NFER publishes policy analysis of student loan reimbursements for improving teacher retention

New NFER analysis, commissioned by the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) and the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET), shows that a student loan reimbursement scheme could be considered as an effective policy tool to boost teacher retention.

Teacher student loan reimbursement (TSLR) is a policy whereby the government pays back the amount of money paid by teachers in the previous financial year for their student loan repayments.

Using the estimates from the Department for Education (DfE) pilot of a TSLR scheme in 2018 for state sector teachers in certain shortage subjects and in the first 10 years of their teaching career, researchers at NFER modelled the likely impact of introducing a new TSLR scheme for all teachers in their first 10 years of teaching.

NFER estimated that after one year of the scheme there could be around 2,100 additional teachers, who would have been expected to otherwise leave teaching in the state sector if there was no TSLR scheme. The cost of the scheme for one year is around £245 million, which is around the total current spend on training bursaries.  

Having estimated the cost of a TSLR scheme, NFER then modelled what the increase in teachers might be from instead spending the same money on bursaries or early-career retention payments.

The full findings can be read in NFER’s report, Policy analysis of student loan reimbursements for improving teacher retention, which can be downloaded here.

Sarah Tang, Economist in NFER’s Centre for Policy and Practice Research, said:

“Our analysis shows that introducing a new TSLR scheme could be an efficient policy for improving teacher supply through encouraging more teachers to remain in the profession. Especially for shortage subjects where bursaries are already high, a TSLR scheme could be considered as part of a broad teacher recruitment and retention strategy.”

Emma Hollis, NASBTT Chief Executive, commented: “In our manifesto The Future of Initial Teacher Training: How can we attract more people to the teaching profession and support school-based ITT providers to deliver high-quality training?, we outlined our commitment to working with partners to model the potential benefits of student loan repayment for new teachers working in state schools for a certain number of years.

“The publication of NFER’s analysis considering the cost effectiveness of a new TSLR scheme as one policy option that could be a beneficial tool for encouraging more teachers to remain in the profession is therefore a huge step forward in making the case for a serious policy discussion around that, and we welcome the findings.

“For us, we are committed to develop a solutions-focused approach to the challenges the sector faces around teacher recruitment and retention. We look forward to feeding the findings of this work into DfE and moving the conversation forward.”