Number of new teachers recruited in Peterborough on the rise

Jonathan Lewis, Peterborough City Council service director for education, told members of the council’s Children and Education Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on Monday: “We’ve seen some really positive changes in terms of our teacher recruitment figures over the past few months.

“Our class sizes are getting smaller because we are able to recruit more teachers, and those that we have brought in are local and they’re putting capacity back into our community. What we need now is for the parents and everybody who works in the wider education program to pay a huge respect to them for the achievements that they’ve made.

“Social mobility is driven by education – we have an entitlement to our children and the more that we can do to for our teachers, offering them the very best training – and we’re certainly doing that now – looking at other opportunities to develop them, and for them to become the future headteachers in the city, is absolutely key.

“That’s why we’ve invested significant levels of resources over the past few years to make sure that Peterborough people who become teachers also become the role-models for the future.”

Cllr Graham Casey (Conservative, Orton Longueville) wanted to know about the recruitment process, and said: “What is it that has changed in terms of recruitment driving these figures up, and what specific elements are you looking to get from the people who want to teach in our schools?”

Mr Lewis replied: “We aspire to attract great, even amazing, teachers to Peterborough, and this report shows that we are achieving just that. What we need is a ready supply; we need localism in terms of our teachers, we need a dynamic, cross-range of society to come forward and become teachers, and I could probably elaborate into a number of other accolades to describe them.

“But what we need first and foremost are people who will look to achieve ‘quality first in teaching’, people who want to make that difference in the classrooms, people who can inspire our children and young people.

“The teacher training program that we now have has enabled us for the first time to report that pupil-teacher ratios have fallen, which shows our supply of teachers is coming upwards, and I think the quality of our teaching is improving.

“Ofsted have recognised this, and so yes, we are getting great teachers coming through – good, great, fantastic and amazing, let’s settle for amazing teachers, it describes them all.”

A delighted committee chair, Cllr Janet Goodwin (Conservative, Hargate & Hempsted), said: “I feel that teachers have such a big commitment to the children in this city, and often have a very challenging role to perform. So, it’s only right that we offer them all the possible benefits available to us to ensure that they’re happy to remain within this community.

“I think that if there is media reporting that is negative about our teachers and the outcomes of our education program, then this must be very disappointing for them as they do already work so hard.

“As a partnership between the council, the academies, the maintained schools, the trusts and the boards of governors we have an opportunity to work together as a team to firstly encourage people to come to Peterborough and take up the teacher training programmes that we already have, but, much more than that, remain within our city, remain within our communities so that these people, these teachers, can genuinely play a part in those communities as role-models.

“I think the initiative that I’ve heard from tonight’s meeting around bringing teachers forward from the city as well as the surrounding rural areas is a great scheme. It shows that we are on the right track, that this enterprise can work if it is supported by all the education parties involved, working as a team.

“I was so pleased that so many people from education were here tonight, including representatives of the trusts, the boards of governors, the training program and the input from the members whose job it is to scrutinise all of this to ensure that it works to the long-term benefit of our children.”

Mr Lewis added: “I think this report has demonstrated that the actions we’ve been taking over the past two to three years – as a collective, with the schools, academy trusts and the local authority – has started to have an impact.

“Let’s not get carried away, however. It’s early days – there’s lots more work to be done, and I’m very confident that there is an extra set of actions, responsibilities and responses that have to come from the report.

“But we have to aim high – if we don’t have high aspirations ourselves then how will our children develop high aspirations? We’re all focussed on what we need to do – it was a combined effort tonight from the education leaders in the city, and I’m very positive that we’re moving forward in the right direction.”

Robert Alexander, Local Democracy Reporting Service