It’s five years since the DfE published its recruitment and retention strategy, and since NFER began publishing our annual report on the teacher labour market in England. We aim to monitor the progress the system is making towards meeting the teacher supply challenge; but unfortunately, there isn’t much positive progress to report.
Despite some improvements in recruitment this year due to bursary increases and some success in attracting more international applicants in physics, both recruitment and retention issues are persisting. Teacher supply is in a critical state that risks the quality of education that children and young people receive.
Overall secondary recruitment into teacher training last year was just half of the required numbers. Our ITT recruitment forecast for this year, based on applications so far and newly-published targets, suggests that may improve to around 61 per cent of target, but that 10 out of 17 secondary subjects remain likely to under-recruit. Primary recruitment, which is usually at or above its target each year, is forecast to reach only 83 per cent of target next year.
Retaining more teachers would mean not needing to recruit so many, and bring down the targets, but retention is a particular concern this year. After bouncing back up to a similar level to what it was before the pandemic last year, the teacher leaving rate may rise further. DfE’s Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders (WLTL) survey data suggests that the number of teachers who are considering leaving increased by 44 per cent in 2022/23 compared to the previous year.
