Almost four out of 10 teachers quit within a year of qualifying, with 11,000 leaving the profession before they have really begun their career and record numbers of those who remain giving up mid-career, according to analysis of government figures.



The exodus of new recruits has almost tripled in six years, resulting in a crisis in teacher supply in a profession that has become “incompatible with normal life”, according to Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.



Denouncing the government’s record on schools, she said the education system was “being run on a wing and a prayer”, with teachers exhausted, stressed and burnt out in a profession that was being “monitored to within an inch of its life”.



Addressing ATL’s annual conference in Liverpool, Bousted told delegates that before he entered office, former education secretary Michael Gove had told ATL’s 2010 conference that teachers should be highly valued and that he wanted to give the profession more freedom over how to teach.



She said: “If that was Michael Gove’s intention, and I am sure that was his honest intention, how is it at the end of the coalition’s term in office that not only are record numbers of teachers leaving the profession mid-career, but there is also a crisis of teacher supply?

“This crisis is happening right at the very start of teachers’ careers. Teachers are leaving in their first year, or not starting teaching when they have completed their training.”



According to ATL’s analysis of the latest government figures, in 2011 just 62% of teachers who gained qualified teaching status that year were still teaching a year later.



Bousted said it was “a dismal retention rate” compared with 2005 when 80% remained in teaching and just 3,600 deciding not to pursue their chosen career.



“Why are we losing the next generation of teachers – that new blood for the profession which should be bright-eyed and bushy tailed, full of promise and ambition?



“Is it, I wonder, because trainee and newly qualified teachers see very early on just what teaching has become and decide that they do not want to be a part of it? Is it that they learn as they work with exhausted and stressed colleagues that teaching has become a profession which is incompatible with a normal life?”



A recent ATL survey found that almost three-quarters (73%) of trainee and newly qualified teachers have considered leaving the profession, with 76% blaming heavy workloads.

Bousted said Gove’s great experiment, to set schools free through academisation, had left too many schools unsupported and in freefall. “In essence, our education system is being run on a wing and a prayer – and if something goes badly wrong, the government relies upon someone being brave enough to speak out. Who knows what else is going on under the radar?”



In a furious speech that delighted delegates, Bousted said the schools watchdog, Ofsted, was “a weapon of fear and terror”, an organisation plagued with quality control problems and a “credibility chasm” with the teaching profession. Its judgments were “a nonsense”, she said.



“Trainee and newly qualified teachers cannot fail to understand that, despite Michael Gove’s intentions, teaching has become a profession monitored to within an inch of its life.”



Bousted then set her sights on the exams watchdog, Ofqual, which has been overseeing sweeping changes to GCSEs and A-levels, leaving “dismay and devastation” in its wake. It was, she said, staffed by “fundamentalists” who worshipped exams.



Widespread concerns have been raised by many, including the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, about Ofqual’s decision to assess practical science experiments through written exams.

Bousted said: “Like all fundamentalists, Ofqual is not prepared to engage with debate and uncertainty. It is not, indeed, prepared to engage in debate at any price. It ignores the concerns of subject experts, subject associations, teachers, employers – who argue that the qualification reform is travelling smartly in the wrong direction.”



And on Morgan’s invitation to teachers to talk directly to those in power about the pressures and demands on the profession, Bousted was disparaging. More than 44,000 teachers contacted the Department for Education, she said, but it had proved to be “a lost opportunity”, with respondents parked on a DfE database.

Bousted concluded with a stark warning to politicians: “We have had enough of politicians waging war on teachers, battling against mediocrity, fighting for higher standards. Let me remind politicians that they do not raise standards.

“It is us, here in this hall today, education professionals, support staff, teachers, lecturers and school leaders who raise standards of education for all. And if you do not take better care of us, you will reap the bitter reward of parental fury when there is no teacher for their child.



“This is no threat – this is a crisis of your own making. That time is coming. You have been warned. Will you listen? And will you act?”

