The state and the teachers: Problems in teacher supply, retention and morale

Abstract Supply, retention and morale problems related to teaching are in themselves the surface manifestations of deeper historical, structural and ideological contradictions within state policy in education. Such issues cannot possibly be explained without reference to the radical changes in state policy in education which have transformed both the terms and conditions of service for teachers and the nature of the educational process in England and Wales. This paper will attempt to place problems of teacher supply, retention and morale in a wider analytical context by outlining recent historical trends in teacher‐state relations which are relevant to contemporary policy issues. It will then proceed to examine the consequences of these changing social and power relations for teacher supply, retention and morale problems. Finally it will attempt a critical reflection upon the options available for a contemporary education policy which is informed by the insights of critical scholarship rather than by the decontextualized analysis of policy science.1 1. Policy science is understood to be a mode of analysis and of policy formation which is premised upon a notion of ‘system malfunction’. It characteristically excludes both the history and the wider socio‐political context in which a specific malfunction occurs. It is, in C. Wright Mills’ (1973) terms a form of ‘abstracted empiricism’. For further discussion see Fay (1975) and Grace (1984b, 1990). A critical social science attempts to go beyond these limitations. (See Carr & Kemmis, 1986 and Fay, 1987).