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The HFL Education Business Services Podcast - The recruitment and retention crisis; how can school leaders adapt? Part 2 · HFL Education

• 0:02
  Hello and welcome to the HFL Education Business Services podcast.
• 0:05
  I'm Catherine Loake the director of business services at HFL Education and your host.
• 0:10
  We wanted to create this series of podcasts because we recognise that the role of school leadership grows ever wider and ever deeper.
• 0:16
  And finding the time to unpack some of those core issues away from frontline teaching and learning is becoming ever more challenging.
• 0:21
  So that's where we come in.
• 0:23
  And I'm joined this week for part two, with Alex Tomkins of Greenside School in Stevenage, to talk about the future of recruitment and retention in schools we’re going to be looking at Gen Z and we're going to be looking at the future of the classroom.
• 0:35
  And that probably brings us on quite neatly to my next question, which is about the generational shift we're seeing in the workplace.
• 0:42
  So you and I are kind of Gen X’ers.
• 0:44
  We've shaped workplace policy and process for the last I don't know how many years, but we're starting to see now the millennials reaching leadership.
• 0:54
  And the Gen Z’ers kind of coming through into the workplace.
• 0:57
  if you believe stereotypes, their behaviors and expectations from employers and in the workplace are very, very different to ours.
• 1:05
  So they're big on work life balance.
• 1:07
  They want, morally significant jobs, which is great for education because massive tick, What are you seeing in younger generation that are coming into the workforce?
• 1:15
  And as a leader, how are you adapting to ensure that you're able to sort of retain this new generation of staff?
• 1:21
  I think it's important to recognise all staff are individuals.
• 1:25
  If we're saying the kids, all very individuals in special schools and in some respects all schools, we shouldn't be grouping staff so much as we can, because I think we have a tendency to see them as a homogeneous group of TA’s and teachers and stuff.
• 1:38
  But you're right.
• 1:39
  You know, if you look at my teaching workforce, we have different teachers at different sort of ages, and there is an element of difference.
• 1:47
  I do believe that the Covid times impacted a lot on people's perspective on work.
• 1:52
  It's not all about how many hours you can put in.
• 1:54
  But also recently I was reflecting on what we're offering our teachers and our TA’s.
• 1:59
  It's all about career progression.
• 2:00
  It's all about going up.
• 2:02
  But actually is that necessarily what everyone wants?
• 2:06
  People want a balance to their lives.
• 2:08
  So what else are we giving them?
• 2:10
  You know, what else are we offering?
• 2:11
  And it's not all about, oh you can go up, you can be a head teacher in 15 years.
• 2:15
  Because actually more and more people are going, I don't want to do that because I want to be a surfer or I want to do this or I want to do karate.
• 2:22
  You know, I have lots of TA’s that have a lot of different interests, which are perfectly valid.
• 2:27
  And actually talking to them about that and seeing how they can still have those interests is really great.
• 2:33
  We’ve reviewed our leave of absence policy.
• 2:35
  So having rather than a very fixed policy that says, you know, you got to be in work all the time and that ends up people kind of reaching towards sickness.
• 2:44
  And you know, if they say they're sick, they're sick, you know, can't do much about that, but actually having a more supportive approach.
• 2:50
  So we developed a number of authorised reasons for days off.
• 2:54
  And they're not just things like childcare and stuff because it felt like actually our young staff don't necessarily have children, but they have other reasons.
• 3:02
  Just because you've got a child isn't really important, what gives us the right to put that in an order.
• 3:08
  We've decided to really offer the same package to everyone and be supportive of different sorts of interest, because I've got TA’s and stuff that as you say, the social media type element that's come through, I think with the generation that are coming through have been with mobiles since day one.
• 3:25
  I only had snake and stuff when I was a teenager for a number of years, but actually now it's constantly there.
• 3:32
  There is challenges around that because sometimes it feels like you need to encourage them to put the phones away.
• 3:37
  And we have that sort of safeguarding element around phone use.
• 3:41
  But actually it's about looking at how we can use that understanding and bring it into the school.
• 3:48
  And that builds on that value point.
• 3:50
  Everyone wants to feel valued, but that valued is different.
• 3:54
  I think that's really interesting what you said around, you know, a lot of your TA’s having multiple interests because again, as I understand, the Gen Zer’s is are more likely to pursue sort of portfolio careers.
