Transcript: ECF Staffroom S04E05

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You're listening to an IOE podcast. Powered by UCL Minds.

Elaine Long 
Welcome to the ECF Staffroom. I'm Elaine Long.

Mark Quinn
And I am Mark Quinn.

Elaine Long 
We are programme leaders for the UCL Early Career Teacher Development Programme. Why are we in the staffroom? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems can be aired bluntly and where solutions can be explored.

Mark Quinn
Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come in the ECF Staffroom. We will hear from early career teachers themselves and from the mentors and induction tutors who support them. We will talk about all things ECF, the challenges and the joys. So, why don't you enjoy a coffee with us, perhaps even grab a biscuit and sit down to half an hour of ECF Staffroom chat.

Welcome to the ECF Staffroom, Emily McLeod. Emily, we're really delighted to have you sit in our staffroom. Emily, just so that people know is a recent winner of the British Educational Research Association doctoral thesis award. And I'm so tired having said that, you must be very tired having achieved it, Emily. So, we give you a seat, we offer you a drink, we offer you a biscuit.

You just need to tell me, I go and get the drink in the biscuit. So, you just need to tell me what you'd like.

Emily McLeod 
Thank you. It's great to be here. I think we're speaking on a Friday afternoon, like fairly relaxed. I'm going to go non caffeinated and can I have a peppermint tea please? I also heard there was a biscuit on offer.

Mark Quinn
Yes. There's a biscuit.

Emily McLeod 
I think you can't beat a digestive system.

Mark Quinn
Well, I've got loads of digestives. I don't know why people don't eat my digestives, but I can certainly give you a digestive. I'm quite fond of peppermint tea myself, so I'll spare you a bag.

Emily McLeod 
Thank you very much.

Elaine Long
Emily, we know that not only have you been able to win this award, but we also know that you have many, strings. in terms of your career, so would you mind introducing yourself for our listeners and telling them a bit about your journey and what your role is now?

Emily McLeod 
Of course. Thank you so much. so. Yeah, so I finished my PhD at UCL last year. and so now I'm an honorary senior research fellow at UCL, but I'm also a senior analyst at a not-for-profit research institution called Rand. But overall kind of spanning all those roles and lots of my career is being an education researcher, is how I'd phrase it.

So, I was a teacher, quite a while ago. Now I work in education research. So, that's working with schools, young people, children, teachers themselves to try and understand what's happening in education. And if we can, how can we improve it for those people within education? I think in terms of like best bits of the job or like particular highlights, I am quite a geek and I do really like the analysis and the writing, but I would say probably the first highlight and the thing I enjoy most about the job is fieldwork. As in, when you get to go to a school and you get to speak to young people or teachers because they're you really get to speak about people who hopefully enjoy what they're doing and just what it's like, their day-to-day experiences and just speaking to people about their lives. It's always really fascinating.

Though I would add a second thing that's really important to me about my work is the power to make a difference through this research, to people's lives and to education, because I know that some people think of research as research for research’s sake and it not necessarily reaching the right people. It's definitely difficult to always reach the people who you want to with the research in terms of, you know, I've got this finding, and you should hear about it, like, we can make a difference.

But, when you do find evidence that something should change and some it has the potential to improve young people's lives, then that's always really exciting.

Mark Quinn
Well, we always like having geeks in the staffroom. I think we wouldn’t have a staffroom if we didn't have geeks, isn’t that right Elaine.

Elaine Long
Speak for yourself, Mark.

Mark Quinn
I'm number one geek. If we're talking about research, that makes a difference. Actually, this is the first question I wanted to ask you because you've heavily involved with the, Aspires project, which is really a piece, a big piece of research which has resonated, has even that came across my radar. So please just tell our listeners a little bit about that project and what the overall intention of it has been.

