by Our News Desk

MORE than half of teachers are considering leaving the profession in the next two years, a shocking poll revealed yesterday.

The damning data from a joint NUT and YouGov survey found 53 per cent of teachers are looking to quit, mainly due to low morale and high workloads made worse by cuts in pay and the number of teachers and support staff.

Teachers are working up to 60 hours a week, the teaching union found. It is calling on the government to take action to address the issues of workload, pay and low morale.

Meanwhile, NUT general secretary Christine Blower said that teachers felt the Department for Education’s efforts to tackle workload have been “totally inadequate.” 

Former education secretary Michael Gove’s introduction of performance-related pay has not gone down well, with two-thirds of teachers opposed to it.

The vast majority, 76 per cent of the 1,000 teachers surveyed, also believed that forcing schools judged by Ofsted to “require improvement” to become academies would damage education.

And 62 per cent thought plans for 500 new free schools would make matters worse.

Ms Blower said: “The government’s current priorities are both wrong and profoundly out of step with the views of teachers.

“They are the essential cause of the growing problems with teacher supply.”

She warned that the emergence of the problems coincided with ballooning class sizes, with nearly one million more children starting school over the next decade.

“The government’s solution so far has been to build free schools, often where there are surplus places, and to allow class sizes to grow,” said Ms Blower.

“Add to this a situation where teachers are leaving in droves and teacher recruitment remains low.

“We now have a perfect storm of crisis upon crisis in the schools system.

“The long-term erosion of teacher pay is further contributing to low teacher morale,” the NUT leader argued.

She added that the Department for Education “remains wilfully and recklessly unable to see that they are the cause of teacher misery across England.”

Schools Minister Nick Gibb claimed that teaching “remains a hugely popular profession,” with the highest numbers of people joining since 2008.