Over half of school staff use own money on supplies

A new survey exploring the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on education staff has revealed over 50 per cent of workers have spent their own money on supplies for the classroom. Of those respondents buying materials, almost 24 per cent find themselves regularly purchasing materials, with 28 per cent doing so occasionally.

The survey, by membership service Discounts for Teachers, polled over 1,000 workers from across the education sector, to highlight the financial struggles affecting educators’ dayto-day lives. Discounts for Teachers is calling for greater support to help incentivise the sector and keep quality teachers in schools.

With respondents spanning schoolteachers to catering staff, and university lecturers to nursery workers, a further one in five have taken an additional jobs as prices continue to

Recruitment

rise. Amongst these additional jobs, education staff cited tutoring at weekends, working in supermarkets, babysitting and administration work, on top of their overstretched workloads. Over 75 per cent of respondents also said the current economic climate is having a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing. For a sector facing wellbeing and recruitment challenges, these findings underline the risk that today’s financial pressures pose to retaining good quality education staff. Beyond impacting their work in the classroom and ability to support students, the research further highlights where staff have made cutbacks at home. A significant 78 per cent of respondents have restricted turning the heating whilst 64 per cent are foregoing putting money into savings accounts because of skyrocketing energy bills, and 16 per cent said they have made the biggest cutbacks in groceries and food. Strikingly, many respondents said the current cost-of-living crisis has impacted their ability to take industrial action, with a quarter saying it had completely affected their ability to strike.

Bursary to boost Welsh language teacher recruitment

The Welsh Government has announced a new bursary and grant to increase the number of teachers who can speak Welsh. A new £5,000 bursary will be available to teachers who gained Qualified Teacher Status from August 2020 onwards, and who have completed three years of teaching Welsh or through the medium of Welsh. The bursary will initially be available until Autumn 2028 to assess its success in encouraging teachers to enter and remain in the profession. Alongside this, a second round of the Welsh-medium workforce capacity building grant has opened, with a total pot of £800,000. This scheme provides small grants to schools so they can develop innovative ways of resolving the recruitment challenges they face. This grant gives schools the freedom to tailor plans to the needs of their own locality, workforce and demographics. During the first year of the grant successful projects included apprentices appointed to train towards becoming teaching assistants and secondary schools working together to deliver joint-provision for year 10 and 11 learners who were resitting GCSE exams.

Increasing the number of teachers who can teach Welsh and through the medium of Welsh is said to be vital to realising the Welsh Government’s vision for a million Welsh speakers by 2050 and to achieve the ambitions of the White Paper for the Welsh Language Education Bill. Jeremy Miles, The Minister for Education and Welsh Language, said: “One of our biggest priorities for achieving a million Welsh speakers is making sure we have enough teachers to meet the demand for learning in Welsh. This package of support will strengthen our Welshspeaking education workforce and ensure more people can take advantage of the exciting career opportunities on offer.”