Emily McLeod 
Yes, you're right. I think the working on the Aspires project kind of taught me that the importance of impactful research, and what research has the potential to do. Yeah. So yeah, so Aspires is large national research project at UCL and it's tracking young people's career aspirations and their experiences of education, especially in relation to science. and so, I joined the project, after I first left teaching. It was back in 2015. and the overall aim of the project is to explore whether and why young people aspire to work in science and other STEM, subjects, and typically why those aspirations have been gendered and classed, and what we can try and do to get more young people seeing themselves as, fitting within science or seeing science as for me, so yeah, it's a mixed methods project, which means that we've both used surveys. So quantitative, methods and interviews, so qualitative methods to try and track young people's aspirations. And the best bit about the aspires project is that it's longitudinal, which means that we've tracked these young people's aspirations over a long period of time.

So, we started when they were ten, at the end of primary school in England and that cohort is now 23. I joined the project when that cohort was about 15, so we've tracked them through primary school, through secondary school, through further education into higher education, if they took that route, we are now into their first careers so we can see what they wanted to be, what they're pursuing now as a first career, and yes, such a fascinating project, which I went on to kind of use some of the data for, for my PhD

Elaine Long
And you studied, as part of that, you studied a data set of over 60,000 surveys. The really interesting thing is you found that 1 in 3 young people were open to following a career in teaching. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

Emily McLeod 
Yeah. So, just to go back to a Aspires. The joys of working in any university. So, my contract was coming to an end, as sometimes happens when you work in the university and I really wanted to continue working with the team, working with that interesting data set. As a former teacher, as I'm sure listeners are aware, I was super aware that we need more teachers in the UK, England and many of the countries are facing real teacher shortages. Because I was familiar with this data set, I thought there was an opportunity to look at it through new lens and ask new questions of it. So, I used the Aspires data and collected some new data to ask who aspires to become a teacher when they're older.

And then because, we tracked them into early adulthood, did they become teachers or not?

You mentioned that we, I was able to use survey data from Aspire, and so by the time I started my PhD, we had surveyed that cohort six times at six different ages, and yet over 60,000 young people, which is a really cool, like, robust, rich, data set.

I really wanted to know who said that they wanted to teach just kind of like, to create the context of my research and understand who's saying that. So, I was able to see who said that they might want to teach at different ages. This was the first time that people have been able to look across age groups rather than at one age group by itself.

First of all, I found when I just looked at who wrote down specifically the word teacher, I found that about 5% of young people, between ages ten and 22, said that they might want to teach. I was like, oh, that that seems quite high. I don't imagine all 5% are going into teaching. So, I did a second analysis then, and I looked at who agreed with the statement that they would like to work with children and become a teacher.

Now, that's a much broader statement than people physically writing in the word teacher. If they were asked to write in what they wanted to be, and that gave me, this really interesting statistic that you mentioned, which is one third of young people at all ages. So that's from age 10 to 22, said that they would agree with the statement that they wanted to be a teacher.

I've interpreted that as I think it means that a lot of people have this openness to teach. It's not necessarily that it's their first choice that they definitely want to do it, but they're not against it. That just is so fascinating to me, given that we have such teacher shortages in the UK. I think that one of the implications to that, is that many more young people seem to be open to teaching than this reflected in the recruitment data.

And another one is that some people say to me, oh, isn't that because these people are in school? They see teachers every day, and on one hand, yes, perhaps. But I think that if that is the case, that impact is lasting. It's going into their early 20s. So, that's not something that should be dismissed, if that is an impact that young people might want to teach or have an interest in teaching because they're in schools.

But I think the bigger problem is what's happening? Why isn't that translating into young people becoming teachers? That's kind of where my qualitative analysis came in. So, that statistical analysis provided the context that who aspires to teach how many, and then I also was able to track with and building upon this Aspires data, 13 young people who said that they aspired to teach at some point in their education, again, from age ten, up until they were entering their first career.

So, this was 146 interviews spanning 11 years. I was able to see that what was happening in the qualitative data as well is that, yeah, lots of people are interested in teaching, but if they don't pursue it, it's not that they've gone off it, it's that it's a common back up career.

