Want to ease the teacher retention crisis? We must change the nature of the job

The amazing Lucy Kellaway, former Financial Times journalist and founder of Now Teach, has reached the conclusion that teaching is “unendurably hard”. Why, she asks, can’t we engineer things so that teachers can work three-day weeks? Having achieved that change herself, after her full-time training year, she’s now loving her job – and is, I’m sure, a better teacher for it.I admire Lucy and would love to meet her. Her widely-shared experience has shone a spotlight on the harsh realities of teaching. What follows isn’t intended as criticism, merely comment on the unanswerable questions she raises.On one level you can’t argue: most teachers would cope better with a three-day week. They’d be less exhausted, escaping from the marking-preparation-and-admin treadmill and, hey, be allowed a life.The first problem is financial. Most ordinary teachers would struggle on three-fifths of a £25K salary. By contrast, in her revealing BBC Radio 4 series, aired in the summer, Lucy quoted a Now Teach colleague who took a 90 per cent pay cut to follow her lead: she had similarly left a highly-paid job.