Secretary of State keen on flexible working for teachers

Education Secretary Justine Greening discussed her vision for the teaching profession and its role in school improvement in a major speech.

Addressing the audience of school and college leaders, Ms Greening also explained how she wanted the teaching profession to embed flexible working as the norm, to help keep hold of the most talented teachers. As part of this she announced that a summit would be held later this year with teaching unions looking at ways of implementing flexible working more widely across the profession.

Ms Greening said: "If we really want to get great teachers into the schools that need them most – and keep them there – then we have to align the right incentives.

"We need to take coherent, concrete steps to tackle the challenge in areas that need it most – beginning with a multi-million pound investment to pilot new approaches to attracting and retaining teachers in the north of England.

"Flexible working exists in most other workplaces and we need to work out how to embed it in teaching. This is about a culture shift – it won’t be the whole answer to recruitment and retention but it is definitely part of it and many schools are already demonstrating what’s possible."

Ms Greening also referred back to her commitment to strengthen qualified teacher status (QTS) and the CPD offer for the teaching profession.