Factors Affecting Secondary Teacher Wellbeing in England: Self-perceptions, Policy and Politics
Creators: name: McQuade, Laura
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: X330 - Academic studies in secondary education

description: The ONS (2016) reports that secondary school teachers in England have above average wellbeing, but Foster (2019) states that recruitment to teaching has been below target year on year since 2011 and 32.3% of teachers leave the profession before completing five years in the job. After the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, the NEU (2021) report that one in three teachers plan to leave the profession in the next five years. Therefore, there is a disparity between reported wellbeing and the way teachers are reacting to their working conditions. The language which has been used to examine teachers attitudes has focused on workload, with extensive surveys and guidance reports being published by the DfE (2016, 2016a, 2016b and 2016c) but this has not affected the wastage rate of the profession. This suggests that there is something deeper at work,so this study aims to understand how the interplay of the neoliberalisation of the global education industry, English education policy and the leadership styles that facilitate this, affect the wellbeing of teachers in secondary education. The literature demonstrates how supra-scale theories are passed down through macro and meso processes to impact individuals and affect their wellbeing. Therefore, a hierarchy of levels of control that impact on education and individuals is proposed. The Literature Review tracks the influence of governmentality (Foucault, 1982) through neoliberalism and continues by exploring national education policy and how this is adapted through policy borrowing from other countries, such as Chile. The influence of this on leadership styles in schools is discussed in relation to the characteristics of transactional and transformational leadership. Finally, the impact of these factors on individual teachers is analysed in relation to their varying professionalisms. A critical theory, mixed method approach is used to gain a breadth and depth of understanding of the attitudes of 55 respondents to a survey and 17 participants in semi?structured interviews. All data collection was carried out in secondary schools in Lincolnshire, where teacher pay is good in comparison to the county average of workforce pay as a whole. The purpose of these methods is to test the assumption thatconcerns about workload and pay are causing teachers’ discontent. The findings reveal that teacher attitudes towards their working lives are complex due to individuals trying to internalise the values of both traditional and new professionalisms. Due to this, teachers can appear contradictory in their demands and toleration of demands of the profession and themselves. The characteristics of neoliberal management including transactional leadership, competition and ambivalence to processes in favour of outcomes, do not match traditional professionalvalues of dedication, expertise and working for the greater good. The research concludes that this reflects the premise of Mills (1959), who suggests that when there is a misalliance between societal expectation and the expectations of the individual, a feeling of ill-ease results.