Recruitment and retention, public sector pay and pensions were the focus of an education conference in the Isle of Man.

London head teacher and president of the National Association of Head Teachers, Anne Lyons, was visiting the island which was hosting the inter-islands teaching conference with representatives from Guernsey, Jersey and Gibraltar.

’The areas are quite small so it’s beneficial to join together for what we hope might be a regular event. It’s a joint venture for school leaders and union representatives to discuss common themes affecting Crown Dependencies,’ she said.

Other areas under discussion include assessment policies and behaviour policies, working with government, and areas of conflict and agreement between the different teaching unions.

The conference opened with an address by director of education, Geoff Moorcroft and closed with a speech from Education Minister Graham Cregeen, MHK.

While retention of staff is not a concern in the Isle of Man, recruitment is and Mrs Lyons cited parallels with her own situation in London where both recruitment and retention were a ’massive issue’, she said.

One of the factors at the root of this was pay.

’Pay has fallen behind similar professional roles,’ she said.

Kewaigue School headteacher Adrian Shorthouse said the pay situation was accentuated in the Isle of Man where a one per cent pay cap has greater impact with the island’s inflation rate rising ahead of that in the UK. Recent statistics showed the RPI figure for the Isle of Man in May was 8.4 per cent and the CPI figure was up to 3.9 per cent, compared with the UK CPI rate for May of 2.7 per cent.

He said higher general living costs in the island could also prove prohibitive for new recruits to the profession.

Financial incentives offered to teachers and would-be teachers in the UK, particularly in shortage subjects such as maths, science and modern languages, were also not available here and the loss of on-island training was a major disadvantage, he said.

Mrs Lyons said a major benefit in the UK was schemes such as ’teach first’ offering on-the-job training for recruits moving across from other professions.

’I have parents looking to teaching as a second career who have already worked in another profession,’ she said.