said the government was "restoring teaching as the highly valued profession it should be", adding that last year had seen one of the lowest rates of teachers leaving the profession since 2010.

Education Support's annual Teacher Wellbeing Index measures the stress, mental health and wellbeing issues reported by teachers and school leaders across the UK.

More than 3,000 education staff registered with the YouGov polling service responded to questions about their mental health and wellbeing between June and July this year.

The charity's findings suggest:

The report also used the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS), which scores a person's wellbeing according to how often they report feeling optimistic, relaxed, or close with other people, for example. Those scores are then added together to give an overall picture of the respondent's mental wellbeing, with higher scores indicating a more positive mental outlook.

Compared with the general population, the teachers and school leaders who responded to the survey had a lower wellbeing score. The report's education staff wellbeing score was 43, compared with overall population scores of 51 in England and Northern Ireland, 49 in Wales, and 48 in Scotland.

The responses of more than a third (36%) of education staff produced a WEMWBS score of less than 41, indicating probable clinical depression.

Education Support chief executive Sinéad McBrearty said: "We urgently need a national retention strategy that puts staff wellbeing at its core.

"Without this, more teachers will leave the profession, and more children and young people's education will suffer."

Former head teacher Hilary Mitchell left the profession over Easter this year, after 32 years in teaching, including five years as a primary school principal in Walsall.

"It got to the point where that's all there was," she said.

"I was so exhausted when I got home. I couldn't sleep. It was making me very irritable, because of the constant demands and never feeling like you're doing a good enough job."

It's a decision which made her "extremely sad", she said, and which was not part of her career plan.

"In my head I'm a young 56-year-old. I had energy to give, but I just feel like it was being beaten out of me," she said.

"I really enjoyed my job, and it was the best school in the world. But it was more and more demands, more pressure, but less resources and funding."

Simon Hart, principal of Springwest Academy in west London, said his school had brought in a "culture of kindness" to promote feelings of staff belonging, trust and self-esteem.

His school has lessons from 09:00 until 16:00 from Monday to Thursday, which means the school can close at 13:40 for staff and students every Friday.

The school also offers online parents' evenings for staff and parents, something he says is "a huge wellbeing offer that's very popular".

The school encourages staff to get to know one another with regular coffee and cake breaks, and the system for enforcing rules around behaviour is run by the school's leadership team - rather than the teachers.

"In education, a lot of teachers leave because of behaviour - it's not managed," Simon says.

Taking detentions and other behaviour issues out of the teachers' hands means they "can just get on and teach".

He says the approach has had a positive impact on attainment, school culture and the retention of staff.

Teacher wellbeing is an issue the government is trying to improve as part of its manifesto pledge to recruit 6,500 new teachers.

But earlier this year, analysis by the National Foundation of Educational Research (NFER) said unfilled vacancies were at a record high and recruitment into teacher training remained "persistently low."

Teaching unions are calling for wellbeing, workload and support to be a priority for the government.

The National Education Union (NEU) said it was a "system in crisis", with NASUWT adding that teachers were being "driven out of the classroom".

The Association of School and College Leaders said the "many positives" of teaching were "increasingly being undermined by a tsunami of stress and pressure".

And the National Association of Head Teachers said "real movement is needed to shed some of the huge burdens our dedicated teachers and leaders carry, show they are valued, and restore teaching as a truly rewarding career."

The DfE said it was already delivering on its manifesto pledge around recruiting and retaining teachers, and said the government was "taking action to tackle poor pupil behaviour, high workload and poor wellbeing" among staff.