@jackworth.bsky.social
Education economist at NFER researching recruitment and retention in the education workforce
NEW: What helps to improve teacher retention?
Today we have published a new study on teacher retention, looking at the association between a wide range of factors relating to teacher's' working lives and their retention decisions
www.nfer.ac.uk/publications...
✍️ | In a new blog, @jackworth.bsky.social uses insights from our redeveloped teacher supply forecast and simulation model to look at what the implications of different STRB recommendations might be for teacher recruitment and retention trends.
Read more 👉 www.nfer.ac.uk/blogs/what-s...
explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statist...
16.12.2025 11:24 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
New blog post - What should happen to teachers’ pay from 2026?
With the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) currently developing its recommendations for teachers’ pay for the next two years, our Education Workforce Lead, @jackworth.bsky.social, has written a new blog post looking at what he thinks should happen from 2026.
Read the post 👉 bit.ly/3KMbSWU
Interesting stat from today's release: more than half of physics trainees are now non-UK and non-EEA nationals. A remarkable shift from 6% of trainees in 2021 to 59% in 2025. Encouraged by the bursary eligibility change in 2022/23, but how many have gone on to state-sector employment?
04.12.2025 16:20 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Today's ITT Census data is positive, showing a sizeable increase in trainee numbers vs last year, alongside lower targets due to other supply improvements like retention. But there's still more to do as secondary recruitment is still below target at 88 per cent
04.12.2025 16:20 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
"Improved recruitment to postgraduate teacher training in England is welcome after years of severe under-recruitment. While targets for core secondary subjects including English, maths and the sciences have been met, overall secondary recruitment still falls short of the numbers required. “Further policy efforts to improve teacher recruitment and retention will be needed to maintain the stronger recruitment, reverse the impacts of previous persistent under-recruitment and deliver on the Government's objective to recruit 6,500 new teachers." Jack Worth - Education Workforce Lead
🗣️ "Improved recruitment to postgraduate teacher training in England is welcome after years of severe under-recruitment."
Our Education Workforce Lead, @jackworth.bsky.social, has given his reaction to the latest DfE initial teacher training census data. 👇
First 2025/26 cycle ITT data out today. Too early to tell much and it's quite contradictory!
- Applications up, but offers and acceptances flat or down
- Acceptances especially down for secondary and in bursary-cut subjects
Will be interesting to see if extra apps translate into offers later on
NEW EPISODE
This week, we're joined by @JackWorthNFER, an economist studying the teacher labour market, to explore the history and future or recruitment and retention. It's MEGA nerdy, and super fascinating.
Tune in and share here 👇👇
open.spotify.com/episode/20PH...
New blog post - A widespread lack of specialist physics teachers persists due to recruitment and retention challenges
In a brand new feature length blog post, our Education Workforce Lead, @jackworth.bsky.social, discusses new analysis, commissioned by the @instituteofphysics.bsky.social, highlighting how the under-supply of specialist teachers is affecting secondary schools.
Read the post 👉 bit.ly/4m8dSWt
“Addressing the teacher supply challenges in secondary and further education requires a strategic and targeted approach to improving the attractiveness of the teaching profession in key subjects and particularly in disadvantaged areas. NFER’s research echoes the importance of building a strategy around the key factors for recruitment and retention raised in this report, including teacher workload, pupil behaviour, a lack of access to flexible working arrangements and teacher pay and incentives.” Jack Worth, Education Workforce Lead
Our Education Workforce Lead, @jackworth.bsky.social, has has given his reaction to the House of Commons Public Committee report on teacher numbers in secondary and further education, published today.
Read the full quote 👉 bit.ly/3TuIHIB
Sat down with Tom and James earlier this week to discuss 6,500 teachers. Do have a listen! 👇
03.07.2025 10:43 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Retention payments for early career teachers may help, but the evidence is mixed.
This is the conclusion of our new analysis funded by
@nuffieldfoundation.org
Read @jackworth.bsky.social's blog on the new findings 👇
bit.ly/4liHKQ5
Thanks to @nuffieldfoundation.org for funding this work and my colleague Dawson for doing so much of the data-wrangling and number-crunching
Full report: www.nfer.ac.uk/publications...
Our analysis implies retention payments have a high marginal cost compared to bursaries
This suggests that a 'bursaries first' policy approach is probably always best, which aligns with the findings from the Maths Phased Bursary evaluation www.gov.uk/government/p...
In summary, the retention impacts were somewhat mixed and generally not statistically significant. Overall, it suggested an association with lower retention rates, but wasn't conclusive
26.06.2025 10:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Do extra payments to in-service teachers in shortage subjects improve retention?
We thought our analysis might back up the fairly strong 'yes' from UK literature so far, but our findings were not as conclusive. In this blog I assess the findings and what they might mean for policy:
bit.ly/4liHKQ5
Yesterday, our School Workforce Lead and co-author of the research, @jackworth.bsky.social, spoke to LBC News's Vanessa Baffoe about the findings.
[2/2] 👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcO6...
🔬 'Teaching does not reflect diversity in the working-age or school-age populations - but the diversity of training applicants is high'
Jack Worth presents new research from @thenfer.bsky.social and @mission44.bsky.social
schoolsweek.co.uk/why-we-must-...
“We welcome the Government’s teacher pay award of 4 per cent as it recognises the crucial value of teachers in our society and will help to improve teacher recruitment and retention. “While we also welcome the funding the Government has announced to cover the additional 1.2 per cent above its initial proposal to School Teachers' Review Body (STRB), requiring schools to find efficiencies to fund some of this pay rise puts extra strain on school budgets that are already very tight. Jack Worth, School Workforce Lead
🗣️ Our School Workforce Lead @jackworth.bsky.social has given his reaction to the announcement of a 4% pay rise for teachers and leaders for the 2025/26 academic year, as well as additional funding for schools and colleges.
Read the full quote 👉 bit.ly/4jcuomo
Short answer: probably. bsky.app/profile/jack...
29.04.2025 17:19 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0@hugheshaili.bsky.social
29.04.2025 16:13 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0indeed very likely so this year, but these targets cover the expected need for the 2026 labour market. Funding during that period uncertain until spending review
29.04.2025 15:43 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Worth noting that the long view suggests that the secondary targets have, in general, been unusually high in the last few years.
And that interpreting a time series of %s of target doesn't give the full picture on what's really happening
With the uptick in recruitment evident in yesterday's application stats, our overall forecast of the ITT outcomes for Sep 2025 is now looking much more positive
Maths, science, English, primary: all forecast to be at/above target this year
Secondary overall still below target by 15%.
The stats release explains that it is due to a number of different factors that have changed since last model, including:
- fewer teachers forecast to leave
- higher ITT recruitment last year than previous
- pupil growth rate decelerating
- more returners
DfE published some hefty changes to the ITT recruitment targets this morning
- down overall and across phases by around 20%
- some subjects like physics/ MFL down by more than a third
There are some real positive signs in the latest ITT recruitment data of improvement vs last year, especially in secondary. I will hold off updating the forecast until tomorrow, when targets are published.
But it's interesting to see where the growth is and isn't coming from...🧵
So what could be driving it?
Possibilities:
- shortage subject retention payments bedding in and acting as a recruitment boost (would explain STEM surge)
- cooling labour market (esp in tech: www.nfer.ac.uk/press-releas...)
- impact of last year's 5.5% pay rise
- more marketing (?)