Elaine Long
That's very interesting. One of the things you mentioned in your research and you've touched on it there, is that the previous studies about recruitment and retention in teaching have been quantitative in their approach and have really just, focussed on the numbers. But your methodology, is a lot more sophisticated than that, I think.

So, from a researcher's point of view, I wonder if you could just say a bit about the methodology that you adopted and why you think you've got more meaningful answers to the questions?

Emily McLeod 
Well, thank you for calling it sophisticated, first off. I'm aware that I'm very lucky to be able to use the Aspires data that was already there. It's such a rich data set to build upon. So, yeah. So, we touched on this problem that we face in England and many other countries that have teacher shortages, and that means that there is a lot of research already, people trying to understand who wants to become teachers? How can we get more teachers, why do people teach?

Typically the vast majority of research in this area or, that they exist currently asks existing teachers, why did you become a teacher? When I say existing teachers, sometimes it's people already in the classroom already working. Sometimes it's pre-service teachers or teacher education students, but they typically, there's a lot of studies that give them surveys and it says rank these reasons why you became a teacher or why you pursue teaching, and that gives us some really useful findings.

So, for example, not too surprisingly, perhaps a lot of people agree that they became a teacher because they wanted to work with children or because they liked their subject area, if it's secondary, especially. But because that data is quantitative, it means that it's quite difficult to understand the reasons behind that. Like why do you want to work with children? Like do you have experiences of it already? And that's where the richness of qualitative data comes in.

So, I would also say of that research, there are a few exceptions, but typically it's what I would call one off and one sided. So, by one off I mean it's asking people at one point in time after they've made the decision, why did you decide to teach? And it's one sided because it's only asking the people who decided like positively that they will become teachers.

Because I was able to use data that tracked people throughout their childhood at different stages of this decision making process, I found that it was such a, it wasn't a linear process. It went up and down, sometimes they wanted to teach, sometimes they didn't. I was able to really follow their, what I would call trajectories towards and away from teaching and really understand some of the reasons behind that, though, of course, the answer is it's a bit messy in reality.

Elaine Long
The interesting thing is for me, I think in the question that I suppose I hadn't really considered till I engaged with your research, who are the could have beens? How could we maybe pull in the could have beens. You know, might have considered a career in teaching at one point, but what turned them off and on? I think that’s a really interesting question.

Emily McLeod 
Absolutely, I think that's not considered enough. We sometimes talk about the potential for young people to become teachers and some people talk about the potential for career changes to become teachers. My research evidence is that there are a lot of people who are potentially ready to become teachers, if the current job that they're in doesn't work out, they don't like it, whatever. There's a lot of could have beens absolutely.

Mark Quinn
Do we know what the could have beens, did a been? Do we know what some of those people who could have been teachers decided to do? And what I'm interested in is, did they do things, did they move into jobs which are somehow adjacent to teaching or very different from?

Emily McLeod 
Overall, I would say very different. I think if this cohort had been a bit older, perhaps there'd be more of a pattern to it. But these young people, like all of them, had just graduated to university. And also, I want to acknowledge that it was the pandemic, which, like, could have made it more difficult for them to go into certain routes. It was all sorts. We had some people pursuing postgraduate education, some people becoming lawyers, some people working in science, some people working in the NHS. Yeah, really, really all sorts, but I think that is a reflection on, first of all, the data, because this data set started when these young people were ten, there was no way of knowing what they were doing or what their passions were, what their interests were.

So that it's quite a mixed group of people, which makes it interesting. But also teaching has quite a broad kind of, you don't need to have a certain subject, right?  Or you do need to have a certain qualification, but in England at least you can choose that quite late, like after you've done your undergraduate right.

Mark Quinn
Right. Your choices narrows down that early.

Emily McLeod 
Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Mark Quinn
You take out two particular influencers, factors that often lead people to become teachers. You talk about security and status. Can you just offer us your definitions of those two phrases for us?

