Only half of the required number of trainee secondary school teachers in England have been recruited as the academic year gets under way, analysis shows.
The figures, obtained by the National Education Union (NEU) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), show ministers are on course to miss their recruitment targets by 48%.
Numbers in all subjects except for history, PE and classics are below the government recruitment target, the National Foundation for Educational Research has said. “Without an urgent policy response to make teaching more attractive, schools will face increasingly intense shortages over the next few years, which are likely to impact negatively on the quality of pupils’ education,” said Jack Worth, the NFER’s school workforce lead.
Government figures for last month – the final month before teacher training courses get under way – show there were just 13,788 recruits, well short of the target of 26,360.
The NAHT and the NEU will host a joint debate on the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention at the TUC’s annual conference in Liverpool on Tuesday.
Paul Whiteman, the NAHT general secretary, said the shortages meant more children were being taught either by teachers with no qualification in the subject, by teaching assistants or by supply staff.
“The government must rip up its failed recruitment and retention strategy and replace it with a new vision which restores education as a career graduates aspire to,” he said. “That means at the very least immediate action to tackle crushing workload and fundamentally reform Ofsted, as well as a plan to reverse more than a decade of real-terms pay cuts.”
