How are teacher shortages in hardest-to-staff schools represented in (inter)national policy documents from England and Australia?

ABSTARCT

Teacher shortages are a significant global problem disproportionally affecting “hardest-to-staff” schools and subjects. To better understand (inter)national policy responses to teacher shortages, this paper uses a Bacchian-inspired approach to critically examine proposals suggested as solutions in policy documents from England and Australia, and thus how the problem is being thought about especially in relation to hardest-to-staff contexts. We contend that the problem representations in the policy documents are narrowly conceived and need to be considered differently through the lenses of (re)professionalisation and social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher shortages
• hard-to-staff schools
• teacher attraction
• teacher retention
• teacher professionalism
• social justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC DP230100041).