Emily McLeod 
Yeah. So, this came out of me trying to make sense of this as I said, messy, complex qualitative data. I had 13 young people over 11 years, all going in different directions, sometimes going towards teaching, sometimes going against it, and sometimes back again. What I found was these two themes really helped me to make sense of, first of all, why they were all interested in teaching at some point, and then also why they either went into teaching or why they left it?

So, for all of them at the start, teaching was what I've called high in status and high in safety. High in status means for them, it was, they thought of it as a respected profession where they could help and benefit others. Right? Not too groundbreaking there, though I'm aware and I should acknowledge that the word status has been used lots in relation to the teaching profession and I kind of add a new definition to it, but maybe I'll mention that in a moment.

Safety mentioned less in relation to teaching, but that was also very important. Young people all said or kind of acknowledged that for teaching, they thought it was something that was accessible to them. It was something that they could and perhaps would access with the route of education that they were going to.

What I found when I looked at these young people like later on as they were making these decisions, you know, around university for those people who became teachers, teaching was maintained status as high in status high in safety for them, whereas the people who decided not to teach as a first career, it had either lost its safety or lost its status.

So, by lost its safety, there were a few examples, but one for example, one young person realised that he would have to go to university but to become a teacher, and no one in his family had been to university before, and he'd realise how expensive it is to go to university. And because his family hadn't been to university, he didn't appreciate perhaps all of the like, loan offers and things.

It just it was a lot of money and he thought, why would I do that? And that, I've interpreted it, it wasn't as safe for him anymore. Whereas the status thing does link a little bit to this known definition we have of teaching and teacher status. It was that for some young people, they were aware that they had other options that often their parents’ thought were more important, would do like more good for society.

I think that's kind of the crux of these themes. We often, I've heard teaching be referred to as low in status, sometimes of high in status, but I would say these things are so changeable and so specific. They depended upon the age of the young person, the class, the gender, ethnicity, all of these things influenced how young people figured teaching.

Mark Quinn
Right. So, status is sometimes thought of as a thing you could put a kind of monetary value on its, if we pay them a lot of money or and I think this is what you go for as your definition. It's about the benefit to society that it is perceived to offer.

What I was getting at asking you, the question earlier about what were the alternative jobs that these people would move into because were they looking for other jobs which offered something which they would define as either secure or stated as the high status?

Emily McLeod 
Absolutely. Yeah. It was when one of those things were lost that they looked for more than somewhere else. Yeah. You mentioned money, which is a really important point. People often ask me about with this research, but because these young people were exactly that, they were young people, this was their first career. Some of them had heard that teaching didn't pay as well as some other jobs, but for some of them, teaching paid way better than anyone in their family ever had.

So, it wasn't the make or break I found, in a way that I've seen reflected, like some people assume that if we increased teacher salaries, more young people will go into teaching. I don't think that that's a bad idea. I think that that could impact the status of teaching for some people, but it wasn't salary as the make or break for young people.

Mark Quinn
Right. So, I want to draw you further into that, actually. I think the way into it is this idea of safety and it is to do with status, and it is to do with salary, but it's also to do with the identities that these young people have in the first place. Right? We know that, well, for one thing, we know that our profession is largely populated by women. So, there's a gendered aspect to this, you mentioned also earlier, there's a class aspect to this, which may connect to people's ideas of how much money teachers do or don't get, and I think you also talk about a racial aspect to this.

We know that our profession in this country is largely white, for example, like white and British. So, please to delve into that for us, please because I think this is really interesting. Our profession is, you know, largely female and largely white and British and we don't have enough of them. Right? We don't have a teacher.

So, is there something we can discuss here?

