Extend fully paid maternity leave for UK teachers to stem exodus, union says | Teaching
Full maternity pay for teachers across the UK should be increased to 26 weeks to stop women in their 30s leaving classrooms, a union leader has said.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of teachers’ union NASUWT, said it was a “national scandal” that so many teachers were quitting, saying inadequate maternity support was one of the reasons.
He said the government’s efforts to retain teachers would be undermined unless urgent improvements were made to maternity, paternity and flexible working rights.
The government recently announced in its schools whitepaper that it plans to double teachers’ entitlement to full maternity pay from four weeks to eight weeks, starting from the 2027-28 academic year. The Ministry of Education announced this as the first national maternity pay improvement for teachers in more than 25 years.
Wrack reminded delegates attending the NASUWT annual conference in Birmingham on Friday that maternity pay was much more generous elsewhere in the public and private sectors.
Giving her first conference speech as NASUWT leader, Wrack, a one-time firefighter and former general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said female firefighters in the West Midlands were entitled to 52 weeks of fully paid leave.
The largest group leaving teaching is women in their 30s. A NASUWT survey of 2,000 UK teachers showed that 95% of teachers struggle to balance their jobs with being a parent, and 70% are seriously considering resigning due to the impact on their children.
More than three-quarters (77%) of respondents who had taken maternity, paternity or adoption leave in the past five years would have liked to have taken more leave, but financial reasons prevented most from doing so.
The survey also found that some school administrators did not support pregnant teachers and their spouses, and some participants were denied requests to attend prenatal appointments.
A teacher suffering from severe morning sickness asked if something could be done if she had to leave the classroom to be sick. He was rejected and had to vomit into a bucket in the classroom locker.
Another said: “I had to have a minor surgery while I was pregnant. I felt guilty for taking time off. I had to leave work three times because I was bleeding. The principal told me I was overreacting. It turned out I had an abnormal growth on my cervix.”
NASUWT will now campaign for negotiations with governments across the UK to introduce the 26-week measure as part of efforts to improve maternity, paternity and flexible working rights for teachers.
Wrack told NASUWT members: “The DfE made a big fuss about doubling full pay time for maternity leave. “Of course that sounds good – until you dig a little deeper.
“Full maternity pay will indeed double from four weeks to eight weeks. But when we start to look deeper, the fanfare disappears. The truth is that many parts of the public and private sectors already have much better maternity services. So doubling a very small amount still doesn’t leave us with… much.”
The DfE said: “Last year we saw one of the lowest rates of teachers leaving the profession since 2010 and we are already delivering on our promise to recruit and retain 6,500 more talented teachers, with more than 2,300 secondary and special school teachers in classrooms this year.”
