Education Sector Wide Workforce Planning Conference 2024

Check out some highlights in video above.

There is a growing need to better understand the challenges facing the education sector in Northern Ireland in relation to recruiting and retaining skilled and motivated staff, ensuring a strong future talent pool to deliver for children and young people now and into the future.

The Department of Education and employers are acutely aware that many of the professions within the education sector are difficult to fill and if not addressed, this will impact learning outcomes for our children and young people. 

At the conference we heard about:

• The challenge of attracting key roles such as skilled teachers and classroom assistants and the contributing factors.
• The increasing number of children with special educational needs and the growing skills shortages to support these children.
• A need for increased leadership development and clear internal career pathways to be put in place.

Following on from this conference, sector partners will continue to work to develop a strong case for a sector wide dedicated workforce planning function, which will be core to moving forward with plans to shape how we attract and retain a highly skilled, expert and child centred workforce across education in Northern Ireland.

The insights gathered at this Workforce Planning Conference will help us collectively determine and agree key priorities across the sector which we can together focus on improving to ensure that we develop an effective education workforce for the years ahead, and we will continue to engage with school leaders, and across the sector as we build this expertise for the system.