Emily McLeod 
So like, yeah, I think this is so important. I know that so many people talk about teacher shortages and we desperately need more teachers, and that is so true. But what I found that I don't think enough people are talking about or aware of, it's that these teacher shortages are patterned. They are patterned by, as you say, gender and ethnicity, at the time when I was writing last year, so I don't imagine it's takes too much. 75% of England's teaching workforce were women and 85% identified as white British. And I think that we need to look at that when we look at teacher shortages and think, hang on, if we don't see it as just like teacher shortages, but understand that it's patterned, can we perhaps approach this issue in new ways?

So, in fact, one of the more interesting things I noticed, from the young people who became teachers out of this sample of 13 who I looked at in depth, three of them became teachers. and they were all, unsurprisingly, perhaps white women. That was one thing they had in common and in many other ways, they were completely different. They had lots of different intersectionality, intersectional identities, where they lived in the country, like their backgrounds, loads of things were different, but they didn't have that all in common. That kind of, that was always in the back of my mind when I was, like looking at this data and speaking to these women. One of the things that they had in common was actually they all worked really hard to become a teacher.

I mentioned earlier that these trajectories into teaching, they're not linear, right? They go, they're multi-directional, they're complex, and we like, I imagine like everyone can empathise with that. No one's trajectory into anything is going to be straightforward. But they had things to deal with, like funding, the Covid pandemic influencing what routes into teaching they were planning or what money or salaries they would receive as a result of that.

Some of them had difficulties with school and university, and they all make compromises in their journey in decision making towards becoming a teacher, which meant that it wasn't, it didn't look like something that was guaranteed, but they thought, oh, hang on, it's not working that way. Maybe I'm going to look at another route into teaching or that's okay, I won't accept that salary, but I'm going to see if the school down the road as well, that's okay, I was planning to live independently, but I'm going to move back in with my parents.

So, they all made these quite significant compromises in their decision to become a teacher, the most fascinating for me was that once they were all in teacher education, they kind of implied that teaching was something that was a constant in their life and that it was always going to happen, they were always going to become a teacher.

Mark Quinn
And you knew differently because you looked at them when they were ten years old. Right?

Emily McLeod 
Exactly, exactly and like, of course, it's not I think it's something that we all do. Right? We narrate our decisions retrospectively; we make sense of this complex journeys that we're on. So, on one hand, they were simply doing that, but knowing that they were all white women and why do societal discourse we have that teaching as a vocation, I found this quite telling and quite interesting.

They all spoke of something of teaching as something that they were almost meant to do, that they were always going to do. And yeah, as you say, I had evidence that that wasn't the case, that they turned in different directions and made different decisions along the way.

Mark Quinn
Right, right. We don't want to offend the 75% or the 85% of our listeners, because, you know, they're teachers, right? So, but I'm sure that what you said about the reasons for the how hard they had to work in to get in to teaching, the sacrifices they had to make, I'm sure that would resonate really loudly with the ECTs and their mentors who listen to this podcast.

You used the V word Emily. The vocation.

Emily McLeod 
Yeah

Mark Quinn
I think, you feel that this is somehow problematic when it comes to getting and keeping teachers?

Emily McLeod 
Absolutely. I think, on a number of levels. Firstly, like you said, they worked hard to get there, and it doesn't acknowledge that hard work and the compromises and sacrifices that people have made along the way. But I think the bigger question is, what about the people who don't feel like teaching is their vocation? Where are they and who are they?  Are they the people who in our survey said that they were open to teaching, but maybe it wasn't their first choice? I think there must be a lot of these people who are interested in teaching. I think perhaps I was one of them, interested in teaching, might try it. I am I as born to do it as my colleague or my friend who's pursuing teacher education, and it raises these questions. 
So, the first point I'd like to make as well on that is that it's not a coincidence. I don't think that the three people who were, that engaging in this narrative were all white women.

So, their intersectional identities reflected the typical image of a teacher in this country, and I think that, my analysis showed kind of evidence that all of them also had in common that one of the, what I call teacher makers, like their reasons for becoming a teacher was that they were all recognised by someone who had been a teacher or was a teacher in their lives, who recognised them as a teacher and supported them in becoming a teacher and said, you know, oh, you'd make a good teacher. And sometimes it was like, you're good at looking after your younger brother, or you're great at that sports club that you volunteer at, you'd make a great teacher, absolutely fantastic. They were supported in getting into the profession, which is great.

