28th February 2017
As school or department managers, we face a constant staffing challenge which arises every year – which teachers will be leaving, how can we ensure that new replacements fit well into our institution, and how can we keep good teachers on board to continue doing the good work that gets results? There is no simple answer to these questions; teacher retention is not as simple as just paying people to do the job and expecting them to stay year after year. Job satisfaction for a teacher is related to the work-life balance that teachers experience, how they feel valued in different areas of their work and life, and what they perceive their development prospects to be in their position.
With a forward-thinking and holistic approach to teacher management, many of these challenges can be addressed continuously throughout the working year, so here are some ways that we can reduce the end-of-year stress levels and ensure that we have a handle on where our teachers are heading before staffing turns into crisis management. Indeed, hanging on to teachers is not a problem unique to Hong Kong - many developing countries are experiencing similar issues.
1) Set realistic expectations for teachers, parents and students
Expectations are absolutely key to success in a people-oriented industry such as education. One of the most common complaints from staff, students and parents alike starts with the statement “but at the beginning of the year, I was told that…”. Nine times out of ten, even if they are effectively managed at the time, unexpected changes to working conditions cause issues that can come back and bite you in the long term. For this reason, honesty is the best policy when talking about what should be expected from the year / contract ahead. This is true when thinking about the wording of contracts for school staff, and information given to students and their parents. Another common reason for staff dissatisfaction is that schools provide incorrect or misleading marketing information to clients, and the teachers get the blame because they are in the front line and deliver the content face to face.
Talk to your teachers, and find out why they teach in the way that they do. This will throw up some educational benefits that can be used as plus points for your school, and shows teachers that you are interested in what goes on in the classroom – the hub of any educational organisation. In addition, being informed of how things run daily can give you more accurate information to pass on to clients, and expectations are more likely to be met.
2) Offer Performance Related benefits (not just based on academic performance of students – measure progress, not results)
Perhaps the most important goal of any educator is to provide tangible, quantifiable results at the end of the term, showing that the students are developing in their fields of study. However, it is important to ask ourselves how we measure these results. Students may enter classes at different points in their development, so is it fair to assess everyone using the same measurements at the end of the year? Teachers, especially language teachers, are trained to praise progress and development rather than the end result alone. Quantifying the progress made by a specific group of students relies on an understanding of that group’s starting point, so entry tests at the beginning of a period of study are a really important step in judging the effectiveness of what is being done in the classroom. Looking at the differences between entry test and progress / final test marks can give a good idea of how much progress has been made by the class, and therefore how effective the teaching has been.
For example, imagine two classes of students where 70% of students receive A grades in an end-of-term exam. The quality of teaching cannot be judged by these results alone, though it does provide an overall picture of the students’ proficiency at that moment in time. Now consider that at the beginning of the term, 50% of the students in one class scored As on a similar test in one class, but only 10% of students in the second class were at this level. By considering only the final grades of these students, it would be difficult to draw a distinction between the quality of work that went on in each of the classes throughout the term. However, valuing progress over product reveals that one teacher would be much more worthy of reward than the other. Look for progress and development as markers of good teaching, rather than taking a snapshot of the end result.
3) Take an interest in teachers’ lives outside of work
For a teacher, feeling valued in the workplace goes beyond simple monetary benefits for work done in school hours. A good manager, who is liked and respected by their staff, will also take wider considerations into account. Details which affect life around work also count towards teacher satisfaction, and therefore retention. Think about issues such as:
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How far does the teacher live from school? How long does it take him or her to get there?
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How much work does the teacher take home with them?
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What kind of family life does the teacher have? Does this affect their work-life balance?
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Does the teacher do extra-curricular or after-hours work with the students which are not part of their contract?
A good teacher may not make noises about these kinds of issues until it is too late, if they feel that they are not being recognised. After all, the job still needs to be done despite all of the above. Small everyday rewards for continuing to do a good job in the face of other out-of-work issues go a long way to building more positive relationships with staff and can aid retention when teachers compare their situation to previous jobs that they have done, or jobs that their friends have.
4) Offer CPD / assign a CPD officer
Another thing that effective teachers look for in longer-term positions relates to their own development. Continuous Professional Development organised by the school or through an outside provider adds value to the human resource in your school, and shows the school’s commitment to raising the teaching quality that is delivered there. Creating certificates or giving small financial incentives can encourage teachers to attend, and assigning stronger teachers to deliver development sessions to others can both build a stronger team and show that you can give trust through responsibility to those who are performing well.
Find out what areas your teachers would like to develop, perhaps through discussion or by teachers thinking of questions they have asked themselves, and find out the areas of strength or expertise that different teachers have. CPD is an integral part of any thriving school, but often falls by the wayside in practice. However, the benefits of passing control over to the teachers to help each other shows trust and engagement with what they are doing in the classroom.
5) Encourage diversity
In many cultures, there is still the perception that English language teachers have to be white-skinned native speakers with standard British or American accents in order for students to make the best progress. However, this outdated remnant of the colonial mindset is absolutely not true. I have rarely met any teacher working effectively in language education who has willingly wanted to work for an employer who holds assumptions about teaching and learning based on accent or skin colour. Cast-off remarks about race or gender are detrimental to a school’s reputation among teachers, despite what parents and school heads may believe.
Diversity of gender, accent and culture in a teaching staff is in fact a very effective way to prepare students for their futures as English language users, at school, university and beyond. English language speakers who have neutral, standard accents are in the tiny minority of native speakers in the world, and within this group, those who happen to have white skin are simply not representative of the voices who will be met by language learners worldwide. I have worked at university language centres where Chinese engineering or sciences students have been left behind and failed due to the fact that they did not understand their Indian, Middle-Eastern or Eastern European lecturers. Is it that high-ranking English-language universities should employ only the minority stereotypes valued by parents, or is it the schools and parents who need to change their prejudices in order to accept the way that the world has changed over the last hundred years?
This is a progressive view of the benefits of employing a diverse range of teachers based on their skills in the classroom rather than their outward experience, and this view is shared by the majority of teachers and language education experts worldwide. It follows that a school who upholds this progressive view will have a greater pool of good teachers to draw on, a trend which will have great effects on retention and educational quality in the future.
In all, teacher satisfaction and staff retention doesn’t have to be a yearly end-of-term headache; take a continuous approach to finding out what makes your teachers tick, and how they do things in the classroom. This will give you criteria by which to prioritise the teachers you want to keep and those you could happily find replacements for. Encourage progression, reward progress and promote diversity, and your centre will become a happier place that teachers can take responsibility for, and somewhere where better teachers will want to work by reputation. School development is bigger than test results, and it’s often not something you can feel until it’s too late, so take positive steps to prevent retention problems rather than waiting until the end of term to fight for new teachers.