• 4:05
  So again, there's a real opportunity, isn't there, in education where you've got a 38 week window, but there's a lot of time outside those 38 weeks to be doing other things.
• 4:15
  And also, again, the kind of school day does lend itself to some evening work being a DJ, for example, if that's your real passion, you know, TA by day, DJ by evening, again, we sometimes we miss the opportunities don't we, in education.
• 4:27
  So I love your thinking on that.
• 4:28
  I think it's really great, Alex.
• 4:30
  Just to sort of to take that broader picture and actually how do we accommodate, and fit our leadership around this, this new generation?
• 4:37
  Very much so.
• 4:38
  And that threads back to recruitment.
• 4:39
  You know, you've got to stand out as a recruiter.
• 4:41
  So we release recently recruited some teachers and TA’s And as you say you put it on Teach in Herts and stuff.
• 4:48
  And there's loads and loads of different people asking the same things.
• 4:51
  And you've got to think, how is the person you're recruiting, why are they going to pick you?
• 4:55
  Why do they apply for Greenside over another school?
• 4:59
  And in some respects is looking at what you're putting in those adverts.
• 5:02
  And actually instead of just saying oh we’re, this we're this, we're this actually put about, what are we going to offer you, what coming to Greenside will offer you, you have the opportunity for this training.
• 5:13
  We put in our adverts about the flexible working we put in about the leave of absence policy I'm a big advocate for work life balance because I have to, because as soon as I go home, my six year old doesn't allow me to not talk about work.
• 5:27
  The last thing she has an interest in is about education.
• 5:30
  Focusing it back to why someone's going to come to your school.
• 5:33
  If you're looking at a job, the chances are you're going to go on the school website.
• 5:37
  What's the website saying?
• 5:38
  Have you got information on that website about staff?
• 5:41
  This is our next sort of thing within our people strategy.
• 5:44
  We're going to have a bit on there about recruitment.
• 5:46
  It's not just going to have our adverts up, we're wanting to recruit these people.
• 5:50
  It will say about what we offer you, why come and work for Greenside, why come and work in education, most often I've got groups of classes going out at the moment offsite to forest schools and farms.
• 6:03
  You know, the work is fun there's a lot of creativity in the workplace.
• 6:07
  There's a lot of autonomy over what you can offer in front of the young people.
• 6:11
  And I think that's really refreshing.
• 6:12
  But are we describing that?
• 6:14
  Recently I thought about whether people understand what special schools are.
• 6:17
  So we're saying about teachers and saying why come to Greenside and I got we're at a special school.
• 6:20
  What does that mean?
• 6:22
  I've been in special school for God knows how many years.
• 6:25
  I think people have a good understanding of primary schools, good understanding of secondary schools, but specialist schools.
• 6:30
  Within that how do we know we've got a try and have a decent video on our website so people get an insight, but what makes them come into special in the first place?
• 6:39
  We need a lot of workers.
• 6:41
  There's a lot of growth in the sector of specialist.
• 6:43
  We want an extra 500 places over the next five years.
• 6:46
  The chances are we going to need 500 staff as such around that.
• 6:50
  They've got to come from somewhere.
• 6:51
  There's a part of that where we need to actually open up the doors of specialist schools so people understand.
• 6:57
  And that's really interesting because I think again, looking forward, so I guess in a crisis recruitment retention crisis, you look at the here and now in your firefighting largely, and I don't think we're really looking ahead to the future of the workforce and education as well as we might be.
• 7:12
  And I think specialist particularly, if the reforms in the white paper around more children with SEND educated in mainstream and only the most complex, educated and special schools kind of come to pass, but that kind of layered with the fact that children are becoming more complex and we have got this generational shift in staffing, I think necessitates a bit of a rethink in specialist there is a real opportunity to redefine our workforce and what, you know, the role of a teacher looks like, what the role of a teaching assistant looks like.
• 7:44
  What are your thoughts, Alex, on the future of the specialist sector.
• 7:47
  Do you see it shifting in the next 5 to 10 years?
• 7:49
  Do you think our classrooms will look quite different?
• 7:51
  I think it will look different.
• 7:53
  I imagine the classrooms in the short term are likely to get a bit busier because there's a lot of pressure, but there isn't that valve of development around because development takes a long time.
• 8:04
  So new schools or satellites and all manner of things take a number of years to become there.
