Sir Michael Wilshaw has called for “golden handcuffs” to help keep teachers in state schools, and said the government needed to urgently tackle the shortage of teaching staff across England.



The Ofsted chief inspector, in his annual report on education and skills in England, highlighted the difficulty struggling schools had recruiting staff, and said the government’s teacher training reforms – pushing initial teacher training into schools – were allowing good schools to monopolise hiring.



“As a result there is an emerging two-tier system, with one group of schools more able to recruit and another less able to do so,” Wilshaw said.



“The danger of this if not addressed is that this will further intensify the disparity in local and regional performance and entrench the divide in quality across the country.”

He said the headteacher of a “less than good school” had complained that “training schools usually kept hold of the best trainees for themselves”.

Wilshaw said action was need at a national level to tackle the shortage of teachers in training and to retain those already in the profession. “Financial incentives need to be targeted in order to get trainees to start their career in the areas and schools that need them most.

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“There needs to be consideration of a form of golden handcuffs to keep teachers working in the state system that trains them.”

Wilshaw said there was a shortage of people entering the profession and many headteachers had reported being unable to recruit good staff, even in affluent areas.



“The overriding message from these headteachers, in schools of all grades and types, is that teacher recruitment is a very real problem.” Even London experienced problems recruiting teachers. “Try tempting maths teachers to inner London, where house prices are mind-boggling multiples of their annual salaries. Believe me, they can do the sums.”

Wilshaw used the publication of the annual report to highlight the “deeply troubling” educational divide in England, with children in the north and Midlands much less likely to attend a good or outstanding secondary school than their peers in the south.

More than 400,000 pupils in northern England and the Midlands were being taught in a secondary school that fell below Ofsted’s “good” rating. The report highlighted 16 poorly performing local authority areas where fewer than 60% of children attend good or outstanding secondary schools, and where pupils achieve lower than average GCSE grades and make less than average progress.

Of these 16 areas, three are in the south – Swindon, South Gloucestershire and the Isle of Wight – while 13 are in the north or Midlands. They are Barnsley, Blackpool, Derbyshire, Doncaster, Hartlepool, Bradford, Knowsley, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Oldham, Salford, St Helens and Stoke-on-Trent.

Wilshaw said: “We are witnessing an educational division of the country after age 11, with secondary schools performing well overall in the south but struggling to improve in the north and Midlands.

“The facts are stark. Compared to secondary school children in the south, those in the north and Midlands on average make less progress in English and maths, perform worse at GCSE and attain fewer top grades at A-level.

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“If left unaddressed the consequences will be profound. Our society, our future prosperity and development rely on the better education of our children. As things stand, too many secondary schools in the north and Midlands are failing to equip young people with the skills and knowledge they and the country need.



“I fear that unless we resolve these divisions our country’s educational progress will be seriously impeded and we will not be able to compete as well with our international competitors.”



Wilshaw said the education sector needed to move on from the “sterile debate” about academies and school structures. “The government has made it clear it wants all schools to become academies. If this is the political direction of travel we should not waste time in tendentious arguments about the relative merits of academies, but rather on how we can make them work.”

He went on: “Our national system is still some way from being considered world class … Indeed there should be some anxiety that when next year’s Pisa tables [which rank educational attainment in different countries] are published, our rankings won’t show much improvement.

“When all is said and done, we have a far better education system now than was the case 20 years ago. The problem is that, as we have improved, so have other countries. Despite our achievements, serious weaknesses remain.”

The report said early years education had never been stronger, but warned that government-funded places for two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds were being disproportionately taken by children from wealthier families.

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More than 113,000 children who would benefit most from early years education were failing to take up their places, meaning many were not ready to start formal schooling when the time came.

The report said 85% of primary schools were now good or outstanding, and the number of local authorities where fewer than 75% of pupils are in schools rated less than “good” had halved. Primaries have been particularly strong at closing the gap for disadvantaged children.

Responding to Ofsted’s report, the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, said the overall proportion of schools rated good or outstanding had risen by 15 percentage points since 2010, with 81% of schools now achieving top Ofsted ratings.

“The landscape of English education has been transformed over the past five years through raising both standards and expectations,” she said. “Thanks to the hard work of teachers across the country and our ambitious programme of reforms, there are now 1.4 million more pupils being taught in good or outstanding schools compared to 2010.

“This progress should not be ignored, but we believe more needs to be done to deliver educational excellence everywhere and tackle pockets of underperformance, so that we can extend opportunity to every single child.”

Last month the government announced the launch of a National Teaching Service to get good teachers into underperforming schools in struggling areas, starting with a pilot in the north-west, with a view to placing 1,500 outstanding teachers in schools across the country by 2020.

Sir Peter Lampl, chair of the Sutton Trust education charity, said Wilshaw was right to highlight England’s north-south divide. “Today’s report confirms our own research which has consistently shown that your chances of getting good GCSEs, attending a good university and accessing a professional job aren’t just a matter of ability, but are linked to where you live.”

He said the findings showed an urgent national drive was needed to reduce educational inequalities and improve social mobility. “All young people, regardless of where they live or their family background, should have access to great teaching as well as the chance to go to the best schools.”

Sir Kevan Collins, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, said the EEF had launched a £15m drive in Yorkshire and the north-east aimed at improving attainment for disadvantaged pupils over the next five years.



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“As today’s report shows, inconsistency between similar schools in different parts of the country is one of the biggest challenges we face in our drive to improve standards. Not only are educational outcomes linked to family income, but they’re also linked to where you live.

“If young people are all to have the same chance of doing well regardless of where they live, schools need to make better use of what we know about what works and view evidence as a crucial tool to help them decide on the ‘best bets’ for spending limited resources.

“We need to see greater collaboration between schools too and a concerted effort to reach those in the ‘cold spots’ that today’s report identifies.”

James Westhead, executive director of Teach First, a charity that works to get talented teachers into challenging schools, said: “More and more we are seeing that schools facing the biggest challenges are now in coastal and market towns, rather than large cities.

“As the success of our city schools has proved, great teaching and leadership are among the most powerful forces to change this. We need to work together to attract and support more talented teachers and leaders to these areas of greatest need.”

In September the charity placed 200 teachers in coastal towns including Blackpool, Redcar and Grimsby.

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John Howson, a former chief adviser to the government and an expert on teacher retention and recruitment, said Wilshaw was right to highlight the crisis.

“The failure of the coalition government to act quickly on warning signs has created a crisis where schools cannot find enough qualified teachers. This wastes resources on unnecessary profit for the private sector but more importantly affects the life chances of our children.

“The National Teaching Service will not solve this problem and must not be used as a distraction with the public. As an urgent first step, the government should once again abate the fees for all graduates training to be teachers as was the case up to 2010.”

Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the recruitment of subject specialists was crucial.

“It is increasingly difficult to recruit teachers in core subjects like maths and science, and this is often even more so in schools in challenging circumstances …It is of the utmost importance that teaching in general, and particularly in these areas is better incentivised, celebrated and supported by all of us.”

Lightman said the London Challenge initiative – which was launched in 2003 with major investment by the Labour government to improve the performance of the capital’s secondary schools – showed how focused support and investment could help improve results.

“There is no doubt that areas of disadvantage in the Midlands and north would also benefit from similar approaches.”

Stephen Gorard, professor of education at Durham University, was more sceptical about attempts to replicate the London Challenge in areas of the north and Midlands.

“The London Challenge was set up in an era of relative economic prosperity and was reasonably well-funded. In addition to any activities or changes, schools got extra money. It is not reasonable to expect other and poorer parts of England, such as the north-east, to achieve the same without the same funding.”