Watch my speech on boosting teacher retention

This week parliament considered an e-petition debate about introducing a four-day school

week.

While the Liberal Democrats believe such a proposal is impractical, it is important for the Government to address the key issue it seeks to resolve: teacher retention.

Heavy workloads created by unnecessary bureaucracy and increasingly challenging pupil behaviour are driving teachers to leave the profession.

Although new teachers keep coming in, we are trying to fill a leaky bucket as more experienced teachers leave in droves.

It’s been argued that going down to a four-day week could help with this. But there are economic and childcare reasons that make this a non-starter.

Instead, the Government should explore greater access to flexible working arrangements for teachers and finally update the teacher and recruitment strategy which was published in 2019.