What helps to attract minority ethnic teachers in England?: Results from a national survey

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the experiences and retention of minority ethnic teachers in England. There are proportionately many fewer minority ethnic teachers than there are pupils, and it is important to understand why and what can be done about it. Our national survey of 3,646 serving teachers can help address part of this. We report descriptive and comparative results for all ethnic groups, looking at factors attracting teachers to a school, or encouraging them to leave. We developed regression models explaining which teachers report intending to leave the profession, based on their background and teaching experiences. There are some small variations, mostly due to small numbers of cases in some ethnic groups such as Travellers, but many of the experiences and factors involved in moving schools and planning to leave teaching are common across all ethnic groups including White British. However, minority ethnic teachers report being more concerned about pay, and more interested in the ethnic mix of the leadership, staff and students in the schools they work in. Overall though, pay, along with promotion and the resources of schools, play little role in encouraging teachers to leave. Workload stress is the biggest and most constant factor in identifying teachers wanting to leave. For minority ethnic teachers, the ethnic mix of leaders, staff and students is a factor in planning to leave teaching. One implication for teacher retention would be that policy attempts should be made to improve the ethnic mix of schools across all regions of England. This may also help with the few reports of racism in this paper. Our next paper will look at how this might be achieved.