Teachers (Redundancies) (Hansard, 19 January 1982)

§ Sir Keith Joseph

My speech of 6 January to the North of England conference included the following passageGood, effective teachers, with the right mix of qualifications and experience, are the first essential for a good school system. Because of falling school rolls, and the need to constrain expenditure, we must have fewer teachers in total. At the same time we must face the facts that despite the high quality of many of our teachers some lack the ability to inspire a good response from their pupils, and that within the schools the match between curriculum and teachers' qualifications is not always as close as it should be. Supply, on the other hand, is good. There are excellent young teachers emerging from the initial training system, and even in the long-standing shortage subjects of mathematics and science, there has been a welcome improvement in the numbers coming forward to train as teachers. I have no doubt that you are all well aware of these facts. I have discussed them and their implications with the local authority associations. It is the implications which are so difficult but which must be faced if we are to give the children in our schools what they deserve and have a right to expect—the best curriculum we can devise taught by the most effective and best qualified teachers available. Over the next few years many teachers will retire, and some of them need not be replaced. Others, near retirement age, whose skills are no longer needed in the schools, can be enabled to retire voluntarily on early retirement terms. Others still can be enabled to improve or broaden their skills through in-service training. But these measures will not be enough by themselves, and there will have to be in addition some compulsory redundancies among teachers too young for early retirement terms, if the curriculum is to be protected and taught by suitably skilled and effective teachers. Nothing less than this is good enough for our children. It is with regret that I come to this conclusion and I know that the local education authorities, who are responsible for the individual schools and individual teachers, share my concern. The plain fact is however that there are some teaching posts and some teachers that cannot be retained. Whatever the difficulties, and I know that they are great, we shall be failing in our duty to the children and their parents on the one hand, and to the taxpayers and ratepayers and all who work or seek work in the trading base on the other, if we keep ineffective teachers in the schools or employ more teachers than we can afford. I have asked the local authority associations to consider these difficult issues further, and whether there are steps which I or the Department could take which would be helpful, and to discuss the subject again with me during the early months of this year.

Some reports have suggested that I was arguing for compulsory redundancies as a means of getting rid of incompetent teachers. This is not the case. Incompetence and redundancy are quite separate issues. If a teacher is found to be incompetent, and is not able to improve his performance satisfactorily with appropriate support from his employer and perhaps additional training, then the employer should consider dismissing him in the interest of the children in the schools. Such cases are not properly described as redundancies.

It is where a local authority or a school as an employer has more teachers with particular qualifications and skills than are needed, either because of a decline in school rolls or changes in the curriculum, that redundancies may occur, without any reflection on the competence of the teachers concerned.

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The planned expenditure in 1982–83 which I announced on 21 December includes provision for redundancy payments in these circumstances.