And that leaves me to question however, other people, perhaps even doing the same activities, supporting their younger siblings who perhaps don't share those intersectional identities as being a white woman and therefore and not being recognised as potential teachers. That really like leaves me questioning, is it mainly the white women who are being told, oh, you'd be a good teacher and why is that and why can't it be, a different, a different way?

But the second thing I'd make in terms of that vocation argument, why I don't like it and why I think it's problematic is like, we're not born to teach. Teaching is a specialist profession. Everyone who's a teacher in England has gone through teacher education. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. You're taught by specialists, you're an expert. So, let's celebrate that. It's not something that you're just born to do.

Elaine Long
It's interesting just taking us back to the start of the podcast when you talked about the driving force of research for you is to make an improvement. So, you know, if we are missing the could have been teachers. What are the implications of your research in that sense and what could we do to attract more people to become teachers?

Emily McLeod 
Yeah. Great question, and you’re right, it’s like the most important question, right? Otherwise, why do the research? One of my biggest recommendations, perhaps the biggest one is more careers education around teaching. So, I think there's an assumption that a lot of young people know about teaching and know how to become a teacher and I didn't find that that was the case.

Of the 13 young people who I spoke to in more depth, one of them had been told by their undergraduate course, like, do you know, with this degree you can become a teacher and this is how you might do that. All of the others could have been a teacher and had expressed an interest in teaching, but their institutions hadn’t to acknowledge that, and like, fine, I understand that there's lots of other routes you can go into, but I just think, if especially higher education institutions who have all of these undergrads because postgraduate teacher education is the most common route into teaching.

If there is a little bit more space given to, hey, do you know, one of the things you can do with your course is become a teacher? Here are some of the ways that you could do that. I think that would perhaps, I'm imagining, you know, lecture, lecture theatres, and my research suggests that a third of people in these lecture theatres have an openness or interest in teaching. So, I think that could go a long way and seems like a relatively simple step that could be made quite quickly.

I think the other thing that I would recommend and suggest, which is perhaps harder to implement in practice, is more what I would call teaching type opportunities for young people. By which I mean these experiences like babysitting or coaching or volunteering with young people, like having a teaching like role. So, there's been some research to kind of indicate that there might be a link between having an experience role like that and becoming a teacher.

And I found that it wasn't the teacher maker that you would hope, I had a lot of people in my sample who had a lot of experience volunteering with young people and chose not to teach, so I wouldn't say it's getting to like, definitely really increase teacher recruitment, if every young person in the country had a week’s work experience in a teaching like role.

But none of those people who had experiences like that had turned off teaching completely. They were all really interested in teaching. They had what I'd call like they'd started to form like teacher identity, and they'd seen themselves in the role, they learned more about the role and surprise, surprise, working with young people didn't put them off. It's a great profession, it's really fun. Right?

It's just the other things are happening too. So, I think giving more people the opportunity to try out and learn about the profession that we just assume they know about because it's there, because everyone went to school, I think that can really make a difference as well.

Elaine Long
That's interesting. So, we need to be more proactive about bringing the joys of teaching to people, rather than expecting them to find it or discover it, because some people may not necessarily do that even though they have an openness to it.

Can I ask also about this, the fact that, you know, teaching is overwhelmingly white, working class women and therefore it seems to me that there's a benefit to, you know, encouraging people from other intersectional identities into teaching, not least because you can't be what you can't see, and in terms of people from diverse backgrounds with different identities, they would definitely benefit from having a more diverse range of teachers in front of them. Is there anything that emerged from your research about that or how we do that particularly?

Emily McLeod 
Yeah, it I'm afraid, there’s not like a one short answer to that. There's not like a, I'll do this and that would do it. But it comes back to these the importance of status and safety. Those people who like for example, you said don't see people like themselves within the profession, it’s perhaps not safe for them.

