New wellbeing tool for Early Career Teachers
The National Institute of Teaching has launched a new digital tool to help early career teachers manage their workload and improve their wellbeing.
As part of NIoT’s Early Career Framework, the new tool takes the form of a brief pulse survey that ECTs and their mentors will complete at regular intervals, giving snapshots of their wellbeing and workload.
It is no secret that teachers, especially at the start of their career, are under enormous pressure, with 1 in 5 teachers leaving the profession within their first two years. NIoT’s digital tool is designed to address this issue within its wider mission of offering new teachers the support they need.
Using the anonymised data from regular pulse surveys, NIoT will be able to identify the common pinch points across the school year for its entire ECT cohort, and plan accordingly both to alleviate pressure and to develop its continuous programme development.
ECTs will also have access to their personal history of entries, and will be able to work with their mentors to highlight their personal pinch points and plan the distribution of their workload effectively.
Anonymised data
Over the long term, NIoT will share its anonymised data with its in-house researchers and associates, allowing it to identify patterns across the entire education sector and create effective strategies to benefit the community of teachers nationwide.
Katy Micklewright, head of Early Career Framework at the National Institute of Teaching, said: "From evidence, we know that wellbeing is one of the biggest reasons for amazing early career teachers leaving this incredible profession. We want to tackle this head on at the National Institute of Teaching by investigating the root of this issue with teachers on our ECF programme.
"This tool will not only allow us to gather valuable insights into the wellbeing of our early career teachers, but it will give them the opportunity to meaningfully reflect on and discuss their own wellbeing.
"Most importantly it will give us the ability at NIoT to share findings and develop solutions across the broader teaching profession.
"This is our passion and we know it is pivotal to retaining not only our early career colleagues, but teachers throughout the profession."