Overworked instructor begs for plan to cease workers leaving as Starmer makes promise

An overworked teacher has pleaded for plan to stop a “tsunami” of staff leaving the profession as Keir Starmer made a key promise to her.

Primary school teacher Jen, a caller on BBC 5 Live, pressed the Labour leader on how he was going to stop staff leaving in their droves in the education sector. Mr Starmer pledged to put in place a teacher “retention scheme” that would especially target people in their mid 30s who are considering leaving their jobs.

In her question, Jen asked: “I’m a teacher, 15 years roughly, and I would like to know if you get into power, what will you do for teachers like me to keep me in the profession? What incentives will you put in? Because my working day is a lot longer now than it was when I started and I feel that as a profession, we’re not as respected perhaps as we used to be.”

The Labour leader promised firstly to respect those who are teaching, adding: “One of the depressing things in my view about politics in recent years is there’s been a tendency for politicians to simply point the finger at other people all of the time whenever there’s a problem and that becomes disrespectful and it has become disrespectful of teachers. So there will be respect.”

He acknowledged that teachers needed more than respect though, continuing: “That is why we want to put in place a retention scheme for teachers such as yourself, which is to do with progression and recognition of the skills that you have. I’m not going to pretend there’s a lot of money. I haven’t got a magic wand. We do want to bring in the extra teachers we need so the strain and the burden goes down. But overall, Jen, my intention is that our public services, our schools have the money they need and are properly able to deliver the service that parents and the public, not only expect, but that they deserve.”

Labour has made it a key manifesto pledge to bring in 6,500 teachers. But Jen maintained it would be a hard task to hire more staff especially in the “cost of living crisis”. “I think the general public perception of a teacher is that it is an incredibly demanding and draining job,” she said. “It’s a wonderful job. I have a fantastic class and I work in a brilliant primary school, but it doesn’t stop me from going home each day with a very long to do list. It doesn’t stop me from waking up each day to multiple safeguarding emails, there’s always something for me to be thinking about. It is a 24 hour job really.”

She continued: “The profile of the profession needs to be driven up before people are going to say: ‘You know what, I’m going to step foot in that profession because that’s one that I’m going to have for life and it’s one that I’m going to feel really good in each day each and every day.’ And until that happens, I can’t see anything changing in education.”

Mr Starmer repeated his pledge to bring back “respect” for the profession. Explaining his retention plans, he went on: “As you know, many teachers sort of about mid 30s or so begin to question whether they want to continue as teachers or whether they want to go and do something else. Putting in place more support and structure there is part of our plan to retain and make sure that people can progress and be properly respected. If we and when we grow the economy, that will mean more money available as well and the new teachers coming in will take the stress off.”

Jen said she didn’t yet know if she would leave the profession but that “something dramatic would have to change for me to not consider that”. She added: “And anecdotally, it’s what I hear from many everyday. So there’s a tsunami coming in education and somebody needs to do something about it.”