• 8:09
  So there's more pressure in the classroom, but actually there is plenty of people out there in my opinion, going forward, the chances are that the market, when you look at the future projections, job roles changing due to AI fall in role but fall in role related to, you know, just general population of children doesn't mean that there's plenty of teachers around.
• 8:31
  And this is connecting back to that idea that there's primary school teachers and staff when smaller schools are closing, we'll be looking around for roles and you've got to put across that, actually, how attractive is the specialist sector?
• 8:46
  Actually what we want our primary school trained people because actually that is the level of learning that we're doing in the specialist sector.
• 8:55
  I think that's generally across the board.
• 8:56
  The reason why they're very complex is because they are performing two, if not three or four years underneath their chronological age.
• 9:04
  So all of that fits into the primary sort of teaching.
• 9:07
  But even so, it is challenging to get primary school teachers necessary to apply for special schools, because the white paper is, is really aspirational.
• 9:19
  But it's a worry I think my primary school colleagues that I speak to, there's not enough substance in there of how it's going to look.
• 9:25
  They would love to do all that, but they don't have the money or the finance or the capacity to support that.
• 9:31
  And actually, the white paper offers a lot and I think it's really it's a great aspiration.
• 9:37
  But once again, the government are very good at putting across sort of those bigger ideas for the sector and then expect the sector to work out the nuts and bolts underneath.
• 9:48
  And I think that's a very hard position to be in, and a lot more is put across the schools.
• 9:53
  It feels a bit like headteachers are told, well you’re just going to just have more complex young people crack on.
• 9:58
  And actually the opportunity of experts at hand is is a great tool.
• 10:02
  But what's that going to look like too.
• 10:04
  Because you want experts at hand to understand your setting.
• 10:07
  Every setting is so different.
• 10:09
  that's where we need to think about our people strategy going forward and make sure that we're able to offer a system of training within the school.
• 10:17
  My big plan in the next couple of years is how do we take someone literally off the street and train them through, because we need to be aware that often is not that perfect person with the perfect CV that's going to be available, but there probably is going to likely be lots of people available.
• 10:34
  But the school we can set up, schools are so different.
• 10:37
  So if you go from one primary school to another, the chances are you're still going to spend the first year training how to learn in that due the systems.
• 10:43
  And it's the same as specialist schools.
• 10:44
  In my school we're looking at September class groups at the moment, one teacher moving from one class to the other.
• 10:50
  It's like going back stage one to some extent.
• 10:52
  Why can't we be more open for anyone who has the right values and the right skills to join our school, be part of a team and help us support some of the most vulnerable in society.
• 11:06
  Because you're right, is a moral endeavor, and I'm hoping the real positives of that Gen Z generation is that moral compass.
• 11:15
  And if that moral compass is there, then I think that should really help the public sector, which includes things like the NHS, you know, we were big employer in Stevenage, but we've also got Lister Hospital round the corner.
• 11:25
  So everyone's drawing the same type of people.
• 11:28
  So I think sometimes it's about schools being more confident that actually it's not necessarily about how skilled they are.
• 11:34
  Someone might not write the best application in the world, they might not interview the best.
• 11:38
  But if they've got the right values for the place and you're offering the best CPD, and you have a plan that takes the person literally off the street and be a very confident TA to some extent within 6 or 7 months, then you know you're going to be able to ride out the storm, I think, in the future when it comes to recruitment.
• 11:55
  Alex, this has been really fascinating.
• 11:57
  And I think what's really come through to me is just how different actually headship in the specialist sector is because of the kind of huge people challenges you face and really inspired by your people first approach.
• 12:10
  I would love to come and work for you.
• 12:11
  You know, it sounds like a fantastic school to be in.
• 12:14
  And yeah, just that thought around the needs of your staff and seeing everyone as an individual is, is fantastic.
• 12:20
  So yeah, I hope the kind of the people strategy over the next few years comes to fruition.
• 12:24
  And we'd love to have you back to sort of see how it’s all gone.
• 12:27
  Thank you for your time.
• 12:28
  I know it's thank you to your staff who have kept the school running while you've been here, but it's been a really, really interesting pod.
• 12:34
  And I know that colleagues up and down the country, not just in Hertfordshire, are going to take a lot from this.
• 12:39
  So thank you for coming in.
• 12:40
  If you've enjoyed this podcast, do like and subscribe and we will see you next time.