How can we make it so that the profession is high and status and high and safety for more people, and that includes valuing the profession more, perhaps with salary increases? Understanding that it's not a vocation, that it's a specialised profession with a lot of education that goes into it. So yeah, I think it it's quite complex and it depends on who you are and your individual background, experiences, identities. But it all comes back to bringing it to be in high and status high and safety.

Elaine Long
Because I suppose, you know, the schools can be associated with quite white middle-class values in England. Is it jumping and please tell me if I am jumping too far because I'm not a research, a commentator, but is it too far to speculate that because of that, that wouldn't feel like it necessarily a safe environment for everybody because they don't feel they fit in to those white middle class values, and then it becomes a sort of self-perpetuating cycle in a way that, you know, this is an interesting insight into how we could break it slightly.

Emily McLeod 
Yeah. No, I, I think you're absolutely right. I think some people's experiences of education, like, can be racist, can be sexist. I think that it all comes back to, you're right. that's the wider question, isn't it? Like, how can we make education not just becoming a teacher, but how can we make education a safe space for everyone?

Yeah, that involves a lot more systemic change. perhaps more research in the future, we can collaborate on, on answering some of those questions, but I'm absolutely certain that they're all linked. If someone's had a negative experience of education, no matter if they've had a great teacher along the way, why would they want to re-enter that as a professional?

Elaine Long
Yeah, it would take a lot of guts to want to change that and it probably wouldn't feel very, very safe or in line with your identity. But yeah, you're right that is a big, a big question.
Mark Quinn
Emily, we are recording this podcast in the week that we've been given the date for the next general election, and at least one party is going into that election promising to recruit in excess of 6000 new teachers. There'll be other parties who promise and promise promise even more than that. I think they could do well, listen, I think I'll send this podcast to some people in party HQ somewhere so they can pick up some ideas.

The question is simple one really. I mean, what would your, would you be hopeful that the lessons can be learned or is it just a matter of the wheel turning and the job seeming to be more secure or higher status and therefore more people will go into it? Is it cyclical, are you hopeful that we'll get these teachers we need?

Emily McLeod 
That is a really good question. So, overall, on an everyday basis, I'm definitely an optimist and I want to say yes, that I'm hopeful. But I'm also aware that a lot of the things that we've discussed today are like big societal problems, it's about how we recognise the role of women in society, for example, and the jobs associated with being a women and I think some of these things can be adjusted and improved with quite quick fixes, like making it easier to become a teacher, telling more people about how they can become a teacher. But I'm also aware that this is an issue.

We need to think beyond the education system. It needs to be a wider societal thing, like parents and families have a role too. Are people saying, oh, you could be a teacher. Why not be a teacher to all of their family members? Or is it just the little girls in their family?

So, I think everyone plays a role in that and I think that, just targeting education with education policy won't make all the difference with this particular issue. So, I think we need to shout about it from the rooftops, we need to share it with more than the education policy makers.

Mark Quinn
Yeah, and it's good that, you know, we are going into an election where it is recognised that this is a priority, right? That we know we've got too few people going in and we've got too many people leaving the other end, and I mean, this is relevant to us, obviously, because we are called the ECF Staffroom podcast.
We are part of or meant to be part of the solution to this problem, at least in trying to attract, you know, retain people, stick some teachers to their schools. It is it is difficult.

I think Elaine and I would be hopeful. otherwise, we wouldn't be turning up for work every day. But it is complex, isn't it? I think it's been so interesting to listen to you today about why it's just not a simple matter of saying, up salaries. I also think you've offered some fairly simple, you know, straightforward suggestions which is to talk to young people about why it might be a good idea to become a teacher. Keep talking to them about it.

Emily McLeod 
Yeah. I'm also aware, this time last year at least, there were seven different ways to become a teacher in England, and I struggled to, like, find out about all of them with the space and funding that I had to do that job. So, I think it's quite difficult to understand the messy nature of teacher education and all the routes that you could do.

And if you've got that qualification, can you get funding of a bursary from there? And where do you do it? So, make it a bit easier to understand the initial teacher education landscape. Yeah.

Mark Quinn
Simpler and you say easier. I think, maybe more predictable as well, would be nice. Because if you if you were speaking to a ten year old and 13 year olds and 15 year olds and they were aware of this idea of a bursary to go into teaching. By the time they became 22 or 23, whatever it is, that the bursary was no longer there or not in the subject they were hoping to train in, then it's no good, it's not attraction then, is it?

Emily McLeod 
It's lost its safety. Yeah.

Elaine Long
I'm going to challenge you now, Emily, because what’s really come across on the podcast is, like Mark says, I think politically, we think this is a very simple problem with technical solutions. But in fact, from talking to you, I think what's fascinating about it is, is how interrelated and how woven into the fabric of society this problem is, really, but, contrary to that, I'm now going to ask you, if you could, and this is something we give every guest on our podcast, a Post-it note to write some advice on, and you have only got a small Post-it note, I’m sorry.

What do you want to write on yours? Who would you like to give it to? Where would you like to stick it? It could land on a desk anywhere. you know, Houses of Parliament, anywhere in England on a new teacher’s desk. So, what are you going to put on that post-it note and, who’s desk or wall or forehead would you like me to stick it to?

Emily McLeod 
Are you sure you I can only have one? That's tough.

Elaine Long
I’m really sorry, you can only have one Post-it note. You have the freedom to stick it anywhere.

Emily McLeod 
I'll have to come back on another podcast so I could get, a second Post-it for you. Speaking with you today and, like, knowing also, remembering how it was as an early career teacher, you can sometimes feel so out of your depth. It's a difficult job, it's great, but it's tough sometimes, and definitely I felt a sense of imposter syndrome some days, and I think informed by my research findings, I would have a Post-it, and in whatever places many early career teachers could see it. I don't know if that’s in the IOE somewhere in your staffroom, and on it, I would remind the wonderful early career teachers, that they are highly trained professionals, they have received and are still participating in specialist education, and they are an expert in what they're doing.

That's why they're there. In other words, they weren't born to be a teacher. That's okay, and I would encourage them to remind and tell others, both within teaching and outside of teaching, that they were not born to become a teacher, but they've received specialist education to do so.

Elaine Long
Okay. So, I'm going, well I'm going to stick, you're an expert in what you're doing. I'm going to stick that on the toilet door, staff toilets. I think everybody sees that.

Mark Quinn
I think you used both sides of that Post-it note, Emily. But, there is a bell ringing, which we have in our staffroom. and that tells us that we've, sort of we've come to the end of our time talking together. But as you said, you've just invited yourself back in for part two. We'll have to establish distance at some point.

Your peppermint tea is sitting at your elbow still. I didn't see you drinking it. I'm sure you can take it away with you along with that digestive biscuit. It's been lovely talking to you and thank you for coming in to chat to us this afternoon.

Emily McLeod 
I've really enjoyed it.  Thank you.

Elaine Long
Thanks so much Emily.

Mark Quinn
Our thanks go to Dr Emily McLeod for sharing a peppermint tea and a digestive biscuit this week with us in the ECF Staffroom.

Elaine Long
Please do get in touch with us if you think you would like to chat about your ECF experience. In the meantime, do join us for a biscuit and a chat with another colleague in the ECF Staffroom.

Mark Quinn
If you've enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from. Search IOE podcast from wherever you get your podcasts to find episodes of the ECF Staffroom, as well as more podcasts from the IOE.

Elaine Long
Finally, a quick favour before you go. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we would really appreciate it if you could give the IOE podcast a rating, Five stars would be nice if you're enjoying the show, and that will help us reach more people who are interested in hearing what the ECF Staffroom is all about.

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